Both Elon Musk and Changpeng Zhao agree that the Mars economy should run on cryptocurrency.
Tesla Inc (NASDAQ: TSLA) CEO Elon Musk has big plans for his Mars settlement. One of them is the development of the so-called MarsCoin – the crypto that the Mars economy would run on. Musk hopes to send the first humans to Mars as early 2024, with the ultimate aim of establishing a “self-sustaining city on Mars as soon as possible”.
Soon after investing $1.5 billion in Bitcoin (BTC), Elon Musk started posting tweets about Dogecoin (DOGE). He agreed that any settlements he makes on Mars will be powered by cryptocurrency like DOGE. Besides, he asked Dogecoin holders to sell their coins so that they could be equally distributed between all the participants.
If major Dogecoin holders sell most of their coins, it will get my full support. Too much concentration is the only real issue imo.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 14, 2021
Further, Twitter user Mansour Shahrokh offered Musk to develop ElonCoin. In response, Musk said he would do it if necessary. And then Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao interfered. He said such an initiative is essential and suggested Elon Musk naming the currency “MarsCoin”. And Musk agreed.
Looks like we will have a MarsCoin. In foresight, it is inevitable. pic.twitter.com/iMZcJgswu0
— CZ 🔶 Binance (@cz_binance) February 16, 2021
What is more interesting, such a coin already exists. Derived from the Litecoin (LTC) fork of Bitcoin, Marscoin is dedicated to supporting the settlement of Mars and other space-related projects intended to get humans living and thriving off of planet earth. MarsCoin project was founded in 2014 and saw a brief surge in popularity during the cryptocurrency market bull run in late 2017. Now, its market cap totals less than $100,000, according to CoinMarketCap.
While Musk Is Considering MarsCoin, Bill Gates Voices Scepticism about Mars
While Elon Musk is ambitious about bringing humans to Mars, Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT) CEO Bill Gates believes we need to focus more on problems existing on Earth. For example, rockets are not a solution to climate change.
Gates said:
“Well, it’s important to say that what Elon did with Tesla is one of the greatest contributions to climate change anyone’s ever made. And you know, underestimating Elon is not a good idea.”
He further added that he is “not a Mars person” and he does not “think rockets are the solution.”
Besides, Gates said he would rather spend money on the development of measles vaccines than traveling to space in a rocket.
The billionaire stated:
“I’m not going to pay a lot of money because my foundation can buy measles vaccines and save a life for $1,000. So anything I do, I always think, OK, I could spend that $1,000 buying measles vaccine.”
While Bill Gates is focusing on Earth problems, Elon Muck receives supports from other influential figures in his Mars ambitions. For example, Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ: AMZN) founder Jeff Bezos also believes humans need space travel. As he explained, we are “destroying this planet”. Therefore, it is a good idea to explore space and try to move polluting manufacturing businesses there, if possible.
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