holidays – Earlybirds Invest https://earlybirdsinvest.com Latest Crypto News Mon, 01 Sep 2025 00:58:53 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.7 https://i0.wp.com/earlybirdsinvest.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/cropped-New-Project-2024-12-17T235703.455.png?fit=32%2C32&ssl=1 holidays – Earlybirds Invest https://earlybirdsinvest.com 32 32 240146708 Rich Bitcoiners Are Reportedly Spending BTC on Luxury Holidays: Does This Really Make Sense? https://earlybirdsinvest.com/rich-bitcoiners-are-reportedly-spending-btc-on-luxury-holidays-does-this-really-make-sense/ https://earlybirdsinvest.com/rich-bitcoiners-are-reportedly-spending-btc-on-luxury-holidays-does-this-really-make-sense/#respond Mon, 01 Sep 2025 00:58:52 +0000 https://earlybirdsinvest.com/rich-bitcoiners-are-reportedly-spending-btc-on-luxury-holidays-does-this-really-make-sense/

Bitcoin’s latest rally is spilling over into the luxury holiday market.

The Financial Times (FT) reported earlier today that private jet firms, cruise lines and boutique hotels are increasingly accepting crypto payments.

Flexjet-owned FXAIR, for instance, now takes tokens for transatlantic trips costing about $80,000, while cruise operator Virgin Voyages sells annual passes worth $120,000.

SeaDream Yacht Club and boutique hotel groups including The Kessler Collection have also added crypto checkout options, according to the FT.

High-end travel is a natural niche for crypto spending. On six-figure invoices, fees and volatility matter less, and merchants can instantly convert payments into fiat.

For customers, paying in bitcoin carries status value, echoing earlier bull-market splurges on Lamborghinis and watches. This time, the indulgence is time-saving private jets and one-of-a-kind cruises.

Still, whether it makes financial sense is another matter. Bitcoin’s most famous cautionary tale comes from 2010, when Florida programmer Laszlo Hanyecz spent 10,000 BTC on two pizzas, a purchase now worth over $1 billion in hindsight. Today’s jet bookings could invite the same regret if bitcoin keeps climbing.

Yet others see logic in cashing in.

With bitcoin recently hitting a record $124,128 on Aug. 14, some wealthy holders may view the present rally as a window to lock in gains before macro shocks send prices lower.

Inflationary pressures tied to the new U.S. import tariffs, along with wider economic uncertainty, could easily knock BTC back below $100,000, turning today’s holiday splurges into a rational hedge.

There are also tax complications.

The U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS), for instance, treats crypto as property, meaning that spending BTC counts as a taxable disposal and can trigger capital-gains liabilities. The U.K.’s HMRC applies the same principle, taxing disposals when coins are sold, swapped or spent.

The bigger backdrop, according to McKinsey data cited by the FT, is that younger affluent travelers are driving a luxury travel boom projected to nearly double spending between 2023 and 2028. For that generation, crypto is not just an investment vehicle but also a way to pay for experiences that promise freedom and exclusivity.

Bottom line: Crypto hasn’t taken over coffee shops, but at the top end of the market it is showing up. Whether that’s smart wealth management or another billion-dollar pizza mistake depends on how long this bull cycle lasts.

]]> https://earlybirdsinvest.com/rich-bitcoiners-are-reportedly-spending-btc-on-luxury-holidays-does-this-really-make-sense/feed/ 0 56132 OpenSim land area, active users up for the holidays https://earlybirdsinvest.com/opensim-land-area-active-users-up-for-the-holidays/ https://earlybirdsinvest.com/opensim-land-area-active-users-up-for-the-holidays/#respond Thu, 06 Feb 2025 14:35:49 +0000 https://earlybirdsinvest.com/opensim-land-area-active-users-up-for-the-holidays/

Both land area and active users increased this month in OpenSim, possibly because people are spending more time inside, where it’s warm.

But who knows, really, why people do what they do?

Anyway, I am now tracking a total of 2,6617 public grids, of which 290 were active this month and 231 published their statistics. If you have a stats page that we’re not tracking, please email me at maria@hypergridbusiness.com — that way, your grid will be mentioned in this report every month, for additional visibility with both search engines and users.

This month, OSgrid was the largest grid by land area, with 35,614 standard region equivalents, with a gain of more than 2,700 new regions, while Wolf Territories Grid was the most active, with 7,737 unique visitors over the past 30 days.

OpenSim land area for Dec. 2024. (Hypergrid Business data.)

Our stats do not include most of the grids running on DreamGrid, a free easy-to-use version OpenSim, since these tend to be private grids.

OpenSim is a free, open-source, virtual world platform, that’s similar to Second Life and allows people with no technical skills to quickly and cheaply create virtual worlds and teleport to other virtual worlds. Those with technical skills can run OpenSim worlds on their servers for free using either DreamGrid, the official OpenSim installer for those who are more technically inclined, or any other distribution, while commercial hosting starts at less than $5 a region.

A list of OpenSim hosting providers is here. Download the recommended Firestorm viewer here and find out where to get content for your OpenSim world or region here.

Discovery Grid leaves OpenSim for new virtual world platform

This big news today is that Discovery Grid is shutting down. The plan is for it to reopen on the O3DE platform, which Amazon created then donated to the open source community.

You can read more about it here.

Hypergrid Business now on BlueSky

And we now have a BlueSky account: @HypergridBusiness.

Here are a few other folks to follow:

You can see everyone HGB is following here.

Leave a note in the comments if you have a BlueSky account and want people to be able to follow you, or if you know of a grid that does.

Hypergrid Business newsletter is now available

Every month on the 15th — right after the stats report comes out — we will be sending out a newsletter with all the OpenSim news from the previous month. You can subscribe here or fill out the form below.

Top 25 grids by active users

When it comes to general-purpose social grids, especially closed grids, the rule of thumb is the busier the better. People looking to make new friends look for grids that already have the most users. Merchants looking to sell content will go to the grids with the most potential customers. Event organizers looking for the biggest audience — you get the idea.

Top 25 most popular grids this month:

  1. Wolf Territories Grid: 7,737 active users
  2. OSgrid: 4,262 active users
  3. GBG World: 2,548 active users
  4. Alternate Metaverse: 2,357 active users
  5. Darkheart’s Playground: 2,192 active users
  6. DigiWorldz: 2,140 active users
  7. WaterSplash: 1,633 active users
  8. Trianon World: 1,142 active users
  9. AviWorlds: 1,073 active users
  10. Neverworld: 1,065 active users
  11. AviVerse AlterEgo: 1,018 active users
  12. Sciattisi Grid: 830 active users
  13. Party Destination Grid: 826 active users
  14. Littlefield: 761 active users
  15. Craft World: 717 active users
  16. AvatarLife: 656 active users
  17. Gentle Fire Grid: 621 active users
  18. Eureka World: 615 active users
  19. Groovy Verse: 613 active users
  20. Herederos Grid: 582 active users
  21. ZetaWorlds: 529 active users
  22. NakedWorldz: 512 active users
  23. Kitely: 511 active users
  24. Astralia: 484 active users
  25. Kishaki: 455 active users

Online marketplaces for OpenSim content

There are currently 20,998 product listings in Kitely Market containing 41,138 product variations, 35,902 of which are exportable.

Kitely Market has delivered orders to 634 OpenSim grids to date.

(Data courtesy Kitely.)

As you can see in the above chart, nearly all the growth in Kitely Market has been in content that can be exported to other grids — that is the green area on the graph. The red area, of non-exportable content, has stayed level for the past eight years.

Last month, the numbers went down a little bit.

“Unfortunately a few stores were disabled because their owners passed away a long time ago and we lost the ability to transfer their sales earnings to them,” Kitely CEO Ilan Tochner told Hypergrid Business. “In most cases, we don’t do this as people’s next of kin take over their accounts and shut them down themselves, or keep those accounts active and update the PayPal payout address in order to enable us to transfer those stores’ earnings to them.”

This is a reminder to all of us to make provisions for our online accounts, especially those that are generating revenues.

The Kitely Market is the largest collection of legal content available in OpenSim. It is accessible to both hypergrid-enabled and closed, private grids. The instructions for how to configure the Kitely Market for closed grids are here.

New grids

No new grids were added to the database in the past 30 days.

If you know of any public grid that we’re missing, please email me at maria@hypergridbusiness.com.

Suspended grids

The following 10 grids were marked as suspended this month: Alterlifes, Bernicia, Dominator, DowGrid, Goldor Grid, GorGrid, Nova Space, The City, Thrae, and Uzuri Virtual.

If they don’t reappear online again soon, they will be marked as closed in future reports.

Sometimes, a grid changes its login URI or website address — if that’s the case, email me and let me know and I’ll update my database.

Top 40 grids by land area

All region counts on this list are, whenever available, in terms of standard region equivalents. Active user counts include hypergrid visitors whenever possible.

Many school, company, or personal grids do not publish their numbers.

The raw data for this month’s report is here. A list of all active grids is here. And here is a list of all the hypergrid-enabled grids and their hypergrid addresses, sorted by popularity. This is very useful if you are creating a hyperport.

You can see all the historical OpenSim statistics here, including polls and surveys, dating all the way back to 2009.

  • OSgrid: 35,614 regions
  • Wolf Territories Grid: 30,053 regions
  • Kitely: 18,156 regions
  • ZetaWorlds: 13,029 regions
  • Alternate Metaverse: 10,712 regions
  • Groovy Verse: 8,783 regions
  • Virtual Vista Metaverse: 6,173 regions
  • DigiWorldz: 3,485 regions
  • CandM World: 2,102 regions
  • Discovery Grid: 1,618 regions
  • Tag Grid: 1,465 regions
  • Friends Grid: 1,168 regions
  • ArtDestiny: 1,156 regions
  • Shoalwater Bay: 1,104 regions
  • GBG World: 961 regions
  • Virtual Worlds Grid: 914 regions
  • AviWorlds: 826 regions
  • Craft World: 730 regions
  • Kinky Haven: 685 regions
  • AvatarLife: 595 regions
  • Littlefield: 515 regions
  • Neverworld: 374 regions
  • Furry World: 373 regions
  • Virtual Worlds Zone: 364 regions
  • Darkheart’s Playground: 346 regions
  • Nemesis 3D: 305 regions
  • EdMondo: 300 regions
  • Migrating Coconuts: 247 regions
  • Open Virtual Worlds: 229 regions
  • MisFitz Grid: 215 regions
  • Kater and Friends: 202 regions
  • Japan Open Grid: 199 regions
  • Counter Earth: 198 regions
  • Adreans-World: 167 regions
  • Utopia Skye: 156 regions
  • XTalent: 145 regions
  • GerGrid: 141 regions
  • Logicamp: 124 regions
  • WestWorld Grid: 121 regions
  • Magic Grid: 121 regions

Do you know of any other grids that are open to the public but that we don’t have in our database? Email me at maria@hypergridbusiness.com.

Maria Korolov
Latest posts by Maria Korolov (see all)

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