Bitcoin – origin of idea comes from a game?

I am just trying to connect the dots and sharing what I think was the source of bitcoins. I tried to google to check whether my analogy about bitcoins is plausible, but I couldn’t find any references.

Way back in 2003-04 times, when I used to work for an organisation which was devoted to independent verification and validation (IVV) services in India, we got a testing contract from a gaming company. In those days, “gaming currency” wasn’t a new thing; we all have done that always even when we played “Vyapar” game, right? We needed money to buy some property and we used to earn gaming-money.

But when the traditional gaming became online gaming business, the purchase of its currency has to be done by buying it by using your real money. Initially, when you become a player for the first time, the gaming company would give you some money for free so as to allow you to start playing and develop interest. Once you are in, to continue playing, unless you had earned gaming-money, you wouldn’t be able to buy any “tool” or whatever that is on sale in the game. If you have a short-fall of money, then you are allowed to buy more gaming-money by using your real money. That’s how the business model has been.

This game, which I am going to talk about had all the regular facets of online game related currency business, but it was unique when it came to acquiring the currency. There was control over how much money the gaming company sells you. Hence, it was not possible to buy the gaming-money at will. The only alternative was bidding online within the game-players and seek whether anyone is interested to sell the gaming-money- and then the usual process of bidding-buying used to take place. This obviously started increasing the “value” of the gaming-money and players started making real money.

I believe that unless there was no such schema of things in any other older online games, we may want to believe that this game / idea was the origin of bitcoins which is believed to be came in existence in 2009.