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 Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, who famously accused Facebook Inc
founder Mark Zuckerberg of stealing their idea, said they used
bitcoins to buy tickets for a high-altitude voyage on billionaire
Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic commercial spaceflight venture.
The brothers, Olympic rowers who earned MBA degrees from Oxford
University, have become bitcoin evangelists and investors and are
planning to launch a fund to make it easy to trade the digital
currency on the stock market.
In a blog post, Tyler Winklevoss compared Branson's space endeavor
and bitcoin entrepreneurs to major historical figures who changed
the way the world was perceived, like Marco Polo, Christopher
Columbus, Vasco da Gama and Nicolaus Copernicus.
"It is in this vein that Cameron and I contemplate our tickets into
space — as seed capital supporting a new technology that may forever
change the way we travel, purchased with a new technology that may
forever change the way we transact," he wrote.
Virgin Galactic, a U.S. offshoot of Branson's London-based Virgin
Group, is selling rides on its SpaceShipTwo for $250,000.
The twins are not the first to sign up for Virgin Galactic using
bitcoins, but it is the highest-profile flight booking to date using
the currency. Last November, Branson announced that a flight
attendant from Hawaii had become the first person to pay for a seat
with bitcoins.
Bitcoin, a digital currency that is traded on a peer-to-peer network
independent of central control, has seen its value soar in the past
year as it gains attention from growing numbers of investors,
entrepreneurs and regulators.
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But the virtual currency's struggle for legitimacy has been shaken
by recent debacles, including the collapse last week of Tokyo-based
Mt. Gox, once the world's dominant bitcoin exchange.
Few major retailers have begun accepting payment in bitcoins, and
critics say the currency's high volatility makes it unsuitable for
everyday transactions.
The six-passenger, two-pilot SpaceShipTwo is hauled into the air by
a twin-hull carrier jet and then released.
The upcoming flights are designed to reach altitudes of more than 65
miles above Earth, high enough to see the curvature of the planet
set against the blackness of space.
(Reporting by Noel Randewich; editing by Jonathan Oatis)
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