These crypto companies want to “commoditize” the moon
Space Outpost’s MAPP lunar rover is scheduled to go into space in November this year as a payload on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
One company is calling on all crypto-pirates to sail more than 200,000 miles to the moon’s surface to recover a bitcoin booty left on the moon. The announced 62 bitcoin, with a stated value of $1.5 million, will remain stranded on the moon’s south pole after a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket delivers it into space later this year. After 14 days – a single lunar day – it will sit there, waiting for any intrepid crypto-bro to show up and claim its prize. Good thing the crypto-obsessed are already very used to holding their breath.
LunarCrush, a website that offers spot information on the crypto market, announced on Monday that it has engraved the password of a crypto wallet on the Mobile Autonomous Prospecting Platform, or MAPP Lunar Rover, developed by Lunar Outpost.
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This rover is being advertised as the “first commercial lunar resource explorer to debut.” It is part of the $14.1 million Tipping Point mission offered to Nokia in 2020 to deploy the first 4G communications system in space. The rover will be deployed later this year from Intuitive Machines’ Nova-C lander near the moon’s south pole. Two Nova-C landings are planned for 2023, IM-1 and IM-2, with LunarCrush participating in the second.
Aside from introducing crypto to any wayward aliens, the first job of the IM-2 mission is to test how well wireless data transmissions work on the Moon’s south pole. After the mission is completed, the rover will remain stranded for the next one to come across it. This is before NASA plans to launch its own rover at the Moon’s South Pole next year.
According to LunarCrush, the password will be linked to a wallet that will contain 62 bitcoins, which as of Monday afternoon was worth about $1.67 million. Of course, the price of bitcoin fluctuates wildly from week to week, so when the Falcon 9 takes off sometime in June, it could be worth a lot more or a lot less. It could be many, many more years before the crypto bros can plant their own flag on the surface of the moon, so who knows what people will be willing to spend for a single bitcoin by then.
This bitcoin bounty is being called “Nakamoto_1” after the supposed pseudonym of the person who created bitcoin back in 2008. Still, it’s not like LunarCrush has that money on hand. The company said it is asking for donations and selling an NFT collection to raise money for the bounty.
Only 25% of non-fungible token sales will go towards funding the bitcoin premium, while another 25% will go towards funding “bitcoin core development and STEM education-related causes”. Gizmodo confirmed with Lunar Outpost that the remaining 50% will go to “the partners who built this project.” There will be 24,000 NFTs put up for sale and each will initially be priced at $250 set to drop on Tuesday.
The private key will be engraved into a small piece of metal on the MAPP rover that must be detached to be read. Considering that the rover itself is only about the size of a microwave oven, the engraving should be reasonably easy to spot. Detaching it from the rover, well, that presents an entirely different challenge.
Lunar Outpost has announced sponsorship and marketing opportunities as well as physical payload space for its upcoming lunar lander. It is working with Copernic Space, a self-proclaimed “web3 marketplace for space resources and investments” to sell non-fungible tokens on its so-called “tokenized payload space.” These “space assets” are represented as tradable NFTs used to “commoditize a piece of space.”
In the release, LunarCrush CEO Joe Vezzani said the point of the crypto premium was to create an “unattainable goal” that would force more space innovation. Similarly, Lunar Outpost co-founder Forrest Meyen also agreed that this marketing structure “encourages exploration” and unlocks “the best of human ingenuity.”
Vezzani said his companies envision “classrooms, groups, companies and even DAOs (decentralized autonomous organizations) coming together to reach the Moon and share the rewards of the treasure chest. It’s like Willy Wonka’s golden ticket.” Vezzani told The Block that he didn’t expect it to take too long for people to find ways to make commercial moon trips viable.
Why do we need crypto in space?
Crypto companies have attempted to invade every known inch of physical real estate, from sports stadiums to advertising space in New York City. Now the crypto-obsessed think the best way to get people excited about returning to the moon is with Scrooge McDuck levels of greed.
It’s not the first time crypto has tried to dump bitcoin on the moon. The long-damaged crypto trading company BitMEX tried a similar scheme back in 2021. BitMEX promoted that it was depositing a single bitcoin wallet aboard Astrobotics’ delayed Peregrine lunar lander launch, scheduled for later this year. We reached out to Astrobotic to see if that payload will remain on Peregrine, but did not immediately hear back. If anything, these projects symbolize the worst excesses of space commercialization. There is no way to tell what the price of bitcoin will be in several years, let alone the decades it may take before ordinary people have any kind of opportunity to reach the moon.
So is this just another big crypto campaign? Of course. The phrase “to the moon” has been an inside joke in the crypto community for years to convince more people of the inevitable crypto boom cycle. But the idea of incentivizing innovation via a crypto premium seems all the more ridiculous when you consider the cost of actually getting into space, let alone going to the moon. There are many companies that promise space tourism, but most of them advertise tickets to high altitudes or low Earth orbit – destinations not close to the moon. And that’s not even considering the price. One New Shepard ticket from Blue Origin reportedly sold for $28 million back in 2021.
Of course the prices will get cheaper as time goes on, but considering how many years it took to get us to send non-humans into low earth orbit and how it has so far been presented as a travel option for the uber-rich, how long will we have to wait until one of these supposed “classrooms” or “groups” can afford a ticket to the lunar surface. NASA previously estimated that the cost of the Artemis program will be between $20 billion and $30 billion through 2024 in the effort to get people back on the moon. NASA is now targeting 2025 for the launch of Artemis 3 to land a crew in the southern polar region. Potentially, these astronauts could be the first to recover the MAPP rover, if any of them actually have any interest in crypto. In reality, they probably won’t land anywhere near MAPP.
In 1962, President John F. Kennedy delivered his famous speech about America’s attempt to land on the moon. So imagine if, instead of his famous address on common hope and civic duty, he said: “We choose to go to the moon this decade and do the other things, not because they’re easy, but because we can dive into it sweet. , cute crypto.”
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