Hey "visualcsharp", for some reason your post is appearing dead. This is not a real virtual currency, and nothing like Bitcoin. Think of this as store credits,

Hey "visualcsharp", for some reason your post is appearing dead. This is not a real virtual currency, and nothing like Bitcoin. Think of this as store credits, similar to Xbox credits or whatever they use. Its not really a layer of inefficiency because customers will always have a little more Amazon coin than they spend, so this makes Amazon a little more money in the short term and also conditions its customers to use the coins and thus use Amazons services more. (What I mean about not spending all the coins: you buy $20 worth of coin, and something you buy is worth $18.75, that leftover $1.25 is useless until you top up more. And if your not allowed to combine Amazon coin and USD then it encourages you to purchase more coins)