South Korea Rules Virtual Currency On Par With Real Money

This week, the South Korean Supreme Court made a ruling stating that online games’ virtual currency, or “cyber money”, can legally be exchanged for real world currency. The ruling also stated that transactions using this “cyber money” will be taxable.

If such a measure was implemented in the US, the implications for gamers and social games would be large. With Zynga reportedly on a $300 million revenue run rate for 2010, and 90 percent of revenue coming from virtual goods, we know that virtual currency is an estimated $270m per year market, just for Zynga.