A 21st-century infinite race appears to be brewing between Elon Musk and BitMEX, with both parties pledging to launch their respective crypto of choice to the literal moon first.

On Friday, popular crypto derivatives exchange BitMEX announced information technology would be supporting infinite robotics firm Astrobotic Technology in the visitor'due south mission to ship its first commercial lander to the moon during Q4 2020.

Noting that the mission aims to be the first instance in which "a individual company leading a coalition of government, academia, industry, and international partners reaches the lunar surface," BitMEX plans to brand the occasion past delivering a one-of-a-kind physical Bitcoin (BTC) to the moon'due south surface. Referring to Musk as a "Dogecoin protagonist," BitMEX added:

"We've nothing against Dog Coin, we felt it was merely right to help Bitcoin get there offset."

The declaration followed Musk's early May news that SpaceX is planning to launch a Dogecoin-funded payload on one of its first rockets to the moon, asserting that Dogecoin (DOGE) would go the first cryptocurrency to achieve lunar orbit side by side year.

Musk responded to BitMEX's newfound astronomic ambitions on Twitter, proclaiming: "A new space race has begun!"

While replies to Elon's tweet are largely his followers barracking for DOGE to win the crypto infinite race, others noted there are more pressing problems on Earth than whether one's crypto token of choice is the outset to enter the orbit of some other celestial body.

While few projects exploring the utility of establishing crypto infrastructure from infinite have captured the mainstream imagination like Musk'south Dogecoin expedition has, the Tesla CEO's plans to take cryptocurrency out of this world are not the first.

Blockstream appears to have been the starting time in pioneering the use of crypto satellites, launching satellites to broadcast Bitcoin transactions from space in Baronial 2017.

In August 2020, Robonomics and Kusama announced an ambitious program to develop "an interplanetary architecture" capable of relaying data between Mars and Earth using the Kusama network.

CryptoSat outlined the concept behind its ambitious programme to launch a nano-satellite the size of a coffee mug into infinite in a November 2017 white newspaper, with the satellite slated to operate as an isolated cryptographic module from orbit. The team plans to prove the concept with a launch this year before sending an unabridged constellation of CryptoSats into orbit later on.

Spacechain similarly launched in 2017 and has successfully deployed nodes in orbit. On June three, 2021, the project announced that its multisig Ethereum payload destined for installation on the International Infinite Station had been launched aboard a SpaceX rocket.