About
Marscoin welcomes you to Mars!
This website was created as an experiment in planetary crypto currency reserve economics in space using Marscoin.
We are not directly associated with Marscoin beyond being a Mars pioneering enthusiast an end user of Marscoin ourselves. For information about Marscoin see their official website - (http://marscoin.org)
Stakeholders.
The planet Mars has become the focus of many Space exploration and colonisation aspirations for numerous organisations. From the now defunct Mars One project, to SpaceX and various other nations such as India, China, Japan, UAE, etc. Marscoin however is in the hands of the Mars Society, the Marscoin Foundation, and everyday people with an interest in Mars. I personally fall into the later category.
Origins.
Marscoin was specifically created in January 2014 as a logical currency for Mars. Space travel is an expensive proposition where every Kilogram of weight has a cost. In this situation a currency that has little to no weight, existing entirely as digital data makes crypto currency ideal for interplanetary economics in any Mars context. Elon Musk apparently agrees with this assessment - himself referencing Marscoin when asked about using cryptocurrency for a Mars colony over Twitter in 2021.
Although defunct, some in the Mars One project proposed that the first colonists could take with them a cryptocurrency miner, and bring the Marscoin blockchain to Mars as part of the initial infrastructure of the colony.
How would it be used?
We are not directly associated with Marscoin beyond being a Mars pioneering enthusiast an end user of Marscoin ourselves. For information about Marscoin see their official website - (http://marscoin.org)
Stakeholders.
The planet Mars has become the focus of many Space exploration and colonisation aspirations for numerous organisations. From the now defunct Mars One project, to SpaceX and various other nations such as India, China, Japan, UAE, etc. Marscoin however is in the hands of the Mars Society, the Marscoin Foundation, and everyday people with an interest in Mars. I personally fall into the later category.
Origins.
Marscoin was specifically created in January 2014 as a logical currency for Mars. Space travel is an expensive proposition where every Kilogram of weight has a cost. In this situation a currency that has little to no weight, existing entirely as digital data makes crypto currency ideal for interplanetary economics in any Mars context. Elon Musk apparently agrees with this assessment - himself referencing Marscoin when asked about using cryptocurrency for a Mars colony over Twitter in 2021.
Although defunct, some in the Mars One project proposed that the first colonists could take with them a cryptocurrency miner, and bring the Marscoin blockchain to Mars as part of the initial infrastructure of the colony.
How would it be used?
At the time the suggested application of Marscoin would be as a research and trade credit commodity.
How this would work would be for example colonists on Mars could complete work, research, do science experiments or construct and maintain/rent Mars ROV's to or on behalf of academic/research institutions on earth - who would pay them in Marscoin for services rendered.
In return the colonists could spend their Marscoin income to purchase items, materials, luxuries or other supplies which could be included in the next supply delivery from Earth. Conversely, items created or sourced from Mars could similarly be included in any material returned to Earth in return for payment in Marscoin.
In this manner a healthy circulation of Marscoin economics between Earth and Mars could easily be maintained. No extra fuel needed.
Potential problems?
However as is the nature of crypto currencies their value can become quite volatile, particularly when traded on currency exchanges. Considering the time delay between Earth and Mars a situation that could become problematic if values change significantly between the time paying, and the arrival of the payment - the price then no longer being appropriate..
Solutions?
The solution to this issue is simple however - have an organistation that tasks itself with setting baseline prices for goods or services. This would have the reverse effect - the value of Marscoin when faced with stable purchasing power would naturally tend to float at values that are in general appropriate to its buying power. Should the value of Marscoin become too high traders would naturally sell more back into the market, for profit - likewise should the price become too low, traders would be motivated to purchase more. By having purchasing power set by a central organisation - the currency would dictate is value, not the market speculators.
Failing that, the same organisation could periodically review the market liquidity and either release more Marscoin into the market, or purchase back undervalued Marscoin - reducing the supply in the market and hopefully correcting the price..
A reserve bank is an organisation that is meant to work exactly like this. So this is where the idea of a Mars reserve bank came from.
Although really; any organisation with good intentions and enough Marscoins could serve this role. The marscoin foundation - a non profit, and the Mars society a not for profit both hold enough funds to action reserve bank style incubator policies, as does many private marscoin stakeholders engaging in mining and currency exchange trading.
This of course is all dependant on Marscoin being used to actually conduct business, not just for trading on exchanges.
This of course is all dependant on Marscoin being used to actually conduct business, not just for trading on exchanges.
Why Crypto? - Why not Fiat?
Fiat Reserve banks of course are not without problems -
Currently the only baseline national reserve banks can set is interest rates. Previously gold reserve facilitiated the buying power baseline in fiat currency. Although the removal of pegging gold/silver to reserve in world economics has broken this somewhat - meaning most Earth fiat currencies all tend to suffer from "super inflation" where there is little to no checks or balances on the value of currency; beyond wealthy people hoarding it - so more and more keeps getting dumped into the market, with no limit. A problem made worse by the idea of "fractional reserve" which allows banks to double or triple spend or more the same funds over and over to infinity in the form of loans, which adds even more funds into the system without any limits. So over time all currencies devalue, causing the cost of living (ie the cost to buy things) to always keep increasing. As such all Fiat currencies are "inflationary" or "depreciate" in value. Which all things considered make fiat in general a bad investment!
Crypto currency however does not suffer from this issue. Between Proof of Work (ie Mining, Network Fees, Confirming transactions, Adding blocks to blockchain) and a fixed limit to the amount of money that can ever exist in a given cryptocurrency - most active crypto currencies are "appreciative" or will always increase in value the more it is used. This is basic supply and demand, as more people use it, less remains circulating and so the more the circulating funds are worth. Even where a large amount of a given currency exists in the market - the very fact that there is only a limited number of them, and you cannot double spend at all keeps the value in check. On top of this with 8 decimal places even a single cryptocoin has the potential to scale up massively in value and still remain practical to use even if a large amount of the supply has been removed from circulation.
By comparasin Fiat has no such capability, and the only way to scale it, is to dump more of it into circulation making it worthless - and with no checks or balances to fractional reserve there is nothing to stop banks doing exactly that. Even should a reserve bank attempt to remove circulating funds to counter super-inflation, the banks will simply conjure up more of it from thin air in unsecured loans cancelling out the attempts entirely.
Crypto currency however does not suffer from this issue. Between Proof of Work (ie Mining, Network Fees, Confirming transactions, Adding blocks to blockchain) and a fixed limit to the amount of money that can ever exist in a given cryptocurrency - most active crypto currencies are "appreciative" or will always increase in value the more it is used. This is basic supply and demand, as more people use it, less remains circulating and so the more the circulating funds are worth. Even where a large amount of a given currency exists in the market - the very fact that there is only a limited number of them, and you cannot double spend at all keeps the value in check. On top of this with 8 decimal places even a single cryptocoin has the potential to scale up massively in value and still remain practical to use even if a large amount of the supply has been removed from circulation.
By comparasin Fiat has no such capability, and the only way to scale it, is to dump more of it into circulation making it worthless - and with no checks or balances to fractional reserve there is nothing to stop banks doing exactly that. Even should a reserve bank attempt to remove circulating funds to counter super-inflation, the banks will simply conjure up more of it from thin air in unsecured loans cancelling out the attempts entirely.
What roles could a Reserve Bank of Mars Organisation fulfill?
Interest groups may need access to Marscoins but might not be technically proficient in mining, blockchains and electronic wallets. A "reserve bank" can allocate, lend or sell Marscoins to these groups to get them started.
Interest groups may need access to Marscoins but might not be technically proficient in mining, blockchains and electronic wallets. A "reserve bank" can allocate, lend or sell Marscoins to these groups to get them started.
This could work in several ways -
1) Generate "cold wallets" also known as "paper wallets" These are special printed papers that record a public wallet address on the outside, usually with statement of value written on it, and contain sealed inside the necessary private key needed to redeem the value written on the outside. In effect a form of credit note, cheque or printed money in a manner of speaking. These can be exchanged or traded physically between parties. So long as the private seal key has not been broken.. it retains its value without further interaction with technology. In addition to this, the public address on the outside can be entered into a "block explorer" to confirm the current balance of the wallet address, and this same public address can be used to add additional funds to that address by a 3rd party user of Marscoin without needing any special equipment for the holder of the "cold wallet" to gain the funds. The blockchain handles it for them. This has the other advantage that cold wallets can be locked in a physical safe - no chance of "forgetting a password" or a "computer crashing" losing your funds that way. They can also be used with actively used wallet addresses - so if your computer crashes you have in effect got a "backup" to get back to your funds. Another thing you cannot do in Fiat.
1) Generate "cold wallets" also known as "paper wallets" These are special printed papers that record a public wallet address on the outside, usually with statement of value written on it, and contain sealed inside the necessary private key needed to redeem the value written on the outside. In effect a form of credit note, cheque or printed money in a manner of speaking. These can be exchanged or traded physically between parties. So long as the private seal key has not been broken.. it retains its value without further interaction with technology. In addition to this, the public address on the outside can be entered into a "block explorer" to confirm the current balance of the wallet address, and this same public address can be used to add additional funds to that address by a 3rd party user of Marscoin without needing any special equipment for the holder of the "cold wallet" to gain the funds. The blockchain handles it for them. This has the other advantage that cold wallets can be locked in a physical safe - no chance of "forgetting a password" or a "computer crashing" losing your funds that way. They can also be used with actively used wallet addresses - so if your computer crashes you have in effect got a "backup" to get back to your funds. Another thing you cannot do in Fiat.
2) Rent out time on a mining machine. An interested party may want to attempt to mine some coins into a given marscoin address, but lacks the equipment or skillset to do so. In this case they could simply pay or offer goods/services in return for the "reserve bank" lending time on their miner for the benefit of the interested party for an agreed upon time period. Since mining difficulty varies this may return a good or poor number of mined coins. So there is a degree of random chance involved.
3) An entity acting as a reserve bank could hold funds in escrow linked to a particular party or identifying code or papers. In effect like a normal bank account/banker; and act on behalf of that third party in the transfer of funds/confirmation of delivery. This would be a useful method to conduct business between Earth and Mars where the network latency would otherwise make it not practical to directly interact with the Marscoin blockchain to transfer funds. This could work well in concert with a cold or paper wallet; or using a similar printed document or special code that cross references with funds listed in a database held by the organisation acting as the reserve bank with direct access to the blockchain.
4) Incubator funds, loans, or other financial actions could be provided by the Reserve organisation to Mars stakeholders as needed. For example should SpaceX or a similar aerospace company land a habitat on Mars, it would be necessary to provide them with a pool of Marscoin funds to kickstart economic transactions. New colonists may require a loan of Marscoin after such a kickstart to get them started, which other than a single static transaction fee would be essentially interest free, and if they are also being paid in Marscoin can simply pay it back as practical. It would need to be interest free to avoid corporate misuse for indentured slavery. We dont want a repeat of the pretend money loan slavery system banks currently enjoy on Earth occuring on Mars. Particularly as such a system may well lead to death if a colonist cannot afford food and air as a result of financial predator stress. Likewise organisations may need to purchase Marscoin funds; or be supplied a small starting pool of them in order to pay people on Mars. Prices or donations of such would depend entirely on the entity involved, private for profit academic, public non profit academic, or commercial company that sort of thing.