Since credit cards were introduced as a method of digital payment, there have been a handful of attempts to advance the idea of electronic cash.

One of the recent attempts at moving past the plastic is an entirely new form of currency known as Bitcoin.

Introduced in 2009 by a developer using the pseudonym “Satoshi Nakamoto,” Bitcoin is “the first de-centralized digital currency,” according to its online homepage.

“In virtual currencies what you tend to have is this somewhat market-based approach,” said Brian Mennecke, associate professor of supply chain and information systems at Iowa State. “So as long as people trust the currency, it’s going to be viable.”

However, people are sometimes reluctant to trust new ways of money management. An example of this is biometric payment, the scan of a fingerprint used to access an individual’s account rather than the swipe of a credit card.

This method, though popular during the mid-to-late 2000s, has seen dwindling interest.

“We did a study experimenting with pay-by-touch, which used a fingerprint reader,” Mennecke said. “The company is now going out of business, people do not like the fingerprint reader — ‘big brother’ and that.”

The trust of consumers is something Bitcoin has found difficult to retain due in some ways to conflicts caused by a website called Silk Road.

Just this year, it was uncovered that those responsible for the operation of Silk Road had been using the site for the purchase, sale and distribution of illegal narcotics. It was also found that the site had been conducting its business primarily in one type of currency: Bitcoin.

“There’s no underlying economic foundation as to the underlying value of the currency, and the primary value of this faux currency, in my view, is to provide a convenient venue in which to launder revenues to escape tax or criminal liabilities,” said David Swenson, associate scientist with the department of economics.

At case’s conclusion, nearly 1.5 percent of all Bitcoin in circulation was confiscated from the Silk Road site’s creators as evidence, according to the FBI.

“What is the foundation for value? Could I counterfeit bitcoins,” Swenson said, “How does one verify one’s holdings?  What is the underlying value of a bitcoin beyond the competing bids among coin holders?”

As of November of this year, there were roughly 12 million Bitcoin in circulation for a variety of products and services according to Bitcoin Charts. That is equivalent to $7.2 billion.

Consumers can use Bitcoin as currency for a variety of transactions online. Through an equally diverse community of online currency exchanges, Bitcoin holders are able to exchange their virtual wallets for dollars, euros or other forms of legal, governmental currencies.

An issue faced by any de-centralized currency is its independence. Without a government manipulating the currency, it will either fail and fade from the markets, or succeed and become popular.

If the Bitcoin or a similar electronic currency were to gain support to compete with a governmental currency, however, it would be facing the law, rather than mere public opinion.

“It is displacing existing systems,” Mennecke said. “It is a competition among currencies; what is the government going to say? ‘Well we don’t want that.’”

Today, Bitcoin is mined, a process equivalent to minting a virtual coin, on a schedule intended to end when 21 million bitcoins are in circulation.

Time and popular opinion will tell if a digital currency could be accepted and trusted by today’s consumers.