How Minecraft may make bitcoin the ‘official currency of virtual worlds’

The United States dollar bill only has value because you believe it does. Now, a game developer in Chile wants to apply that same concept to Minecraft and bitcoin.

BitQuest is a new public Minecraft server from Chilean game developer Mego. The idea behind BitQuest is to create a working virtual economy where players can earn bitcoins, the popular digital cryptocurrency, by trading Minecraft’s emerald element. Each emerald is worth 1 bit (1/1 millionth of a bitcoin), or about .04 cents. In the BitQuest version of Minecraft, you can deposit the emeralds in exchange for bits using enchanted chests, which act as ATMs. For Mego, this is all about using one of the most popular games in the world to help further legitimize Bitcoin as the official currency of our inevitable cyberpunk future.