I. Starting with a Shovel: A Miner's Cosmic Journey
In a Tianjin alley in 1988, while other children were digging mud with shovels, 7-year-old Wangchun was simulating a "Moon landing" in the courtyard. This boy obsessed with Science Fiction World probably never imagined that thirty years later, he would spend $200 million on a "space ticket" and become the first private player to contract a polar orbit mission.
In Zhongguancun, Beijing, in 2011, 23-year-old Wangchun was experiencing the standard programmer's life: 996, instant noodles, and plaid shirts. But this graduate from Wudaokou Vocational Technical College suddenly threw "The Three-Body Problem" onto his keyboard one night, shouting at the ceiling of his rented room: "I want to give civilization to time, not time to civilization!"
This late-stage chuunibyou young man, in an era when Bitcoin was just a geek's toy, saved up for a mining machine with 5,000 yuan. At the time, no one thought that this otaku wearing a "To The Moon" t-shirt would later push the mining pool's computing power to the Moon - F2Pool's network hash rate once exceeded 30%, equivalent to mining 200 Bitcoins daily.
II. The Crypto Godfather's Wild Moves: From Leek to Banker's Fantastic Drift
When Bitcoin broke through $1,000 in 2013, Wangchun's wild move shocked the crypto world: while other mine owners were busy counting money, he pulled together a mining pool with Tsinghua genius Shenyu.
This project, later known as "Fish Pool", used a "computing power sharing + revenue distribution" model that directly made retail miners collectively ecstatic. Even more magical was that they developed "merged mining" technology, allowing mining machines to simultaneously produce multiple cryptocurrencies, almost like a perpetual motion machine in the crypto world.
But what truly deified Wangchun was the epic market surge in 2017. When Bitcoin hit $20,000, this usually non-posting reserved man suddenly shared mining farm photos on Twitter - thousands of mining machines arranged in a "π" shape on the Inner Mongolian grasslands, earning him the nickname "the man who writes pi with computing power".
Insiders revealed that F2Pool's daily net income then exceeded $3 million, and Wangchun's personal Bitcoin holdings might have exceeded tens of thousands.
However, the crypto godfather's wild moves didn't stop there. When domestic policies tightened in 2018, he directly moved his mining farm to Iceland, claiming to "practice carbon neutrality using geothermal energy". Even more incredibly, in 2023 he changed his nationality to Malta, claiming "to better observe the southern hemisphere's starry sky". This "join them if you can't beat them" survival wisdom was later summarized in the crypto world as "Wangchun's Law": when the sword of Damocles of regulation falls, true players have already built their Noah's Ark in space.
III. The Business Code Behind the $200 Million Ticket
In 2023, Musk received a mysterious email: "Heard you have space on the Dragon spacecraft?" The sender was Wangchun, who holds 100,000 Bitcoins. This $200 million "taxi to space" transaction seems like a rich man's whim but actually conceals a shrewd business calculation.
· From a technical perspective: Choosing a 90-degree polar orbit is like playing a "vertical roller coaster" 450 kilometers above ground. This orbit allows the spacecraft to cross the South and North Poles every 46 minutes and 40 seconds, breaking the Soviet Union's 60-year-old 65-degree orbit record and providing a god's-eye view of aurora phenomena. The 22 experiments carried by Wangchun's team, including growing mushrooms in microgravity and taking space X-ray images, are essentially stealing NASA's work.
· The commercial value is even more intriguing: By collaborating with SpaceX, Wangchun essentially obtained a ticket to the "space data bank". The onboard hyperspectral camera can real-time monitor Arctic ice cap melting and Antarctic krill population. These data are worth far more than $200 million to climate trading markets and deep-sea fishing companies.
· The most audacious is brand marketing: While other crypto giants were creating NFT animal parks, Wangchun directly etched his mining pool logo on the spacecraft's fairing. Live footage showed that when the Falcon 9 lifted off, the "F2Pool" text on its side was clearly visible in the firelight - possibly the most expensive startup ad in human history.
IV. A Hardcore Engineer's Ultimate Romance
· In the exposed training video, a detail made tech nerds emotional: Wangchun insisted on bringing a 1970s Casio F-91W watch to space. This $20 electronic watch was blacklisted by NASA for being used as a timing device by terrorists. Wangchun's explanation: "I want to prove cheap equipment can accomplish great things, just like mining Bitcoin with graphics cards back then."
· This geek spirit runs through the entire mission design: All 4 crew members are "wild scientists". The Norwegian photographer brought an IMAX camera, saying he wants to shoot a "more realistic black hole than Interstellar"; the German robotics expert stuffed a robotic arm in the spacecraft to perform space claw machine games; the Australian explorer was even more extreme, bringing Antarctic ice core samples to conduct a "Earth-Moon material comparison experiment".
Wangchun himself prepared a Bitcoin cold wallet and a laser-engraved private key board. He boldly declared in the livestream: "If the spacecraft explodes, these Bitcoins will be permanently destroyed, sending HODLers the most expensive red envelope in history."
V. Postscript: When the Cosmic Frontier Becomes a Financial Product
This 70s generation from a Tianjin alley completed a magical transformation from miner to astronaut in 14 years. Now in SpaceX's control room, Wangchun's workstation has a handwritten motto: "Before, I gave civilization to time; now, I give time to light-years."
Perhaps, as he wrote in the mission log: "The crypto industry taught me the most important thing: computing power can conquer everything - whether it's the SHA-256 algorithm or Earth's gravity." When the Dragon spacecraft pierced the sky at 27 times the speed of sound, the ground monitoring screen flashed a mysterious code: 0x1a2b3c4d... Netizens instantly erupted: "The boss is mining in space!"
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