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It’s kind of strange that there are all these space companies trying to explore beyond earth’s orbit, and yet none of them (except SpaceX) have even a single Bitcoin on their balance sheet.
If they get to the moon, Mars, or some other planet, do they really think pieces of paper signed by the government on earth will be worth something?
Reminds me of an old post, is Bitcoin money of Earth, the solar system, or the universe? #146595
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This is still all sooo far out. We haven't even bootstrapped robot production by robots on earth yet. Let alone on the moon. Let alone on Mars. Let alone by more than 1 entity such that monetary value even has to change hands there.
A few more decades. Minimum. 🚀
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sure, but they’re clearly setting their sights on places outside the earth’s atmosphere, seems like it would be worth thinking through how money might work in space too
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I think it will still be many decades before money is needed to spend on the moon or Mars. The first people there will get everything for free. Regarding the fact that space companies do not have bitcoin, I think it must have to do with their own investment policies. They must be waiting for it to reach 100k :)
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64 sats \ 0 replies \ @kr OP 18 Mar
one factor that could be contributing to their investment policies is that most space companies are based in the US, and the US government funds them with all sorts of launch missions today.
might be unwise to bite the hand that feeds them.
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I think that's right. These companies are presumably planning on running little command economies at first.
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Probably because they need cash on-hand for operations, and it ads complexity to manage, along with accessing liquidity, also theres no native markets for Bitcoin to x or y commodity so it just adds friction to your operations.
I guess they good pledge the Bitcoin as collateral and borrow against it, but who would be the counterparty?
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A separate problem is, miners in space, mars or the moon would have a hard time getting blocks into the chain since Bitcoin is a time-stamping machine and the longest chain wins. If it takes information too long to be disperses through the gossip network, EVEN IF YOU WIN A BLOCK it'll be invalid.
This would also make getting txs into the mempool a bit harder as you'd have to put a higher fee to anticipate fee price jumps by the time the tx arrived into the mempool since there would be a delay from the price you see for miner fees and the real price once your tx arrives to the majority of miners.
This problem is biggest on other planets, less so on the moon.
Basically earth will have a monopoly on mining.
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A separate problem is, miners in space, mars or the moon would have a hard time getting blocks into the chain since Bitcoin is a time-stamping machine and the longest chain wins. If it takes information too long to be disperses through the gossip network, EVEN IF YOU WIN A BLOCK it'll be invalid.
This would also make getting txs into the mempool a bit harder as you'd have to put a higher fee to anticipate fee price jumps by the time the tx arrived into the mempool since there would be a delay from the price you see for miner fees and the real price once your tx arrives to the majority of miners.
This problem is biggest on other planets, less so on the moon.
Basically earth will have a monopoly on mining.
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The simple answer is focus. I imagine they are focused on what they are doing vs. monetary systems. It doesn't surprise me at since the vast majority of the financial world is still trying to ignore bitcoin. They do this at great risk.
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108 sats \ 0 replies \ @ek 18 Mar
If they get to the moon, Mars, or some other planet, do they really think pieces of paper signed by the government on earth will be worth something?
The people on the moon, Mars or some other planet only have to believe that these pieces of paper signed by the government are worth something which they will probably do, depending on the pace of space exploration vs bitcoin adoption.
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I am not sure if I believe we even travel to space. I feel like maybe space companies are a money drain and psyop. 🤷‍♂️
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As a big fun of Fururama, I also believe in the future of paper bank notes.
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What space companies? lol Where they are going they don't need Bitcoin...
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I suppose that these companies are not thinking about bitcoin even as an alternative for payments outside of planet Earth.
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