Bitcoin in Space with Dhruv Bansal

 
 
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“We can build one currency for our entire fucking planet, that’s an OK thing, that’s still an admirable goal. We don’t have to feel, as bitcoiners, that we somehow failed if that first currency can’t be used on every planet of the cosmos.”
— Dhruv Bansal

SHOW DESCRIPTION

Location: Remotely
Date: Tuesday 16th March
Company: Unchained Capital
Role: Co-founder

With SpaceX CEO Elon Musk “highly confident” that his company will land humans on Mars by 2026, the human colonisation of another planet within our solar system has never been closer. Once humans settle on another world, one question that will have to be solved is what money will be used as the local currency? The obvious answer may, on the surface, be bitcoin. But how would that work?

With the time it takes to send a signal over such a vast distance, we will need to consider how bitcoin functions at scale throughout the solar system. Sending bitcoin transactions from Mars to Earth could work fine if you don’t mind waiting several hours for confirmation, but mining will be impossible on Mars. So, will we use bitcoin on Mars, or will its colony rely on a new ‘Muskcoin’? 

In this interview, I talk to Unchained Capital co-founder Dhruv Bansal. We discuss his Bitcoin Astronomy series of articles, the prospects of Bitcoin as an interplanetary currency, SpaceX, colonisation of other planets, and hyperbitcoinisation.

TIMESTAMPS

00:05:04: Introductions
00:05:44: Why "Bitcoin in Space"?
00:07:41: The background to the show
00:10:27: Requirements for interplanetary economies
00:13:22: Hypothesising Bitcoin as the interplanetary currency
00:16:13: The current investment in space travel
00:19:41: The interplanetary time differential
00:21:47: Why you can't mine on Mars
00:27:15: The blockchain's bounded box
00:28:11: The "centre of hash"
00:29:11: The "hash horizon"
00:32:46: Planet's own blockchains
00:34:30: Bitcoin will be Earth's currency
00:37:49: Elon Musk and the hypothetical "Muskcoin"
00:42:37: The "hash bomb"
00:49:36: The interplanetary economic revolution
00:55:47: One interstellar blockchain and "Solcoin"
01:02:58: A future of enormously extended lifespans
01:06:19: Considering the future of AI and robots
01:09:05: Energy requirements for space travel
01:15:21: The Fermi paradox
01:17:16: The Great Filter
01:20:30: Is there anybody out there?
01:22:07: The Drake equation
01:30:11: Universal aspects of life and civilisations
01:39:53: Fictionalising the theories
01:41:20: Unchained Capital's Concierge onboarding programme
01:41:54: Praise for Parker Lewis
01:44:39: Final comments

 

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SHOW NOTES

PodcastPeter McCormack