Pavlo Tanasyuk (Spacebit): Democratising space exploration with blockchain
“Become a part of the space exploration community”. Pavlo Tanasyuk of Spacebit explained how their platform aims to democratise access to space, while using the blockchain can provide the needed liquidity for space exploration.
Transcript
About SpaceBIT: we started very early, around 2013, and were probably the first company to think about space exploration and blockchain and cryptocurrencies. Well, back in 2013 it was a bit early to do anything like that, even though if we would raise, we would probably raise a very small amount, so it was put on hold. It was revived during the World Economic Forum this year, at Davos we restarted SpaceBIT, and we announced our plans in January, what we are planning to do and what we’ll be doing.
What we are doing now is we are working on a number of large projects. We’ve been working on them for a couple of years, it was not in the public domain, but thank you very much, Vinay, you also joining this space race. I believe it’s very important that more and more people talk about crypto applications, about blockchain applications for the space industry, because it’s something that we can do right now.
Space exploration was very centralised in the past, only governments, limited access, and now it’s actually becoming decentralised. We can see companies like SpaceX, non-space industry involvement, but I strongly believe that the future of space exploration is distributed, where actually crowds can participate. Crowds can invest, crowds can benefit from space exploration, and crowds can actually engage in space exploration as well, which is very important, starting with schools and all the way up.
Why do we have to tokenise the space industry? First of all, if we talk about space projects that don’t really fit the VC profile, so they don’t want to invest, it’s a very long-term and high-risk, and there is no liquidity. Tokenisation can actually bring that liquidity into the space market, which is very important. We believe that there is enough money in crypto, I believe Vinay talked about that, to support live space missions.
There is a debate between security and utility tokens. Obviously I believe in security tokens, but there are some interesting applications of utility tokens as well. For example, a company called Cloudeo, they’ve been quite successful in applying the utility token concept to data tokenisation. Also the club ownership model, where you can collectively own IP of the future of space projects is a very interesting concept as well.
You can actually tokenise the projects instead of tokenising the company, which is a very interesting concept. If many companies are working on one project, they don’t have to give up their equity; you can tokenise the project itself, which is a very interesting concept. Also, all those new models: voting, collaboration, investment and many things like that.
If you look at the actual expenditure of the largest countries in space, the United States is around $36 billion per year, China is just $4 billion per year, and Russia and Germany less than $3 billion. Japan, France and India one billion, including the UK as well. The crypto economy at the moment is $270 billion, so we can actually use part of that to support some of the great missions of humankind.
You’ve probably heard the project talking about the Moon, and Vinay was talking about the project that will happen in the future, but I believe it’s very important to take it from the imagination to reality, and this is a quote from the British Interplanetary Society which I’ve been supporting for many years. And today we would like to announce something which actually takes it from the imagination to reality, so we will announce a very interesting venture which was started some time ago, a couple of years, but now is coming to fruition.
Basically, we have a mission to the Moon, a physical mission, already planned, and we have companies involved. I can’t reveal all the names today because I was asked not to do it, it will be kept secret for a few more days. I can reveal one partner, and people who are from the space industry here can probably guess the rest. We have a Goonhilly ground station, which is the biggest private ground station in the world. If you know about that project, you probably know the scale of that project as well. We have taken a relay communications satellite to the Moon, and we are planning to tokenise the Moon data. The Moon data will be tokenised, and the token holders will have licenses for the Moon data, so they will be able to use these licenses to get benefits from this Moon data when it gets sold.
Also, the satellite will work as a communication link between the Earth and the Moon, so any future missions will be able to use this satellite to get the data from the Moon, to get cheap communication from the Moon surface or orbit as well, and for other projects that might be present in this room, we invite you to join our physical mission. If you want to drop Bitcoins to the Moon surface we can actually do that, we have the capacity to deliver a few kilograms to the Moon surface, so I would like you to talk to me and participate in our space adventure if you’d like to.
This is the Moon data tokenisation model. It’s a bit complicated to go through during the presentation, but basically we adapted the tokenisation model from the Cloudeo model, and hopefully we will be using them to sell our data as well.
But it’s not only the data that we are planning to tokenise, not only the Moon data, but also the communication. As the satellite will be helping with the communication between the Moon and the Earth, the data will be tokenised, and you will be able to buy part of this data using tokens, which is quite an interesting concept as well, and for that I would like to make another announcement. We have formed a consortium of 10 UK companies, I believe the names will be published tomorrow in the press, about the blockchain for data tokenisation. It’s a UK consortium, but companies from other countries are also welcome to participate. We believe that it’s a very important concept, that we should look at the tokenisation of data and the tokenisation of communication networks as well.
So yeah, that’s our project, that’s what SpaceBIT does. Even though we have some exclusivity agreements with our partners, we want to open it up to everyone in this room. Because I strongly believe that we shouldn’t put any restrictions or patents on space exploration; we should make it open, decentralised, distributed, so everyone can participate, invest, take part, do what they want. Because we are in space, our planet is in space, and we are moving through space, and as a species we have to ultimately go into space as well. Thank you very much! [applause]
