- Elon Musk revived the narrative around fulfilling his earlier promise to launch a SpaceX mission funded with Dogecoin.
- The hype quickly waned, as it didn’t translate into significant price action for DOGE.
Talks about SpaceX literally sending Dogecoin (DOGE) to the moon got a second wind with one of American billionaire entrepreneur and Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s latest posts on the social media platform X. Normally, his mentions significantly pushed the memecoin’s price by double-digit percentages, but not this time.
Elon Musk’s Promised Dogecoin Moon Mission
Back in 2021, Musk tweeted about sending Dogecoin to the moon via SpaceX. The post gained a lot of attention on Crypto Twitter (CT), especially at the height of the memecoin mania. However, many took it as a joke because it coincided with April Fools’ Day.
Nonetheless, the post in question sent DOGE skyrocketing by over 30% in a single day. The token pulled back days later, but it would prove to be the catalyst for a series of all-time highs (ATHs) as Musk doubled down on his statement. The trend culminated in a $0.73 peak, when he claimed “cryptocurrency is promising,” a record that still stands as Dogecoin’s highest value to date.
The billionaire entrepreneur confirmed during a Saturday Night Live episode in May of that same year that he would launch a SpaceX mission to the moon entirely funded with Dogecoin. He called it the “DOGE-1 Mission to the Moon.”
The subject became a recurring theme in some of Musk’s succeeding posts. It eventually waned, though, when the plan missed the 2022 deadline, and the long crypto winter struck the price of DOGE down.
An Actual Attempt to Launch DOGE to the Moon
Astrobiotic Technology’s DHL MoonBox attempted to carry out its own Dogecoin community-funded moon mission as early as December 2023. The project went ahead in January 2024, but a propulsion failure extinguished any hope that the lander would ever reach its target.
To prevent it from becoming space debris, mission control steered the lander back toward the Earth’s atmosphere, where it incinerated above the Pacific Ocean.
SpaceX’s Moon Mission Revival
On Tuesday, the official account of Tesla Owners Silicon Valley reposted Musk’s five-year-old tweet about SpaceX sending a “literal Dogecoin on the literal moon.” It captioned the post with “when” and tagged the entrepreneur in it.
Musk replied, “Maybe next year.”
However, DOGE appeared passive this time around to the billionaire’s attempt to build hype around the matter, as it remained subdued within the $0.10 range. The excitement fizzled against the broader crypto market sentiment, which continued to drop to the “Extreme Fear” level on early Wednesday.
Musk’s promises to the Dogecoin community may have run their course, as they never materialized into meaningful executions. One of them was his promise of accepting the token beyond car accessories to payment for Tesla EVs, which he left unfulfilled to the present.
After that, Musk turned a meme called “Department of Government Efficiency” or “D.O.G.E.” into an actual agency during US President Donald Trump’s first few months at the White House in his current term. But then again, it never translated into significant momentum for the memecoin beyond a short-term price spike, and the tension between the Tesla CEO and the country’s leader ultimately hindered the agency’s goals.
