Elon Musk ICO
The biggest ICO ever — Elon Musk is to introduce his own crypto tokens that will be accepted by all of his companies.
Facing an urgent need to quickly raise about $10 Billion to finance production of Model 3 and save Tesla from running out of money, Elon Musk, as always, finds an ingenious solution: print his own money.
According to multiple reports, Musk is negotiating a private pre-sale of tokens worth as much as $3B to $4B. Big Wall Street banks, hedge funds, private equity, traditional and crypto VC funds, family offices, sovereign wealth funds and Bitcoin whales are all lined up to participate.
The invitation-only pre-sale will be followed by a public offering that is expected to raise as much as $20B to $30B.
With the tokens, tentatively to be called Muscoins, you will be able to pay for all of Musk’s existing and future products and services. You would be able to buy a Tesla car, a battery and solar-cell tiles for your house, or subscribe to satellite internet to be provided by SpaceX.
According to the white paper, in two years, Tesla will launch an Uber-like marketplace where you would be able to hail a fully autonomous Tesla and pay for the ride in Muscoins. You will be able to earn tokens back by renting out your Tesla to ferry other people, selling your solar electricity to neighbors and potentially providing other services.
As with other crypto tokens, since the Muscoin emission will be limited, the token price is expected to rise dramatically with time, which fuels the investor interest.
To support Muscoins, a proprietary blockchain will be introduced. To address criticism of wasting enormous amounts of electricity on verifying transactions in traditional blockchains, Musk found another ingenious solution: in his blockchain, the proof work will come from … miles driven by Teslas. A yet-to-be-disclosed cryptographic algorithm to be run on every car’s onboard computer will somehow convert odometer readings to digital credits that could be used to verify the blocks.
In addition to verifying Muscoin transactions it will store, in a distributed ledger, hashes of all Tesla rides, including GPs, radar and camera logs. This will provide immutable evidence in case of crashes and accidents.
Smart contract will be used to settle insurance and liability claims. For example, a fatal auto-pilot accident similar to a recent crash on Highway 101 will trigger an automatic and instant payment of a certain amount of Muscoins to the victim’s estate, without lengthy and expensive lawsuits.
In a more distant but still immediate future, you will be able to pay toll at tunnels being dug by the Boring Company, pay for a Hyperloop ride between San Francisco and Los Angeles or buy a ticket to a 30 minute flight by an intercontinental ballistic missile from New York to Beijing.
One of the best ways to increase tokens’ present value is to make them the exclusive payment option for certain goods and services. According to the white paper, this will include one-way fare to Mars and the price of buying a dwelling property there. Additionally, on the Mars colony, the Muscoin will be the only legal tender.
Neuralink, a Musk’s company developing “neural lace” brain-computer interface, will offer backup and recovery service to come with other Musk’s products. It will upload your mind to a computer and use this reserve copy in case you are killed in a Tesla crash, on a flight to Mars or Hyperloop depressurization. It will only accept payment in Muscoins.
To reflect on Muscoins exceptional features, Musk breaks with a tradition of giving tokens a three-letter trading symbol. Instead, it will be listed on all major crypto-currency exchanges under BSIETW ticker symbol.
