- The mission to land a physical Bitcoin wallet on the moon has had to be scrapped after technical issues with the spacecraft carrying it
- The Peregrine 1 craft has suffered a fuel leak which means it won’t reach the moon
- Bitmex had organized the attempt to get Bitcoin literally to the moon
The attempt to get Bitcoin to the moon is officially dead, and it has nothing to do with the Security and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) X account. A physical Bitcoin wallet loaded with 1 BTC was set to land on the moon along with a bevy of astronauts and other luminaries, the first time in half a century that the feat has been achieved, but due to a technical issue the Peregrine 1 craft has “no chance” of making a successful landing on the lunar surface. The issue means that crypto exchange Bitmex, which was behind the scheme, has seen three years’ worth of work go up in vaporized fuel, with the aim now being to send the rocket as far as it can go.
Bitcoin’s Extra-terrestrial Round Trip
Bitmex revealed its plan to send Bitcoin to the moon in May last year, saying that it had been in discussions over the plan since the Peregrine 1 plan was formed in 2021. The ship is carrying a wallet with 1 BTC engraved with its public address and private key, making it the first-ever financial asset sent to space. This has been achieved, but space is as far as the wallet will get after the Peregrine 1 suffered a “critical loss of propellant” hours after liftoff on Monday owing to an “anomaly” in the propulsion system, according to Astrobotic, the US company behind the project:
<blockquote class=”twitter-tweet”><p lang=”en” dir=”ltr”>Update #7 for Peregrine Mission One: <a href=”https://t.co/qAPcChVROO”>pic.twitter.com/qAPcChVROO</a></p>— Astrobotic (@astrobotic) <a href=”https://twitter.com/astrobotic/status/1744770456626893215?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>January 9, 2024</a></blockquote> <script async src=”https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js” charset=”utf-8″></script>
The aim now is to get the ship as far towards the moon as is safely possible, which sadly means that the wallet will be returning to Earth and back to Bitmex HQ, at least until the next time.
Despite the technical setbacks, Bitmex capitalized on the mission’s publicity by organizing a trading competition, offering prizes such as a baseball hat signed by Arthur Hayes and 100,000 USDT for top traders.
