A company launched on Monday a Bitcoin mining platform called Space Miner One in the stratosphere, where it confirmed transactions and extracted bitcoins more than 100,000 feet from the surface of the planet.
Actually, it is not the first initiative to unite cryptocurrencies and outer space. In fact, there have already been projects with Blockchain and low cost nanosatellites. Also, in 2016, a company launched a 3D model of a Bitcoin portfolio 34 kilometers from outer space. It is said that this was the first peer to peer transaction from outer space. Last month we also reviewed NASA's plans to use Blockchain technology for communication and navigation in space. NASA has begun to investigate Blockchain technology for space navigation.
The platform launched on Monday was called Space Miner One. Attached to a weather balloon it moved through the lower atmosphere before returning to Earth on a parachute, where it landed safely in a field in Lithuania. The platform was connected to the Internet through a satellite phone, and was also equipped with an ASIC mining chip, a Raspberry Pi 3, a battery, GoPro Hero 5 and a metal souvenir coin for the winner of the contest.
CCN spoke with the CEO of Miner One, Pranas Slušnys, about the meaning of the launch and its plans for the future:
"The goal of Space Miner One is to symbolically express our belief that Bitcoin and cryptocurrency in general are about the future and revolutionary technology: Blockchain technology, and with this new technology, the sky is the limit."
Slušnys has an impressive curriculum that includes more than 20 years of experience in the IT & T business, and the construction and management of data centers. The Miner One project is currently raising funds to build a mining farm in northern Sweden, where low temperatures and energy costs will help the project's crypto-mining operation succeed, which the team believes will give investors better yields that mining at home.
The next step of the project is to build the mining facility. Slušnys informed the media that they are eager to start extracting, particularly with Bitcoin and Ether rebound prices, which he says will help pay for more cutting-edge equipment to help the project grow. The initiative is committed to start paying investors before the end of the summer.
The CEO of Miner One told CCN that although Monday's launch was symbolic, he firmly believes that cryptocurrency mining in space will become a reality in the future.
"We believe that mining and the technology on which it is based, of course, will eventually reach outer space." In a sense, it has already done so, to the extent that the communication channels that carry information around the bitcoin network use satellites. "