A virtual currency system keeps track of virtual credits, which can be owned, transferred, purchased, and sold by participants in a virtual economy. Each virtual credit has an internal value and an external value, which define, respectively, the exchange rates for creating and redeeming the virtual credits. Upon creation of new virtual credits, the internal value for those credits is the rate for which real currency was paid per credit. The external value sets the rate at which the virtual credits can be redeemed for real currency. Each virtual credit may further have a face value, which is an apparent value of the virtual credit within the virtual economy, giving users a baseline impression for valuing the virtual currency. These features of the virtual currency enable a number of useful actions within the virtual economy, including currency seeding, couponing, and chargebacks.