Richard Branson, the brazen Brit behind Virgin Galactic, made news last week when he announced that he has begun processing Bitcoin payments from would-be space tourists. (A woman in Hawaii has already booked her ticket, the company says.) But it turns out Branson’s not the only Bitcoin enthusiast looking toward the heavens. Jeff Garzik, one of the core developers of the Bitcoin software and a new addition to the team of developers at BitPay, a Bitcoin payment processor, has been quietly working on a side project aimed at making Bitcoin work by satellite.
Garzik first hinted at his intentions during his “State of the Coin” address at aBitcoin conference last year in London, where he briefly mentioned that he was working to launch a satellite that would be paid for in bitcoins. Last month, he announced the full purpose of the satellite. According to Garzik, it will repeatedly transmit the most recent block in the Bitcoin block chain—the latest transaction data processed by the Bitcoin network.
