From Hashrate to High‑Altitude: The Bitcoin OG Who Polar‑Orbited the Planet

On March 31 2025, Chun Wang – the co‑founder of the legendary Bitcoin mining pool f2pool – strapped into SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Resilience. As mission commander of Fram2, he led the first crewed spacecraft to fly a 90‑degree retrograde polar orbit, a trajectory that makes a trip to your local crypto conference look like a walk to the mailbox. The Falcon 9 lifted off from Kennedy Space Center and traced a path over both poles, a feat no human had ever pulled off; the previous record, set by the Soviet Vostok 6 in 1963, was a mere 65‑degree inclination.

In a Bitcoin Magazine interview, Wang mused about the view with the dry wit of a man who’s calculated the hash rate of the universe: “We’re flying so fast, how could we possibly get back down? The distance is under 500 km, but the velocity difference is what matters.” He then casually invoked Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle (Δx·Δp ≥ ℏ/2) to explain the orbital rendezvous, basically saying that trying to hit re-entry is like trying to time the crypto market—position and momentum are a package deal.

Wang’s crew was a proper degen squad of civilians: vehicle commander Jannicke Mikkelsen, a Norwegian filmmaker‑explorer; pilot Rabea Rogge, a German robotics researcher; and mission specialist Eric Philips, an Australian polar explorer. Their three‑and‑a‑half‑day flight wasn't a joyride; they performed 22 research experiments focused on polar Earth observation, all without the comfort of docking to the ISS—truly a cold wallet for humans.

For Wang, space is just the latest stop on a self‑declared quest to set foot in every ISO 3166 territory, a grind that would make any NFT collector’s travel diary look sparse. As of March 2026 he’s logged 1,153 flights – roughly 36 a year, or one for every major shitcoin that’s rug-pulled – and has visited 150 of the 249 territories, including recent chilly trips to Antarctica.

Born in 1982 in Tianjin, China, Wang’s wanderlust was sparked at age five when his grandfather brought home a world map. He got his first computer, a 486 SX, at 13, coded games and gravity sims, and later dropped out of university to hop between software jobs—the classic pre‑crypto developer origin story.

Bitcoin entered his life in May 2011 after a night‑long deep‑dive into the Bitcoin wiki, a rabbit hole deeper than the current bear market. He borrowed ¥‑$40,000 from his father, mined on a MacBook at a blistering 800 khash/s, then scaled up with GPUs from Zhongguancun. In the first two years he personally mined 7,700 BTC, netting about 2,700 BTC after power costs, and sold most in January 2013 at $11 each to repay the loan—a move that today would cause physical pain to any true holder.

In April 2013 Wang co‑founded f2pool with Mao Shihang (online as Discus Fish). Wang built the backend; Discus Fish ran operations. Launched on May 5, the pool quickly captured roughly one‑third of Bitcoin’s hashrate at its peak and has mined over 1.3 million BTC – more than 9% of all blocks ever produced, securing more value than some small nations hold in their treasuries.

During the heated 2017 block‑size wars, f2pool quietly defended Bitcoin’s Nakamoto consensus while others were yelling into the void. Wang later warned, “Proof‑of‑work is the constitution of Bitcoin. Please respect mining and the miners.” He credited miners with enabling pivotal upgrades like SegWit and the Lightning Network—the true infrastructure OGs.

When China cracked down on mining in 2021, Wang simply shifted operations offshore, a smooth exit that would make any regulatory arbitrage expert proud. After a 2017 chat with Vitalik Buterin, he had already launched stake.fish in 2018. The non‑custodial staking service grew into one of the largest validators on Ethereum, Polkadot, Solana and other networks, proving that diversification isn’t just for portfolios, but for crypto infrastructure too.

The next logical frontier was, obviously, space. Since 2023 Wang had been pitching a private polar‑orbit mission to SpaceX, funding the entire Fram2 flight by selling Bitcoin – no sponsors, no government backing, just pure, unadulterated Satoshi‑funded ambition. After eight months of California‑based training, the crew launched on April 1 2025, a date that thankfully wasn't a cosmic joke.

Wang described the ascent as “much smoother than I had anticipated,” noting only a brief G‑force spike before SECO. Zero‑g was first felt when a stuffed polar bear floated away, a mascot experiencing true weightlessness before any memecoin could. The crew suffered classic space motion sickness on day 1, but by day 2 the nausea vanished and they opened the cupola over Antarctica, noting “pure white, no human activity visible”—a stark contrast to the chaos of a live crypto chart.

The 22 experiments were a degen’s science fair, spanning the first human X‑ray in space, oyster‑mushroom