Winklevoss twins pay Virgin Galactic for a trip to space with Bitcoins

If space travel and virtual currency don’t take off, it won’t be because the Winklevoss twins didn’t try. The brothers, known for their legal battle over the creation of Facebook are going to space and paying for it with Bitcoins. Take that, Mark Zuckerberg. The twins bought tickets, valued at $250,000 each, for a ride to space with Virgin Galactic. That’s about 375 Bitcoins, at Wednesday’s price. They think of their purchase “as seed capital” supporting new technologies they have high hopes for.

The Winklevoss twins are going to space and it’s no surprise that they paid for their $250,000 Virgin Galactic ticket entirely with Bitcoin, something they’re rumored to have a massive stash of. The adventurous venture capitalist brothers, perhaps best known for their legal wrangle with Mark Zuckerberg over HarvardConnection — um, we mean Facebook — announced today they’re officially scheduled to hitch a suborbital ride aboard British billionaire Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo. The early Bitcoin backers, who reportedly own about 40,000 bitcoins (a cool $27 million or so in U.S. dollars), could blast off by the end of the year. At least that’s around when Branson says his pioneering private spaceflight company is expected to make its maiden tourist voyage into space.