The Impact of Virtual Money on E-Commerce

The concept of E-business, along with E-commerce, has been developed due to the expansion of communications system. The concept of E-commerce has first appeared in the 1970s. E-commerce represents a portion of electronic commerce, being a multidisciplinary concept of trading in products and services, as well as paying for them, using the internet via virtual market. Ecommerce has expanded on a global level significantly during the last decade, and it still shows great potential in growth and development. One of the immediate consequences of growth of electronic commerce is a greater need for a type of virtual money that can be used as an instrument of payment. The year 2009 marked the appearance of a revolutionary virtual currency named Bitcoin, a decentralized digital cryptocurrency. Bitcoin is actually the first virtual currency that has gained the trust of its users and in that way managed not only to survive, but to secure a significant presence in the place of online market transactions. This paper aims to point out both the positive and negative impacts Bitcoin has on E-commerce, as well as its influence on the greater macroeconomic and political plan.