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Introduction
Humans are on the brink of extending into outer space, and blockchains and cryptocurrencies are a necessary step in the advancement of this goal. With plenty of reasons to expand (resources, an overcrowded planet, and pure curiosity), the "how" of this endeavor is beginning to take place. Space X is launching rockets, culture and politics are facilitating a transition, and a global conversation about a space frontier is looming. Blockchains will play a role in this transition in ways not yet understood, but using examples from Earth's past, it is possible to hazard a guess as to how that might look.
Body
During the expansion into North America and early colonial history of the United States, plenty of local currencies were created and used to distribute and exchange value. At present, there are many utility tokens being generated at present for all sorts of new features of the Web3. As these protocols solidify and humans begin to migrate into space, protocols will develop for safe space travel and effective resource distribution will be tokenized as well and will become as necessary a feature of space life as physical resources like water and food. Likely it will be these protocols that determine the production, distribution, and recycling of physical resources in space. A meaningful economy extracting resources from solar bodies like asteroids and moons will develop, and Earth itself will become the new point of centralization for a new space economy.
The decentralize frontier will continue, of course, as new governments/governing protocols (possibly DAOs) organize the infrastructure of these habitats and colonies that will need to interact with Earth. To transmit and exchange value, ship metals, and whatever else is found out there, humanity will need to build a web infrastructure between the different habitats and transmit cryptocurrencies via lasers. This is where the power of cryptocurrencies and blockchains can be leveraged; transmitting encrypted money at the speed of light via lasers is much more effective than shipping cash, and this will mean every bit of difference when building structures out in space. It will allow corporations (or whatever corporations become) to pay their workers, it will allow governments (or DOAs) to distribute funds for public works projects, and it will allow humanity to bud and eventually bloom as we travel out in space.