A Ticket to Outer Space
Traveling to space stopped being just a science fiction idea, and Virgin Galactic is one of the companies that is trying to bring that otherworldly experience closer to the public. The brand, which is part of the Virgin Group created by Richard Branson, is offering suborbital space flights. On these trips, passengers reach the edge of space, experience a few minutes of weightlessness, and have the opportunity to see Earth from above.
In 2013, Virgin Galactic announced that it would accept Bitcoin (BTC) as a payment method for its space flights, which constitutes one of the most peculiar examples of cryptocurrency use. In 2014, twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss paid with Bitcoin for the deposit on their tickets to travel aboard SpaceShipTwo.
After a break in operations, Virgin Galactic has resumed ticket sales. However, current prices (in dollars) are around $750,000 per seat. The trip, which lasts around 90 minutes, is considered a unique experience rather than a long space mission. Although payment with cryptocurrencies is no longer officially promoted, individual deals may exist depending on the situation and the client.
Mammoths... or Something Like That
The sale of a pair of woolly mammoth tusks is likely one of the weirdest transactions in the crypto world. In 2014, a dealer from Vancouver published this offer online to sell the fossils for $175,000 or 273,446 BTC at the time. The tusks, found near Dawson City, in Yukon, had a maximum length of 2.8 meters (9.5 feet) and weighed around 55 kg (120 pounds) each. Although the trade of elephant ivory is prohibited, the sale of mammoth tusks is legal because the species is extinct.
Mammoth tusks by Richard Marcus (seller)The story with mammoths could have ended there, as one of the rarest purchases made with cryptocurrencies. But years later, these creatures emerged once again in the crypto ecosystem. Not exactly as a collector’s item, but as the center of an ambitious scientific project that seeks to bring back extinct species by using advanced genetic engineering.
The entity behind that idea is the biotechnology company Colossal, which aims at what is known as “de-extinction.” Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, who have become famous mostly for being the visible faces of the Gemini exchange and for their early investments in Bitcoin, were some of the first investors.
While it’s true that the investment in Colossal wasn’t made directly through cryptocurrencies, a notable part of the Winklevoss fortune came from the crypto world. So, we can say that Bitcoin ended up financing the potential de-extinction of the woolly mammoth. Not a sentence you imagined reading last year, right?
On March 21, 2006, Jack Dorsey, the founder of Twitter, published the first-ever tweet: “just setting up my twttr.” This humble message was turned into a Non-Fungible Token (NFT) in 2021, promoted as a digital piece with historical value. That’s how it ended up being sold to the crypto entrepreneur Sina Estavi for nearly $2.9 million in ETH, no less. This purchase was one of the most famous transactions at the height of the NFT boom.
First Tweet by Jack Dorsey from the Internet ArchiveEstavi called it “the Mona Lisa of the digital world,” and tried to resell it for $48 million on OpenSea, a popular NFT marketplace. He also pledged to give 50% of the proceeds to charity, but so far, no one has offered that amount. Indeed, it’s considered that this particular NFT has lost 99% of its original purchase value. Still, Estavi believes that “years later, people will realize the value of this NFT.”
More than Weird Purchases
We may laugh at stories about hot sauces, mammoth tusks, or a ticket to space bought with crypto, but digital assets have grown into something much bigger. More than 741 million people around the world owned cryptocurrencies in 2025, up 12.4% from the previous year. Meanwhile, directories such as Cryptwerk list more than 7,900 companies and hundreds of thousands of products that can be purchased with crypto globally.
Besides the mass adoption, we shouldn’t forget that cryptocurrencies were created to give people more freedom over their money, without censorship, blocked transactions, or unnecessary intermediaries. The more decentralized a network is, the harder it becomes for any single group to control it. That’s why Obyte aims for a high level of decentralization by removing miners and “validators” altogether, and giving users direct participation through on-chain voting.
Strange purchases may be fun and quirky, but the real story is a technology that keeps putting control back into people's hands.
Featured Vector Image by pikisuperstar / Magnific
