SpaceX accepts Dogecoin payments and will launch a lunar satellite next year

Author | Yang Li

Leifeng.com reported that on the evening of May 8th local time in the United States, when Elon Musk, the "father of Dogecoin", made his first appearance on the American NBC TV program Saturday Night Live, the price of Dogecoin fell for a time, and the Robinhood trading platform was paralyzed for a short period of time due to large trading volume and volatility.

During the frenzy of selling Dogecoin, some Robinhood users even complained that the trading platform's crypto transactions did not work at all.

According to the detection data of coinmarketcap, the lowest point of Dogecoin fell to US$0.4302, which was nearly 41% lower than the highest point of US$0.7242 in the past 24 hours.

And all this stems from an ambiguous statement by Musk when he answered the host: "(Dogecoin) is the future of currency. It is an unstoppable financial instrument that will take over the world."... "It's a scam."

Musk has been the most vocal supporter of Dogecoin, and he has frequently tweeted about cryptocurrencies before. It is not clear what drove the sell-off of Dogecoin, perhaps investors wanted Musk to say something in support of the cryptocurrency. But it is more likely that some kind of "buy the rumor" strategy was used to try to sell at a high price to fulfill investors' predictions.

Subsequently, Canadian engineering company Geometric Energy Corporation announced another event on the afternoon of May 9th local time, which made the trading price of Dogecoin seem to have started to recover.

It is understood that the company announced that it has reached an agreement with SpaceX to launch the lunar satellite DOGE-1 in the first quarter of 2022 and accept the cryptocurrency Dogecoin as a full payment method.

SpaceX's public relations team confirmed the mission in an email to outside reporters.

DOGE-1 is a 40-kilogram cube satellite that will be launched aboard a Falcon 9 rocket to "obtain lunar space intelligence from onboard sensors and cameras with integrated communications and computing systems."

Tom Ochinero, SpaceX vice president of commercial sales, said in a statement that DOGE-1 "will demonstrate the use of cryptocurrency beyond Earth orbit and lay the foundation for interplanetary commerce. We are excited to launch DOGE-1 to the Moon!"

In fact, Musk sent a tweet on April Fools' Day announcing the plan. He wrote: "SpaceX will put Dogecoin on the moon."

At first, Musk's statement was just a joke. Now, Musk's series of tweets have turned Dogecoin into a speculator's dream of wealth.

On the other hand, for SpaceX, this announcement also lays the foundation for the possibility of repeated use of the Falcon 9 launch vehicle. The most recent one was the successful launch of the Transporter-1 mission using the Falcon 9 in January this year. And a few hours ago was the tenth time that SpaceX used the Falcon 9 launch vehicle booster.

“It’s designed to fly 10 or more times without refurbishment after each flight,” Musk told the media in May 2018. “We think it will be able to fly at least 100 times before it’s retired, maybe more.”