That defeats the whole point, unless the virtual currency is worth something in the real world - at the very least considerable social currency or (ideally) it should be exchangeable for real goods and services.
People bet differently when they have something real at stake - ever tried to play poker with no money behind the chips? It's a completely different (and completely boring) game. It's the reason the market instantly knew who was responsible for the Challenger crash (when it took Richard Feynman and the rest of genius scientists on the panel months to even have a plausible idea).
IIRC according to Feynman's memoirs the O-rings were the leading candidate already in his first meeting with NASA engineers, and in his first days in DC General Kutyna made the link to cold-weather brittleness. It did not take them months to have a plausible idea. They spent months looking into lots of things anyway.
Sorry for the scribd link. It's the first copy I found that wasn't behind a pay wall.
The gist is that within a few hours of the Challenger crash the stock for the company responsible for the component that failed went down far more than the stocks for other companies involved in building challenger. Interestingly, the equity value the stock lost (~200 Million USD) is almost exactly the same as the estimated total loss in profit (fines, lawsuits, updates to safety standards, lost contracts, etc).
Hmmm...so traders had a 1 in 4 shot of picking the correct company and they happened to do so? I remain unconvinced. I also remain unconvinced that this data is useful. It's not like we should let trader behavior influence safety investigations, right?
People bet differently when they have something real at stake - ever tried to play poker with no money behind the chips? It's a completely different (and completely boring) game. It's the reason the market instantly knew who was responsible for the Challenger crash (when it took Richard Feynman and the rest of genius scientists on the panel months to even have a plausible idea).