Dogecoin sent ‘to space’ for Elon Musk’s birthday

SpaceX boss plans to send dogecoin ‘to the actual moon’ in 2022

A dogecoin was sent to space attached to a weather balloon to mark Elon Musk’s birthday on 28 June, 2021 (Reid Williamson/ Twitter)

A YouTuber has sent a dogecoin high up towards the Earth’s stratosphere in a stunt designed to take the cryptocurrency “to space”.

Reid Williamson used a weather balloon to launch the replica token in honour of Elon Musk’s 50th birthday.

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The exact altitude the weather balloon reached is unknown, though they typically reach a height of around 40km (25 miles) before they burst. Outer space begins at around 100km from the Earth’s surface.

“To pull this whole thing off, we had to gather a few supplies and do a little bit of research,” Mr Williamson explained in a video documenting the event.

“I ordered a used GPS tracker from eBay, two weather balloons, a parachute, and of course a physical dogecoin replica from Amazon.”

The dogecoin was launched from a field outside of Austin in Texas and landed roughly 30 miles away. The video was published to coincide with Mr Musk’s birthday on Monday, 28 June.

“Hopefully this video will help to push the goodest boy to $1,” Mr Williamson wrote. “Elon, if you need any launch tips for getting Doge to the moon my DMs are always open.”

The SpaceX and Tesla CEO tweeted on 1 April this year that his company was “going to put a literal dogecoin on the literal moon”.

Despite appearing on April Fool’s Day, the tweet came just a week after Tesla began accepting bitcoin as a form of payment.

The tech billionaire also has a history of sending unusual payloads into space, having previously launched his Tesla car aboard the maiden test flight of the Falcon Heavy rocket.

SpaceX secured a multi-billion dollar contract with Nasa earlier this year to return astronauts to the Moon using the next-generation Starship rocket. Test payloads would likely be sent to the Moon first, with launches expected to take place as early as next year.

Mr Musk has also previously shared a mocked-up image of a Shiba Inu dog planting a dogecoin flag into the Moon’s surface. “Literally,” he wrote in February. “On the actual moon.”