Virgin Galactic Now Taking Bitcoin For Suborbital Flights 70
Nerval's Lobster writes "Bitcoin hype has reached orbit: you can now use the virtual currency to fly on Virgin Galactic, which will begin taking passengers on sub-orbital flights in 2014. 'One future astronaut, a female flight attendant from Hawaii, has already purchased her Virgin Galactic ticket using bitcoins,' Virgin CEO Richard Branson wrote in a blog posting on Virgin's Website, 'and we expect many more to follow in her footsteps. All of our future astronauts are pioneers in their own right, and this is one more way to be forward-thinking.' Branson is an investor in Bitcoin, which has seen its per-unit value skyrocket from $10 to $900 over the past two years (today, its value stands at $766, but that could rapidly change). 'The lack of transparency from Bitcoin's founders has attracted some criticism, but its open source nature means anyone can audit the code,' he added in his posting. 'It is a brilliantly conceived idea to allow users to power the peer-to-peer payment network themselves, providing control and freedom for consumers.' A flight aboard Virgin Galactic costs $250,000, or roughly 320 Bitcoin at today's price. However, Bitcoin is also a volatile currency, diving and spiking in response to a variety of factors—while it's certainly possible that its value could zoom above $1,000 in the near future, there's always the possibility it could crash down to a few hundred dollars, or even lower."
Finally (Score:5, Funny)
I can use my fake currency to buy fake seats on a fake flight to space.
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I don't know... this currency where samples were handed out free a few years ago is doubling every few weeks. It has reached a price value where it is virtually impossible for it to lose relevance in today's trade market, with the bigwigs coming in and legitimizing it. I wouldn't be surprised if we remember these numbers below $1000 a coin as the good old days.
Re:Finally (Score:4, Funny)
"The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent." -- John Maynard Keynes
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t has reached a price value where it is virtually impossible for it to lose relevance in today's trade market, with the bigwigs coming in and legitimizing it.
What on earth does this mean? For me, the value is so unstable I don't want to use it as a temporary medium to buy anything. The value fluctuates so quickly that the transaction could very rapidly cost me 20% more or less than I initially thought. The more volatile a currency, the less I want to employ it as "money".
I love the arguments that "Bitcoin is a currency used for transactions, therefore it can't be a ponzi scheme". They fail to acknowledge the flipside of this- if it is too volatile to be u
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As more people trust it, it will tend to fluctuate less.
I would say fewer and fewer people will be trusting BTC over time. The first wave of enthusiasts came and went. Some of them are sitting on serious supplies of BTC in their wallets. There is nothing left, profit-wise, for the later mass of customers to be enticed with. A common man cannot do mining; the currency requires complex software and a lot of time to catch up; transactions are not free (if you want them to complete); there is no central auth
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transactions are not free (if you want them to complete);
guess what when you use a debit/credit card there is a transaction fee too. Also the fee is on average about 0.0001 BTC or currently 8 cents
there is no central authority who can clearly and without doubt tell Aunt Jane that her money have arrived, or why it hasn't arrived yet, and where it is (banks can do that.)
You mean other than the public ledger called a block chain that is the basic foundation of the bitcoin protocol?
On top of that, BTC is not directly accepted in most places; this means that you have to buy and sell currency all the time, enriching moneychangers. Theft of BTC is possible by many *new* methods. Why would then anyone need all this PITA at this time? Do we not have enough of currencies already that are in wide use?
And the number of places accepting bitcoins is growing with the interest and knowledge of it, this is a problem that will solve itself.
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guess what when you use a debit/credit card there is a transaction fee too. Also the fee is on average about 0.0001 BTC or currently 8 cents
How much will that fee be, in percentage, if I want to send you 50 cents? As BTC becomes more and more expensive, this fee will be also more and more important. Besides, why should I pay 8 cents from a purchase of a sandwich to someone I do not know? A cheeseburger costs $1.29; those 8 cents represent 6.2% - who in his right mind will want to overpay 6% just for the
"investing" in bitcoin (Score:2)
I'm "investing" in dollars but I don't call myself an investor. If you want to call bit coin an "investment" then you are treating it as a commodity with a futures market or a speculation on rising prices like gold. Which means it is definitley not a currency, whose halmark is stable value. Bit coin is not currency till people stop saying they invested or speculated on it's value.
Makes sense (Score:4, Funny)
Well, that kind of makes sense since both Virgin Galactic and Bitcoin are something akin to vapour-ware... Full of promises but nothing substantial yet.
Re:Makes sense (Score:5, Funny)
Here's another way you can get really high with Bitcoin.
Interesting (Score:3, Funny)
I can fly into orbit with bitcoin, but I still can't buy a hotdog. :-P
Re:Interesting (Score:5, Informative)
I can fly into orbit with bitcoin, but I still can't buy a hotdog. :-P
Actually, you can buy a hotdog and just about anything else.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=321800.0
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Imagine that three years ago you bought a hotdog for 1 BTC. How would you feel about that today?
The only wise thing you can do with BTC is hold it.
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Imagine not investing in bitcoin 3 years ago. How would you feel about that today?
Sorry, but the whole argument that it is unwise to purchase things in bitcoin is missing the point. It was and unwise to not invest a portion of your savings into bitcoin, and this may still be true. I know, "Heresy! Bitcoin is not real! It will never succeed" and all that. The contrarian viewpoint would see this sentiment as an indicator to its future growth. Of course, do your own DD and decide whether you think Bitcoin can
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The catch is that 99.999% of people on this planet never had a chance to invest into BTC. They will not want to participate in the economy that is dominated by a few early adopters; they will not want to fight for scraps; they will not want to work for weeks and months to buy a coin that Satoshi et al. generated in milliseconds.
The BTC economy was always centered about spending the coins. Deflation was always far away, at least in the minds of pioneers. It was true when nobody needed the coins, but every
Pay with Stamps! (Score:1)
I'm paying for my trip in U.S. "Forever" stamps that I bought 5 years ago. Beat that.
just awaiting delivery of lemon-soaked napkins (Score:2)
Will they honor Pan Am [latimes.com] tickets [robertvenditti.com]?
One of these is an imaginary concept... (Score:1)
...the other is Bitcoin.
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Perhaps in a few decades "Obamacare" can be saved with a health tax on the exchange of currency for Bitcoins. But only if enough eager rich people keep dumping their USDs into them to deliberately devalue the dollar. Either that or invade the Cayman Islands and Be
Economist's resource (Score:5, Informative)
For those armchair economists here who haven't read anything about Bitcoin, but know what it's all about because they're, like, economists, I present this link:
Bitcoin - The Libertarian Introduction [blogspot.nl].
Reading this might prevent your post from getting a response that makes you seem ignorant, if you care about that sort of thing.
(Such posts as: "it's a Ponzi scheme", "it can't work because it's not based on anything", "it's only for illegal commerce [bitcointalk.org]", "it's got some sort of technical flaw", or "the authorities will try to stop it, and that's important".)
Tada! The Prestige! (Score:5, Informative)
LOL - that article is full of propaganda.
I wish I was the guy that came up with this pyramid scheme, I'd be liquidating by bitcoins and enjoying my mansion in Hawaii.
And... voila!
The magician takes the ordinary something and makes it do something extraordinary. Now you're looking for the secret... but you won't find it, because of course you're not really looking. You don't really want to know. You want to be fooled. But you wouldn't clap yet. Because making something disappear isn't enough; you have to bring it back. That's why every magic trick has a third act, the hardest part, the part we call "The Prestige" [wikiquote.org].
Old Chinese Saying (Score:4, Insightful)
There are 2 other Bitcoin apologists besides you slithering around here. Ornia [slashdot.org] and Triclipse [slashdot.org]. One thing is for certain. When Nerdcoin inevitably implodes, idiots like you will be totally silent on the issues, having lost a tremendous amount of face. But don't count on people like me forgetting. When the Shitcoin bubble pops, better get yourself a new Slashdot ID.
Old Chinese saying: "If you wait by the river long enough, eventually you will see the body of your enemy float by."
Your position requires that you sit back and wait. That's fine from my point of view, but a different course of action might yield better results from your point of view: take a chance!
BitCoin might very well implode, and when it does I'll happily admit that I was wrong. There's nothing bad about that.
At the moment, the issue is why will it explode?
We can read all the economics textbooks and papers in the world and have a deep understanding of the issues, but unless we can make predictions the information is useless. Justifying and rationalizing historical incidents is a complete waste of time unless you can apply the lessons to future situations.
I've seen no argument against BitCoin that holds up to the merest cursory level of scrutiny, and there are enough historical parallels to indicate that it will be wildly successful. (Of specific note, the ubiquitous use of non-standard currency in revolutionary times for contraband. Ever wonder why our monetary system is based on the 'dollare and 'centavo instead of the pound and pence?)
Is that all of economics? Are you only able to see and explain the past, or are you able to predict the future?
I'm taking a stand. BitCoin has no logical flaws, and will rise in popularity simply because it has better utility and fewer disadvantages.
You think it will implode. What's your reasoning?
Holy shit, batman! (Score:2)
...don't be surprised when Bitcoin's two major technical flaws, massive block chain size and constantly increasing time to complete a transaction, finally catches up to it. The more bitcoin transactions, the larger the blockchain grows and the more drive space it costs you. The more people adopt bitcoin the faster it will become bloated to the point of usability.
Wow! A cogent, reasoned response, easily destroyed by a quick google search [bitcoin.it].
Apparently you can only win arguments against people who can't google. How's that working out for you?
In 10 years bitcoin will be seen the way an AOL dialup connection is viewed today, primitive and outdated, though there will likely still be a handful of dialup users left even then. Though much money will be made from trading them in the mean time, they will become worthless soon enough.
A bold statement. What's your reasoning? Because, like, your emotional energy isn't convincing me.
ad hominem was required (Score:2)
Wow, ad hominem, the telltale that a person knows they've lost the argument.
It took an ad hominem attack to wake you up, to get you to think through the issues and post a well-thought-out position that isn't facially ludicrous.
You have a good point (finally!), which you should have posted in the 1st response above. Keep it in mind, and post it the next time BitCoin comes up.
I like teasing trolls, but waking one up is an unexpected delight - like finding a $20 bill on the ground. I look forward to the next debate.
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Interesting discussion save the bickering :-)
as technology improves, even the best current technology becomes obsolete
Bitcoin is a protocol, not a product or technology. I would compare bitcoin to HTTP or bittorrent. Look at the success of the web, which is based on a protocol that has seen minor (and mostly backwards compatible) changes over the years. Nobody could have predicted exactly what the web browser experience is in 2013. Once a protocol gains enough user and developer momentum it is hard to throw it away. In my opinion, bitcoin has a good shot.
The fact is that bitcoin
Full block chain (Score:2)
Your citation on bitcoin scalability ignores the problem raised. The block chain is already encroaching on 12GB and is demonstrating exponential growth potential. That's a huge problem! When you extrapolate out 10 years that becomes about 4,500 TB.
xkcd-jokes about extrapolation aside, there a second reason not to over-react about this:
- as the source citation mentions, full blockchain isn't needed to securely work with bitcoins.
They are important for archival.
But a "pruned" data set is suffisent to provide a secure node.
And not every single user needs to run a whole secure node on his/her smartphone.
Contacting a trusted node is suffisent. (Same as e-mail: Not every single user needs to run a full blown mail server, nor even a full IMAP/SMTP client. M
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Actually, it is not a bad introduction, though it does presupposed libertarianism, which is more of a philosophical construct then an economic one in this day and age.
Econtalk podcast is better (Score:2)
http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2011/04/andresen_on_bit.html [econtalk.org]
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I like this sentence, due to the wonderful (il)logic it performs:
"Inflation
currenly very negative
"... is thus pre-determined
that's nice to know, in that case you'll be able to tell me exactly how much a dollar will be worth at any arbitrary point in the future?
"... and ever-decreasing
Holy fucking shit, that's gonna get scary negative.
"... toward zero."
So it's gonna wrap around minus infinity and become positive again, so that it can
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Considering it confuses inflation for deflation (hint: Bit coins are deflationary, goods cost less and less over time, so far, in otherwords, its an economy with programmed recession) leads me to think that perhaps this isn't actually a particularly competent guide.
Paedophiles, Terrorists, Drug-Dealers and Hit Men (Score:2)
There must be a lot of them about with enough spare cash to want to take a trip into space.
What is Branson thinking?
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That providing luxury services to the wealthy top echelons of organized crime is a fine way to make money, little different from providing luxury services to the top echelons of "legit" oligarchs who have bothered to bribe enough governments to make their crimes against humanity legal on paper?
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I suppose there's no such thing as bad publicity?
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That was my point, about "oligarchs that bribe governments." The Chase Bank executives handling billions of dollars of money laundering for drug cartels (at the risk of a slap-on-the-wrist fine and zero chance of jail) will get to play Astronaut right alongside their mafia drug lord buddies, perhaps with some Big Tobacco murder executives thrown into the mix to round things out.
Return of the 1970s pyramid games (Score:3)
BitCoins remind me of those 1970s pyramid parties. At some point, the price will fall out and over half the people will lose nearly their entire investment. Why dally in a virtual currency unless you want to take advantage of others?
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Price (Score:2)
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Branson immediately converts the ticket sale to local currency (dollars or pounds, whichever they use). That way they can provide a refund if the buyer decides they don't really want to go into space. I don't know if Virgin Galactic is using a payment processor like BitPay or Coinbase, but those companies accept bitcoin on behalf of merchants, convert to local currency, and deposit that to your bank account daily. The exchange rate gets updated in real time, like you can see on this site:
https://coinbase [coinbase.com]
Whether it crashes is irrelevant (Score:1)