Today, I’ll speculate on a relatively marginal, but perhaps effective, way to make a Martian invasion interesting.
Load it on a rocket, drive for 6 months at 60,000 kilometers per hour, and then drop gold bars on Mars.
Just as Satoshi Nakamoto created artificial digital scarcity in Bitcoin, which proved to be a good thing, this is the perfect way to create artificial physical scarcity in gold.
Let’s say if this is my job, I think it will make me excited about the future.
It will also be useful for geopolitics and economic geography. I’m enough.
Let’s dig deeper.
The embodiment of this monster.
mathematics
The missile and payload
There are only about 244,000 metric tons of gold on Earth.
According to SpaceX, once Starship is operational, it will be able to transport a 100-ton payload to Mars.
Yes.
What’s the one thing we’d care most about if it were transported to Mars?
Why gold? naturally.
Currently, the value of one ton is $55 million.
So, 100 tons would be worth $5.5 billion.
The cost of building the spacecraft and launching it into orbit is $100 million. Despite Musk’s blatant promises of, let’s say $500 million for a round trip to Mars.
(Maybe after we have a decent Martian colony home a century from now, we can make a round trip to the spacecraft.)
The ROI here makes sense.
Spend $500 million to move $5.5 billion.
not bad.
The economics of a gold supply shock
2440 will be released later, and there will be no gold on Earth.
The only way to get gold is to colonize Mars.
Hey, Elon got you interested in the Martian invasion.
Before I continue, who will buy this gold for SpaceX to send to Mars?
I don’t have such money.
I see a hand.
United States government? Yes? How much will you give us?
no? Are you broke too?
Ah…what about you, Bitcoin users?
We need close to $20 trillion in case no one is counting or googling.
With such a scheme, we expect the price of gold to jump significantly with every 100 tons purchased and dropped on Mars.
(I hope SpaceX doesn’t lose our gold somewhere in outer space.)
Assume they won’t.
We have to stay positive and optimistic here.)
Know that the supply shock could push the price to $200 trillion for all this gold by the time we’re done.
“Wait, could this pay off all the US debt, the Japanese debt, all the debt?!”
“Well, I guess so. But the gold is going to Mars, so how do you pay off the debt?”
Economist: “I assume you look at how each country’s gold increases in value over time so that, even if just a little, it can pay off its debt burden.”
Mathematician: “It means that dGold/dtime is a positive function of time, although it is not linear but exponential.”
For example, the United States has about 3,400 tons of gold at Fort Knox.
And $35 trillion in debt.
At 50x (assumed average ~ half the maximum value), the value over the dumping period + high supply shock price, the value of that gold would be:
3400 * 50 * 55 million dollars = 9.3 trillion dollars.
It’s not enough?
Social consequences
The first missile alone might be enough to make humans behave completely differently toward gold.
So, ditch the math.
The price of gold will skyrocket, and people will start hoarding it like a vice on steroids.
The price will be 10x.
I swear it.
Just like that!
(Satisfied evil laugh).
I’m a devious genius.
I only 10xd went for almost free.
Because value is, above all, a psychological phenomenon.
We’ve all seen millions of people suddenly appreciate something that never existed before – a Trump coin – as their children depended on it.
People need games of value to keep moving forward. They need new things to appreciate them greatly.
They will appreciate their gold greatly. For fear of being sent to Mars.
They will say: “We went poor.”
(BTW, wouldn’t it become radioactive or something? I read that Mars has a very thin atmosphere so it gets bombarded by a lot of cosmic rays).
Men would start hiding gold underground in their basements, and anyone who didn’t have a gun would go and buy one.
Women with necklaces, earrings and gold wedding rings will start to strut more like minor celebrities.
Many people in the prime of their lives will start getting married. It’s a brave thing these days, getting married.
Increasing the number of gold admirers will make people as brave as the Spanish conquistador.
Meanwhile, OG Gold fans will start chanting “Nooo” on social media.
And the inner goldbug in all of us will be uncomfortable.
However, it is better than Elon’s plan.
Barron Trump doesn’t seem keen either.
I even see Michael Saylor recording.
It’s like a whole new “Me Too” movement. No offense.
While sending a human to Mars would be fun (until he dies or something goes horribly wrong).
Watch this heartbreaking movie to see the possible errors), it seems completely useless.
With no return on investment.
Elon Musk may be a genius, but he hasn’t thought enough about how to get humans interested in Mars.
My idea works better.
Think seriously about it.
Use ChatGPT, Apple’s Vision Pro, Frontier Supercomputer, or whatever helps you visualize this idea correctly.
Send gold to Mars first.
In about 50 years, humans will follow.
Because they want damn gold.
No person may die. Cogones.
Political consequences
If President Donald Trump does that, he swears the war in Ukraine will end.
Cuz Putin will be shocked and challenged beyond words.
If you think Putin fears Trump now, let Trump do it.
He once said that no one can stop Bitcoin.
He will say no one can stop Trump.
At the same time, many people will start to love Trump because of his superior presidential genius, but they will also hate him for having such great qualities.
Seriously, it would be incredible.
Geoeconomics and Bitcoin
Put gold on Mars and the price of Bitcoin will go up, it will go up, it will go up uuuuuup.
(listen to music)
How about that.
Bitcoin will push to send more gold to Mars.
Bitcoiners gold beef.
Some even fear that governments will return to the gold standard if Bitcoin fails.
Now, not anymore.
You’ll be stuck with Bitcoin, baby.
Oh no.
Peter Schiff might have tears in his eyes.
He will have to settle for digital gold, also known as…
***
Geographic economies will also be affected.
South Africa will become very important again. Because it contains huge gold deposits that are still waiting to be discovered.
Since we cannot use slaves or poor quality labor in our scheme to dump gold on Mars, we will have to use Elon Optimus robots. Powered by nuclear power plants in South Africa.
(The first time I might not hate these robots. They would actually have a real benefit.)
Hey, Russia also has huge gold deposits and is a major gold producer.
Yes, instead of accepting defeat like Brezhnev in 1969, Putin will ensure that Russian gold is sent to Mars and that a robot plants a Russian flag on it.
(BTW to avoid spreading it all over the surface of Mars, it might be helpful to melt the gold and combine it into one giant bubble.
Mars rovers will have a lot of work to do.
Sounds like a fun game 
that you can play from the ground, right?
Forget Diablo, that’s the cake.)
Whoever has the gold will try to keep it, not send it to Mars. Spending $500 million isn’t cheap, and putting gold bullion in the cargo increases the cost.
Also, why spend $500 million when you can charge 10 times that for someone who wants to send gold to Mars?
There would be an interesting tension between sending gold to Mars and keeping it here.
And then the negotiations $$$$.
I see the lawyers smiling.
But as I said, he won’t stay on Mars forever. It would simply be next door.
End Note – Intrinsic value of gold
Gold is used to do all of the following things, other than to speculate on its monetary value or asset value (Source – Wikipedia):
1. Gold can be hammered to form a semi-transparent layer a few atoms thick, and is useful as an infrared shield in heat-resistant suit visors and in spacesuit sun visors.
2. Gold is a good conductor of heat and is therefore used as a heat dissipation material.
3. Gold is a good conductor of electricity, and because it is also a good conductor (and thus dissipator) of heat and does not react with oxygen, it is commonly used to coat most microprocessor chips.
4. Gold is also used to make corrosion-resistant electrical conductors in computers and electrical appliances. Each mobile phone contains about 50 mg of gold, and with billions of phones shipped each year, several billion dollars are spent each year.
(So, if we got rid of gold on Mars, smartphones would become more expensive.)
Oh.
Yes, you will be hated
I? I wasn’t even in the room.
Note: At 50 mg per smartphone, 100 tons are disposed of = 500 billion smartphones that cannot be manufactured!)
5. Gold is used in some medications that treat rheumatoid arthritis. This means gold sodium thiomalate and auranofin
6. Gold is used to make cranberry glass.
7. Gold is used in small quantities as a food additive in some foods (as it passes through the body unchanged).
8. Gold plays an essential role in the operation of the scanning electron microscope.
