Will BitMEX and Bitcoin be able to beat Elon Musk and Dogecoin to launch the first crypto asset in lunar orbit?
It looks like a 21st century space race is brewing between Elon Musk and BitMEX, with both sides pledging to launch their cryptocurrency to the moon first.
On June 4, popular cryptocurrency exchange BitMEX announced that it would support space robotics company, Astrobotic Technology, in the company's mission to send its first commercial lander to the moon during the fourth quarter of 2020.
Should bitcoin arrive before the Doge on the moon?
Noting that the mission aims to be the first instance where "a private company leading a coalition of government, academia, industry and international partners reaches the lunar surface," BitMEX plans to take the opportunity by offering a kind physical Bitcoin to the surface of moon. Referring to Musk as a "Dogecoin protagonist," BitMEX added:
"We have nothing against Dog Money, we thought it was right to help Bitcoin get there first."
The announcement followed Elon Musk's early May news that SpaceX is planning to launch a Dogecoin-funded payload on one of its first rockets to the moon, stating that DOGE would become the first cryptocurrency to reach lunar orbit next. year.
Elon Musk responded to BitMEX's new astronomical ambitions on Twitter, proclaiming: "A new space race has begun!"
While the responses to Elon's tweet are largely from his followers who would like DOGE to win the crypto space race, others have noted that there are more pressing issues on Earth than having one's chosen crypto token be the first to enter the orbit of another celestial body.
The other space initiatives
While few projects exploring the usefulness of establishing cryptographic infrastructure from space have captured the mainstream imagination as did Musk's Dogecoin expedition, Tesla's CEO plans (Tesla shares - ticker TSLA) to take cryptocurrency out of this world are not the first.
Blockstream appears to have been the first to pioneer the use of crypto satellites, launching satellites to broadcast Bitcoin transactions from space in August 2017.
In August 2020, Robonomics and Kusama announced an ambitious plan to develop "an interplanetary architecture" capable of transmitting data between Mars and Earth using the Kusama network.
CryptoSat outlined the concept behind its ambitious plan to launch a coffee cup-sized nano-satellite into space in a November 2017 whitepaper, with the satellite slated to operate as an isolated cryptographic module from orbit. The team plans to demonstrate the concept with a launch this year before sending an entire constellation of CryptoSats into orbit at a later date.
The launch of Spacechain came in 2017 and has successfully deployed nodes in orbit. On June 3, 2021, the project announced that its Ethereum multisig payload intended for installation on the International Space Station had been launched aboard a SpaceX rocket.
