Two high-tech scientists have published a paper exploring the possibility of deploying Bitcoin as an interplanetary financial standard for financial transactions between Earth and Mars. Apparently, BTC can be transferred in just 3 minutes using existing technology, but only humans or machines are required to receive it on the Red Planet.
The International Space Agency is working on a plan to terraform Mars, which usually grows water, radiation and agricultural targets. However, this groundbreaking study speculates that currency is just as important as others.
Late last month, Jose E. Puente and Carlos Puente released a white paper entitled Bitcoin as an interplanetary financial standard with time stamps of proofs transported,” suggesting that the rarity of apex cryptocurrency, decentralized verification models and predictable issuance will become candidates for “natural candidates.”
Relying on ground stations and satellites to send BTC between Earth and Mars
The main challenge here is the 3-22 minute radio transmission delay between Earth and Mars. This makes it impossible to synchronize Bitcoin Mining Activities on both planets. This level of latency makes the real-time proof (POW) consensus unreliable even for unrealistic and simple payments.
Proposed Transit Proof Time Stamp (Pot) Model It aims to solve this bottleneck as it suggests that if Bitcoin users want to send payments to someone on Mars in the future, the transaction will be delivered via various stations such as ground antennas, satellites, relays around the moon, and more.
Pot introduces an encrypted tamper-proof audit system of proof of concept. Here, transactions are signed and timestamped at each relay station before continuing the journey until they reach the recipient’s destination. If a block or transaction is delayed, the consensus algorithm shows exactly where the transmission delay occurred.
Researchers said the pot serves as a receipt layer for Bitcoin and Lightning networks, leveraging optical links built by NASA, Elon Musk’s Starlink or other satellite providers. According to them, the technology is “essentially ready” and Bitcoin could be the first currency to operate across the planet as soon as a stable link between Earth and Mars is established.
When up and running, BTC Lightning transactions can reach Mars in just 3 minutes.
Jose and Carlos Puente are relieved That the consensus mechanism does not change the Layer 1 economics of Bitcoin or its monetary policy. Instead, we’ll add a layer of responsibility that allows Mars to handle BTC transactions, lightning payments, and sidechains locally, but backpegging against Layer 1 on Earth for settlement.
Technically, Bitcoin mining is not done on Mars, but Earth can have a local economy based on BTC fixed in the supply available on Earth. Consumer payments are made more immediately than lightning channels, but bulk transactions resolve asynchronously between both planets.
Addressing the issue of two-week power outages on Mars that occur every 26 months, their solution is to deliberately route around the sun using relay satellites to avoid power outages. Jose Puente explained that pots work similarly to regular Bitcoin Timestamp technology, except that they spread out into space.
Bitcoin is dependent on planets and has already reached space
The concept is built on Blockstream’s 2018 satellite service, where blockchain developers leased five satellites, broadcast Bitcoin networks in Africa, Europe, South, North America and Asia-Pacific, and provides internet-free trading and information sharing to crypto users across five continents. The company also released an API that allows satellites to send encrypted messages, allowing users to pay for the service using micropayments on the Lightning network.
August 2020, SpaceChain has partnered with the European Space Agency (ESA) Complete the first Bitcoin transaction from International Space Station (ISS). This is now possible by sending encrypted data from the ground station to the ISS. There, the hardware wallet containing the private key was signed off in a transaction. The blockchain startup focused on Space-as-a-Service has delivered multi-sig hardware wallet technology to the space station via the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched at the end of 2019.
However, the biggest caveat is that for a Bitcoin transaction to occur on Mars, humans or AI must exist, but it hasn’t happened yet. Currently, only rovers, landers and orbiters from NASA and other space agencies are exploring the planet’s surface.
Blue Origins of Amazon Founder Jeff Bezos It has begun accepting cryptocurrencies such as BTC, Ether (ETH), Solana (SOL), USDT and USDC, but so far the company’s shuttle has only reached around 100 kilometres on the planet.
Musk’s SpaceX aims to reach Mars by the end of 2026 and plans to build an independent settlement there. Like Jose Puente, Tesla and X’s owners argued that a standardized form of money was needed to trade between Earth and Mars, but expressed concern about Bitcoin’s 10-minute block time.
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The pot is ready for early prototyping as space agencies compete to send people to Mars
Puente argued that Lightning Network would address this issue as Pott and Lightning combine to provide a global settlement and local speed that works across the planet.
While arguing that Bitcoin is the most appropriate form of interplanetary currency, tech entrepreneurs have said that if humanity is serious about becoming a multiplanet civilization, an open, neutral monetary base that is not dependent on a single company, government, or ground stations is needed.
He also pointed out that pots are designed to rely on planets throughout the star’s habitable zone. This means that the travel receipts it generates may come from transactions sent to the moon or other planets.
Currently, research focuses on Earth and Mars. This is because it is the cleanest, short-term case study. The authors reiterated that the proposal for Bitcoin as a shared financial standard between adjacent planets is already concrete and specific enough for early prototyping.
At the time of writing, Bitcoin (BTC) has traded at $113,966, up 1.46% over the past 24 hours.
