On Sunday, Elon Musk tweeted that his company SpaceX will be launching a satellite named Doge-1. Its mission to the moon will be paid with Dogecoin according to a report by the DealBook newsletter. On Saturday, when he debuted on Saturday Night Live, he agreed with a query that called it a “hustle.” This made Dogecoin trading go wild and the Robinhood app temporarily stopped working as it couldn’t cope with the trading frenzy.
On May 10, he tweeted @elonmusk
SpaceX launching satellite Doge-1 to the
moon next year
- Mission paid for in Doge
- 1st crypto in space
- 1st meme in space
To the mooooonnn!!
He also attached a YouTube link of the Doge Song – To the Moon [Official]
Earlier in April, he had dropped hints about the mission when he tweeted that his company SpaceX would “put a literal Dogecoin on a literal moon.”
Geometric Energy Corporation (GEC), a technology firm based in Canada, released a statement yesterday which stated that they were partnering with SpaceX to send a 90 pound satellite on a Falcon 9 mission to the moon. Samuel Reid, its CEO, said that they have officially transacted a deal with DOGE, as a unit of account for the “lunar business.”
Later, a company representative from GEC also confirmed that the project was not a joke, when DealBook asked the company for a comment, but declined to provide additional details.
Tom Ochinero, who is the vice president of commercial sales at SpaceX said in a press release that they were “excited to launch DOGE-1 to the Moon.”
The cryptocurrency Dogecoin started as a joke, when a meme went viral on the internet. Software engineers Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer developed it 2013 to poke fun at Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. It soon became a traded cryptocurrency and slowly became popular. It features a Shibu Inu dog. Musk had recently posted a photo with this dog breed.
The Dogecoin has recently increased in value, several thousand times and has been promoted by Tesla’s Elon Musk, Mark Cuban and many other celebrities. Every time Musk comments on it, it generally goes up in value though on Saturday there were mixed trades as he said that it was a “hustle.” Now, its latest promotion is related to a mission to the moon. What next? We have to wait and see.
