Bitcoin Forum

Bitcoin is really about to take off. Billionaire Richard Branson just invested $30 million dollars in BitPay. WOW.

Read the full story: RICHARD BRANSON INVESTS $30 MILLIONS IN BITPAY (http://www.bitcoinvalues.net/bitcoin-investors-richard-branson-invests-bitpay.html)

Branson and 'other' investors put up $30M. And for sure there is now an increasing trend of Venture Capital money flow into Bitcoin, it will only get bigger and more mainstream from here

Hopefully they use it to target and start bringing brick and mortar businesses into bit coin as well. That is when we hit critical mass and blow up.

Exactly! The first question everyone always ask about bitcoin, "well what can I buy with it" and instead of having to go through a very long discussion that basically amounts to "anything you want, as long as you by it over the web", it'll be much clearly to the mainstream users if they already know that quite a few brick and mortar stores accept bitcoin. Then, owning bitcoin will make perfect sense to them.

Interesting, nice to see some big names join us. It's going to be interesting to see whether this garners anymore media attention and whether it will in turn attract more consumers and business willing to use Bitcoin as a fully fledged payment processor.

Yeah right!
Branson is so rich he can afford to punt on new techology plus branding for him
In a decentralised system, endorsements by individuals is less critical

 Wonderful!


 2014 & 2015 are THE Years of Bitcoin Bursting into the Mainstream. From here through 2015 things just Bigger and BiGGeR and BIGGER.


 Many may currently have doubts, lol, but from here out things get Fast & Huge in a Real Wonderful Hurry!


Bitcoin is Genius.

Bitcoin is Freedom.

Bitcoin is The Future.

Does anyone know what Bitpays volume is cause $30 million seems like a bit much in my opinion.

I remember reading 1mil$ a day or so. Few hundred new merchants every day.
30mil seems analogous to what coinbase were securing, does not seem much to me.

are there any other/more official sources reporting this news? But that goes accordingly with what rich investor do, they invest in everything that has potentiel return with a relatively low risk, notice how he is investing in companies and not in bitcoin straight

$1-2mn per day -- circa $500mn annual run-rate which is tiny still in the grand scheme of things
30,000 installed merchants to date growing at 1,000 a week

BitPay is doing $1-3 mills a day. That $30 millions investment is not near it's true evaluation.

That would appear to be cheap if true.   About $411 to gain an introduction to each business over the next year is quite cheap.  Of course they have to make profit from each of those businesses and get the revenue to regain that money spent but it appears cheap for that amount of potential growth.
  Not including whatever business is already established and profitable within bitpay

I can see why they went for it though branson and the other have all split the risk and can write off a loss here against profits elsewhere and so on, this is just a punt for them

Investing in bitpay is not really same as investing in bitcoin.

Bitcoin price could drop a lot and it doesn't really change the functionality and utility of the coin. Bitpay could still charge and grow the same regardless of the value of bitcoin.

Perhaps not, but investing 30 million into a bit coin promoting business shows a lot of faith in the technology. Since the company he invested in brings new merchants to bit coin it is a big deal for us.

Totally agree with. Having rich and successful business people investing in bitcoin platforms will increase people confidence and convince governments around the world to get on board as well. It's serious when you have serious backing.

Nice news, I think there will be an huge pump at horizon..

Compare Richard Branson with Warren Buffet. The first one is tech savvy, and always open to new and innovative ideas. The second one (was) a genius, 20 years ago, and belongs to the old school. Let's see who will be more successful in the next 5 years.  ;D

Richard Branson is much more a risk taker than Buffet. Richard is going to own the world soon.

Bufffet is 83 years old... in 5 years?......  maybe he should invest in life extending technologies.. ;)

30 mill it´s not to much comparing with the daily volume on a lot of BTC exchanges like BTC-E or Bitstamp. In BTC-E the daily volume it´s more than 3 mill.

BTC-E is day trading... Not processing transactions for businesses selling things. Huge difference.

Warren Buffet will not invest in anything I believe. He has amassed a lot of wealth. And he might be more worried about maintaining it as such, rather than increasing it.

LOL

Agree, warren buffet might be bad at securing his own wallet worth few million. His risk is too high...

A nice article from Forbes:

BitPay Is Headed To The Moon And Richard Branson Is On The Spaceship

http://www.forbes.com/sites/perianneboring/2014/05/13/bitpay-is-headed-to-the-moon-and-richard-branson-is-on-the-spaceship/

Don't everyone forget Branson owns his own bank.

I read this a commercial bank invests in bitpay.

Sounds very interesting.. but can you be sure this is real and not fake..because i am not sure about it. If it is true ,this really can help bitcoin price to go up.

BR,
Gondel

Great news for bitcoin. Even the successful businessman Branson will invest $30m in btc. More people will be aware of the existence of bitcoin and accept it.

very good, hopefully soon be able bitcoin currency around the world;)

Bit late for that.

so, when can I pay my air ticket with btc, Branson ?

Man, I should have bought some bitcoins when I reported the news. A single bitcoin was a little over $350...look at it now 1BTC = $573.101!

Haha, not sure how much of that had to do with the news, and how much had to do with the fact that bitcoins had just flash crashed to $350 and were bound to recover some lost ground.

The exciting thing is that people that obviously know how to acquire great wealth are betting on bit coin. I suspect 2014 will be a watershed year for us. 

Market values of any currency...virtual or traditional, are often go up and down based on speculation. Bitcoin had a simi-crash after Mt.Gox went down and now experiencing a surge after a few big investors invested a bunch!

i think he meant that it would be difficult to prove that the big investors caused anything since bitcoin had just seen a massive fall, was heavily oversold, and due for a correction upward. so it likely had little to do with any good news.