SpaceX CEO Elon Musk says Mars 'will run on crypto', DOGE or different currency

Just days after the Dogelon Mars meme coin inspired by SpaceX CEO Elon Musk’s vision of mars colonisation boosted in its recent listing across two popular crypto exchanges, the Neuralink founder once again hurtled predictions that Mars economy “will run on crypto,” probably the meme-based bitcoin rival dogecoin or any other inimitable currency suited for Red planet. In a recent podcast with the influential artificial intelligence researcher and podcaster Lex Fridman, the Chief executive of aerospace firm SpaceX, EV car company Tesla, and Boring Company categorically stressed that missions to Mars weren’t a distant possibility but a near-term goal. 

In his recent conversation that ranged from topics such as Artificial Intelligence, Tesla autopilot, robotics, human spaceflights and Mars colonisation, the billionaire serial entrepreneur said that he is "highly confident" that SpaceX will land humans on Mars by 2026: "If we get lucky, maybe four years. We want to send an uncrewed vehicle there in two years.” The latter then went on to discuss the official currency of Mars, which he said, may likely be a cryptocurrency, particularly DOGE or something different but “would be kind of a localised thing on Mars.” 

Musk then iterated that the future of Mars should be “up to the Martians.” 1.14.4 Dogecoin has been competing with rival crypto Bitcoin and Ethereum and recently announced implementing a Core 1.14. 5 upgrade backed by Elon Musk that would slash fee for network participants, and would be a key step to for optimum growth, whilst improving blockchain's software security. Musk had said that it was "important" to update the Dogecoin nodes, as he responded to one Doge Whisperer's tweet in a discussion about the Doge upgrades. 

Currently, the predicted Mars currency is on 763 nodes, an estimated 1,090 nodes worldwide, and has been toiling to secure networks and lower transaction fees. Bitcoin smashed to an all-time high in 2017 since its institutional adoption by the payments giant PayPal. The tech billionaire is one of the co-founders of the online payments giant PayPal.

No paper currency based on 'Earth standards' on Mars 

Speculations recently popped up that Musk’s electric car company Tesla could add bitcoin to its balance sheet as the aerospace and AI entrepreneur predicts that the future Mars economy could be based on cryptocurrency contradictory to paper currency based on Earth standards. He had also predicted that Mars colonisation would imply a direct democracy without a governing body of laws. But as Musk thinks, colonisation of Mars is needed by humanity to ensure "the continuance of consciousness as we know it," he told Mars Society founder Robert Zubrin.

Musk, on April Fool’s Day this year, had also stressed that he would put "a literal Dogecoin" (pronounced "dohj coin") on the "literal moon”. While his audience guessed if he was joking, Musk reminded, ”After all, SpaceX's first payload to orbit & back was a wheel of cheese” referring to 2010 test flight of his company’s Dragon cargo spaceship where they delivered the first payload to orbit and back with ‘A wheel of cheese’. "It's kind of funny," Musk told reporters, adding that if they love Monty Python, they’ll “love all his secrets.”