In a stunning revelation from the latest episode of the All-In podcast, investor and Social Capital founder Chamath Palihapitiya made a statement shedding light on a previously undisclosed business practice at SpaceX. According to Palihapitiya, the aerospace company leverages stablecoins—cryptocurrencies pegged to the value of fiat currencies—to sidestep the complications and costs associated with foreign exchange (FX) transactions.
SpaceX Secretly Embraces Crypto
Palihapitiya noted that “a lot of companies you would never think of” are using stablecoins for day-to-day operations. He highlighted SpaceX as one such example. “How do you think they collect payments from all the Starlink customers when they aggregate them in all of these long-tail countries?“ the Canadian-American venture capitalist remarked.
He explained that SpaceX doesn’t “want to necessarily take the FX risk, the foreign exchange risk,” and added, “they don’t want to deal with sending wires. So what they do is they’ll swap into stablecoin, send it back to the United States, and then swap back to US dollars. So it’s a very useful utility.”
Palihapitiya underscored the utility of stablecoins in cross-border transactions, asserting: “So number one is, I think we need to make those rails the standard rails in the United States. And what that does is it allows us to chip away at all of this decrepit infrastructure that the banks use to sort of slow down and tax a process that should never have been taxed.”
The remarks, which have not been confirmed or refuted by SpaceX or Elon Musk, were highlighted by popular X account Autism Capital, who shared a snippet of the discussion via X. Autism Capital commented:
“It means that SpaceX uses Stablecoins, a form of crypto that’s pegged 1:1 with the USD, to send money internationally because it’s instantaneous and far cheaper than using traditional banking rails. Chamath is explaining that Crypto has real use cases outside of grifts and scams.”
While Musk is widely recognized for his affinity for Dogecoin, SpaceX has not publicly announced any initiatives involving stablecoins. Nonetheless, Palihapitiya’s remarks suggest the company takes advantage of the crypto’s rapid settlement times and low fees to manage Starlink’s global customer payments more efficiently.
Musk’s other major enterprise, Tesla, still holds 11,509 BTC. In late October, Tesla transferred its entire Bitcoin balance to seven newly generated wallets, marking the first movement of these assets in more than two years. Initially, this spurred concerns of possible liquidation; however, on-chain analytics firm Arkham Intelligence identified these transfers as internal wallet rotations, indicating no intent to sell.
At press time, BTC traded at $95,694.
