Elon Musk’s rocket company and satellite operator, SpaceX, has achieved a major feat after launching a quartet of space travelers who seek to break new ground with the first-ever privately-funded spacewalk.
The four-member civilian crew, a tech billionaire, a retired Air Force pilot, and two SpaceX operations engineers, blasted off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The mission, known as Polaris Dawn, launched on a Falcon 9 rocket — marking the start of one of SpaceX’s highest-stakes missions yet.
The Polaris Dawn crew will spend five days in orbit, during which they will do research in addition to stepping into space.
Although SpaceX, founded and led by Elon Musk, is predominantly known for its groundbreaking technologies and successful launches, the American aerospace manufacturer is also surprisingly bullish on the alpha cryptocurrency, Bitcoin (BTC).
According to on-chain sleuths Arkharm Intelligence, SpaceX’s Bitcoin stockpile is currently worth approximately $500 million, signaling its bullish view on BTC.
“But did you know that SpaceX isn’t just bullish on Space? They’re also bullish on BTC, with almost $500 million in holdings,” Arkham Intelligence wrote in its Sept. 10 post on X.
TODAY: SpaceX launched 4 astronauts to attempt the world’s first private spacewalkBut did you know that SpaceX isn’t just bullish on Space?They're also bullish on BTC, with almost $500M in holdings pic.twitter.com/SRB1dinixd
— Arkham (@ArkhamIntel) September 10, 2024
SpaceX And Bitcoin
While Musk has previously said at the pro-Bitcoin “The B Word” conference in 2021 that SpaceX owned some Bitcoin, the size of the company’s BTC investment was unknown until Arkham’s report earlier this year.
“I do own Bitcoin, Tesla owns Bitcoin, SpaceX owns Bitcoin,” the centibillionaire said at the time, revealing that he also personally owns Ether (ETH) and Dogecoin (DOGE).
Musk has a long and turbulent track record of trying to incorporate crypto assets like Bitcoin into the functioning of his businesses. In March 2021, Tesla started accepting Bitcoin as a payment option for new EV car purchases. The program was suspended less than two months later, with Musk citing concerns related to the environmental impact of the energy-intensive Bitcoin mining process.
