Ultima Online tried it.
The economy siezed up from hoarding resources. "Fixed" by changing NPC shopkeeps to accept rediculous goods via gold assigned to them out of thin air in time based alottments, as well as time based creation of more resources. Game system went from finite supply to perpetually inflationary
i think a game economy has to be perpetually inflationary and the inflation rate needs to track the number of users, and ultimately any secondary market trading in-game currency is going to be looked at by game companies as money they aren't getting and so they do all sorts of retarded things to try and either get that money or stamp it out
so the root problem has to do with the exclusivity of the IP when you think about it
I find this topic interesting. What would buy say to someone who tries to draw analogies to the real world, claiming Bitcoin can't be used as money?
