Forget dollars, Bitcoin could run Earth-Mars economy

Bitcoin, once dismissed as a “scam,” didn’t take long to be embraced by retail and institutional traders.

The cryptocurrency’s market cap today rivals that of the world’s largest companies like Alphabet (Nasdaq: GOOG), Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN), and Meta Platforms (Nasdaq: META).

Related: What is Crypto? Cryptocurrency explained

It was in 2008 that Satoshi Nakamoto published the Bitcoin white paper that revolutionized the concept of money in later years.

Now, two scientists have published a scientific paper that explores the feasibility of deploying Bitcoin as the shared monetary standard between Earth and Mars.

Titled “Bitcoin as an Interplanetary Monetary Standard with Proof-of-Transit Timestamping,” the paper by Jose Puente and Carlos Puente suggests that Bitcoin’s scarcity, decentralized verification model, and predictable issuance make it a **"**natural candidate" for a universal monetary standard.

A statue of depicting Satoshi Nakamoto, a presumed pseudonym used by the inventor of Bitcoin, in El Zonte, El Salvador, on Sunday, June 1, 2025. As the world plans to make settlements on Mars, the paper explores the possibility of using Bitcoin across interplanetary distances.

The paper proposes a Proof-of-Transit Timestamping (PoTT) model to provide cryptographic, tamper-evident Bitcoin audit trails across planets. In simple words, it is like a digital receipt system that tracks where and when a Bitcoin transaction travels across a network.

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Now, how can Bitcoin transactions occur beyond the Earth?

The paper gives examples of the Bitcoin network already being decoupled from the terrestrial internet via unidirectional broadcast and alternative last-mile relays In orbit, SpaceChain and partners have operated blockchain payloads on the ISS and commercial satellites.

So, the proposal for Bitcoin as a shared monetary standard between Earth and Mars is already “concrete enough for early prototyping,” the authors write.

Michael Sullivan, an author and software engineer, called the white paper “a superior approach.”

This story was originally reported by TheStreet on Sep 9, 2025, where it first appeared in the Innovation section. Add TheStreet as a Preferred Source by clicking here.

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