There are regular threads here about how bitcoin isn't backed by anything, generally followed by a plan to back it with gold or silver or dollars, however, every one of those plans relies on a central authority.  This doesn't work since that central authority is subject to bankruptcy, corruption, and government influence.

In order to keep the distributed nature of bitcoin you would have to back it by something that is itself virtual.  That got me thinking that maybe Namecoin is really a backed virtual currency.  Even if the dollar/bitcoin/whatever value of namecoin went to zero, you'd still be able to use it for something. Currently, that something is registering domains but it is set up to allow you to store name/value pairs.  This makes NameCoin a currency that is backed by the right to use a distributed data store, pretty interesting.