$60 Million Space Gamble: How the Winklevoss Twins Bought a Ticket to Nowhere
In the wild saga of Bitcoin fortunes and space tourism dreams, few stories strike as strangely poetic as that of Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss.
Back in 2014, at the peak of their crypto crusade, the twin tech moguls made headlines by spending 750 BTC — worth just under $500,000 at the time — to secure two tickets on Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic spaceflight.
Fast forward to today, that same amount of Bitcoin is worth over $60 million. And here’s the kicker: they’ve still never left Earth.
The internet never forgets, and crypto Twitter has been having a field day with this time capsule moment. A post on Reddit’s r/CryptoCurrency recently resurfaced the event, pointing out the mind-bending opportunity cost: the twins essentially burned the modern equivalent of a luxury mega-yacht on what has become a spaceflight waiting list.
Let’s rewind. In 2014, Virgin Galactic was hyped as the company that would democratize space travel. Branson promised suborbital flights for civilians “soon.”
The Winklevii, ever the futurists, jumped in early with Bitcoin — partially as a PR move, partially out of sincere belief in the future of both crypto and space tourism. They were, after all, among Bitcoin’s earliest institutional backers, famously buying 1% of the entire BTC supply at $120 per coin.
But Virgin Galactic’s timeline has been, generously speaking, elastic. Technical setbacks, tragic accidents, and regulatory hurdles delayed the program again and again.
Meanwhile, Bitcoin surged past $80,000 in 2024. That means those 750 BTC have appreciated more than 120x since the Winklevoss twins traded them for a dream of the stars.
So what happened to the tickets? As of today, there’s no public record of either Cameron or Tyler boarding a Virgin Galactic flight. And they’re not alone. A-list celebrities, business tycoons, and crypto whales are still in the cosmic queue, waiting for Branson’s promise to take off — literally.
This isn’t just a story about missed spaceflights. It’s a snapshot of an era when Bitcoin was still considered play money by many. It’s also a lesson in speculation — the double-edged sword of betting on the future. On one hand, the Winklevii’s early investment in BTC made them billionaires.
On the other, this particular speculative play turned into a legendary case of digital gold vaporizing into thin air.
And yet, true to form, the twins don’t seem fazed. They’re still pushing forward, running their crypto exchange Gemini and championing digital assets across industries. Perhaps for them, the real loss isn’t the money — it’s the experience. The view of Earth from space. The moment of transcendence that 750 BTC was supposed to buy.
Until they finally launch, the story remains frozen in time: a cosmic punchline in the crypto chronicles. A $60 million reminder that in the digital age, sometimes you really do pay for things that never arrive.