Year: 2025

In a move that has traditional economists reaching for their sick bags and jabbing the flight attendant button, Emirates airline has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (whatever that means) with Crypto.com. The plan is to integrate crypto into all their payment systems sometime next year as part of a broader mission in the UAE to go full degen.

And in a glorious follow-up, they also unveiled their new flagship route: a non-stop service to the literal goddamn Moon.

The announcement came from Emirates Chairman and CEO, Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum, who apparently spent a long weekend mainlining crypto Twitter and binge-watching videos titled “BITCOIN TO $1,000,000?! (NOT CLICKBAIT).”

“For too long, we have been shackled by the terrestrial limitations of Earth and the inflationary chains of central banking,” declared Sheikh Ahmed, wearing a newly acquired laser-eyed profile picture on the company’s official press release. “Our customers don’t just want to go to London or New York. They want to go to Da Moon. We are simply meeting market demand. FUD is not in our vocabulary.”

The new lunar service, designated Flight EK2025, will operate with a specially modified Airbus A380 retrofitted with “an ungodly number of JATO rockets” and a reinforced fuselage to “punch through the atmosphere like a green candle through a resistance level.”

Tickets for the inaugural flight, priced at a firm 0.69420 BTC, sold out in under three minutes. The booking process reportedly crashed the Emirates website, forcing aspiring astronauts to mint their boarding passes as NFTs on the Ethereum blockchain, paying an additional $4,000 in gas fees. No one seemed to mind.

The in-flight experience is also getting a HODLer-friendly overhaul:

• First Class Suites will be replaced with “Diamond Hand Lounges”. Attendants will strap passengers into racing chairs so they can only watch live-streaming charts of their favorite shitcoins.
• The famous Onboard Bar will now serve only lukewarm Tang and instant ramen noodles, rebranded as “Tendie-Packs.”
• In-flight entertainment will consist of a 14-hour loop of Michael Saylor interviews and Elon Musk’s greatest tweet-storms.

Emirates has updated the pre-flight safety demonstration accordingly. An excerpt reads: “In the unlikely event of a market crash, oxygen masks will not drop from the ceiling. We do not believe in panic selling. Please assume the brace position and HODL. You can use your seat cushion as a flotation device, but it will not protect you from liquidation.”

Wall Street analysts are, predictably, baffled.

“This is a logistical nightmare and a fiduciary black hole,” muttered Julie Roobers, a senior analyst at Goldman Sachs. “An A380 cannot achieve escape velocity. Its financial viability is dependent on an asset class whose value is determined by memes and vibes. It makes no sense.”

We found one of the first ticket holders, a 22-year-old who goes by the handle @CryptoChad69, celebrating outside a Starbucks.

“I sold my mom’s 2014 Honda Civic for this ticket and I have zero regrets!” he screamed, holding up his phone to show a JPEG of a boarding pass. “While the paper hands are stuck in traffic, I’ll be sipping Tang on the lunar surface. See you later, wagecucks! To the actual moon!”

The destination itself will feature the first-ever “Emirates Lunar Lounge,” a large, inflatable tent with a sign that says “Lounge” and a flagpole flying a Dogecoin flag. Upon arrival, passengers will be given a complimentary commemorative rock.

When asked if the airline was concerned about the extreme volatility of accepting Bitcoin, a spokesperson simply replied, “We like the volatility,” before putting on a pair of sunglasses and walking away as an explosion sound effect played from a nearby speaker.

Thanks for reading, if that didn’t feel like an entire bucket full of cringe, then you’ll probably love: If You Can Read This, You Might Have Brain Rot