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Meagan Crawford found an unexpected ally when raising money to invest in space startups such as orbiting gas stations and aeroponics food systems.
“We got the best and most ‘Aha, I get it’ reaction from crypto investors,” said Crawford, who co-founded the SpaceFund venture capital firm in 2018. “I always like to say, you know, it’s the same type of crazy. It’s the same type of cutting edge, what’s next, futuristic, how do we change the world in a positive way type of attitude.”
Many people who are interested in cryptocurrency – and the blockchain technology behind this digital money – are also interested in space. And there is a growing overlap between the two sectors.
Blockchain technologies have been placed on satellites and in the International Space Station. SpaceX founder Elon Musk promised a yet-to-be-launched mission paid for with the meme-inspired cryptocurrency Dogecoin.
And in December 2021 and January 2022, more than 2,000 people pooled their Ethereum cryptocurrency to buy two tickets into space. YouTube star Coby Cotton, with Dude Perfect, got one of these seats, taking a 10-minute ride to space and back last year.
There are even bigger plans moving forward, despite last year’s plummet in cryptocurrency value. The volatile market is subject to wild swings, and it more recently regained some of that lost ground.
“Once I started to learn more about the technology itself – the blockchain part, not the cryptocurrency part – I started to realize, whoa, there are some huge applications for blockchain in the space industry,” Crawford said.
Blockchain, essentially a public ledger that records transactions, could streamline international regulations that burden space companies. It could help spacecraft to autonomously fuel up in space. And it could support an off-planet economy where purchasing a beer in an orbiting hotel wouldn’t require routing money to and from Earth.
“We’re trying to build a new economy in space,” Crawford said. “Shouldn’t we be using all the tools available to make that economy as efficient as possible?”
Cryptocurrency is like digital cash. There could be a cryptocurrency that’s used in space, but perhaps the more exciting potential comes from the blockchain technology that runs cryptocurrency, said Darryll DiPietro, founder of Future Stuff Inc., a technology development company that specializes in blockchain, and a general partner in SpaceFund.
“Blockchain isn’t just for finance,” DiPietro said. “The blockchain’s first and easiest way for people to understand it is finance. But it’s going to be used for almost every technology out there.”
Blockchain ledgers are spread across tens of thousands of computers and each transaction is verified by multiple computers before it’s completed. This makes blockchain technology practically impossible to hack because these various computers would have to be hacked at the same time.
This is attractive to space endeavors because multiple countries often work together. And the blockchain can prove that countries are doing what they say they’re doing.
DiPietro used a lunar lander as an example.
Instead of collecting data from a lunar lander’s camera that can be manipulated, DiPietro said an independent blockchain computer could be placed on the lander. That computer would notify other space-based computers as various milestones are achieved. For instance, it could send alerts when the rocket’s engines ignite, when the lunar lander reaches the moon, when the lander collects rocks, etc.
If enough of these other computers receive the same message, then that information is verified as correct.
“Everything that you see in space has to trust the device that collects the information. So how do you build that trust?” DiPietro asked. “With blockchain, you can prove that this mission happened.”
Smart contracts could also benefit space endeavors. These self-executing contracts are built on the blockchain, and they activate when certain terms are met.
On Earth, for instance, a contract might activate when a document is complete and ready to share. And this could make the international sharing of sensitive rocketry information easier by determining which parts of the contract recipients can view based on their country, Crawford said.
In space, a smart contract might activate as a spacecraft receives fuel.
“One thing that a lot of people kind of misconstrue, especially if they read a lot of science fiction, is that the future of space is going to be human,” Crawford said. “It’s absolutely not. Humans are squishy and horrible and hard to keep alive in space. Robots are going to be how things are done in space.”
Humans will be in space, but they won’t be at the helm of every spacecraft. That’s why robots need to transfer money, contracts and information between each other – rather than phoning Earth to have a human start a wire transfer.
And if the vision of space hotels and moon colonies does become a reality, DiPietro said wiring money to and from the Earth would become especially tedious for hospitality businesses. Plus, a lost transmission could mean lost money.
He believes that using the blockchain to exchange funds – whether it be cryptocurrency or a stable coin with a value pegged to the U.S. Dollar – could help build the technologically challenging, capital-intensive space industry.
And there’s another major perk, for now.
“Because it happens in space, the money can stay in space,” DiPietro said. “You don’t have to pay any taxes on it until you technically bring it down to whatever host country you’re flying out of.”
Cryptocurrency and blockchain can also be used to rally the masses, directing the power of many people toward one goal.
An organization called MoonDAO raised more than 2,600 in the Ethereum cryptocurrency, which was worth roughly $8 million at the time, and used that money to buy two seats on Blue Origin’s suborbital rocket, said MoonDAO co-founder Pablo Moncada-Larrotiz.
One ticket was given to Cotton, the YouTube star with Dude Perfect, to help raise awareness of MoonDAO’s mission to contribute to a self-sustaining, self-governing settlement on the moon. The other was raffled to a MoonDAO member.
Cotton, a Frisco resident who co-founded the Dude Perfect media company after a trick basketball shot video went viral, launched into microgravity on Aug. 4. He recalled the rocket’s flames reflecting onto the capsule ceiling when the engines ignited. The way up was smoother than a Disney ride, he said, and the best part was looking at the Earth from above.
“It is truly breathtaking,” Cotton said. “And you just try to soak up that moment as much as possible. You’re up there floating around for anywhere between two to three minutes. It goes by very quick.”
Even without trick shots – Cotton brought a ping-pong ball and pocket-sized basketball hoop on the flight but didn’t end up playing with them – the video of his trip into space was watched more than 24 million times on YouTube. MoonDAO now has roughly 12,000 participants, thousands of which joined after Cotton’s video was published.
MoonDAO member and Chinese citizen Yan Kejun won the second Blue Origin seat and will go to space on an upcoming flight.
If MoonDao keeps growing and raising money, Moncada-Larrotiz said the organization would like to buy more seats into space – hopefully some on future moon missions. It also wants to support projects that put blockchain hardware in space.
“We’re probably going to play a small role in the future settlement of the moon with the treasury that we have today,” Moncada-Larrotiz said. “But we can do these sort of projects … that will allow for the propagation of decentralized values on the moon.”
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