[Editor's Note: This is a guest post by Matt McAllister and Jaini Shah of Offerpal Media. The article addresses issues that developers should consider when implementing virtual currencies. It focuses on the tradeoffs of how to manage two types of currencies within a game.]

Virtual economies are quickly becoming as complex as real ones. As more and more developers monetize their games by selling virtual goods and services, they face many of the same issues and challenges that leaders of real-world economies must deal with every day—inflation and deflation, balance and disparity, supply and demand, security and fraud prevention—plus other challenges that are unique to the online environment.

Some game and virtual world developers, such as Gaia Online, have gone so far as to hire full-time, professional economists to help them navigate the murky waters of creating a virtual economy, so important is it to their monetization numbers and overall revenue.

One common way many developers have chosen to deal with these issues is to implement a dual-currency system. In the