SpaceX to launch ‘DOGE-1’ lunar mission next year

Gokhshtein Media CEO David Gokhshtein and Morgan Creek Digital Co-Founder Jason A. Williams discuss their outlook for the cryptocurrency market.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said on April Fool’s Day that his aerospace company would “put a literal Dogecoin on the literal moon.”
However, the announcement was no joke, as the billionaire is now keeping that promise. Musk tweeted on Sunday that SpaceX will launch Doge-1, the very first fully Dogecoin-funded commercial payload, aboard a Falcon 9 rocket.
The mission, in partnership with Geometric Space Corporation, will send a 40 kilogram cubic satellite to the Moon in the first quarter of 2022. According to a Press release, the payload “will obtain space-lunar information from on-board sensors and cameras with integrated communication and computing systems”.
AMID DOGECOIN’S VOLATILITY AFTER ELON MUSK ‘SNL’ SHOW, ROBINHOOD CRYPTO TRADE REDUCED
Geometric Energy CEO Samuel Reid says the transaction solidifies the token itself as a “unit of account for lunar activities in the space sector.”
SpaceX vice president of commercial sales Tom Ochinero added that the mission “will demonstrate the application of cryptocurrency beyond Earth’s orbit and lay the groundwork for interplanetary commerce.”
“We are delighted to launch DOGE-1 on the Moon!” Ochinero said.
The financial value of the assignment was not disclosed.
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The announcement comes after the joke motto fell following Musk’s Saturday Night Live concert on NBC, in which he called it “a fuss.”
Musk, who played “financial expert Lloyd Ostertag” on SNL’s “Weekend Update” segment, told Michael Che that Dogecoin is “the future of money.”
“It’s an unstoppable financial vehicle that is going to take over the world,” Musk added. “I keep telling you that this is the cryptocurrency that you can trade for conventional money.”
Che responds, “Oh, so it’s a fuss,” to which Musk concedes, “Yeah, it’s a fuss.”
The fall in the value of Dogecoin has temporarily crushed Robinhood’s crypto trading on its investment platform.
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Cryptocurrency was originally created by software engineers Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer, who wanted to create a traditional bank-fee-free payment system. According to price tracking by Coindesk, Dogecoin has fallen around 13% in the past 24 hours to around 56 cents, from its all-time high of 70 cents.