How to fly to space for $1: Story of early Bitcoin investor Wang Chun

​SpaceX is preparing to launch a private orbital mission called Fram2 to study Earth’s polar regions. But few people know that the man leading the mission, entrepreneur Wang Chun, is one of the earliest investors in Bitcoin.

On March 31 at 9:46 p.m. ET, a Falcon 9 rocket will launch the Crew Dragon spacecraft into Earth’s orbit as part of SpaceX’s private space mission, Fram2.

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"Fram" is Norwegian for "Forward" and is a historical reference to the polar exploration vessel that helped scientists reach the Arctic and Antarctic over a century ago.

The Fram set sail from Bergen on July 2, 1893. Source: The National Museum of Norway.

According to the plan, the Fram2 mission will last about four days. The crew will reach an altitude of up to 450 km (48 km higher than the International Space Station) to observe Earth’s polar regions. Among other objectives, they will study rare atmospheric phenomena such as STEVE (Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement), which can only be seen from space. To enable this, the Crew Dragon spacecraft has been equipped with a glass dome providing a panoramic view of the planet.

The mission is unique in its own way. Despite over 60 years of human space exploration, no crewed spacecraft has ever flown over the North or South Poles.

The Fram2 crew includes four people from different countries: Janicke Mikkelsen (Norway), Eric Philips (Australia), Rabea Rögge (Germany), and Malta-based entrepreneur Wang Chun, who funded and is leading the mission. But who is he?

Who is Wang Chun?

Wang Chun is not a widely known figure in the Bitcoin world. Though he co-founded the popular mining pool F2Pool, he has always avoided the spotlight. It’s known that he began actively buying and mining Bitcoin as early as 2011, when BTC was worth just a few cents to a dollar.

In 2013, Wang Chun co-founded F2Pool — the first mining pool in China and one of the largest in the world. In 2018, he launched Stakefish, a validator for various crypto protocols.He rarely appeared in the media, and when he did, it was usually in connection with the mining industry. For example, in September 2023, an unknown user paid 19.8 BTC (around $510,000) in fees to send just 0.074 BTC. The transaction was processed by F2Pool, which initially received the entire reward. However, Wang Chun, speaking on behalf of the company, stated that he was willing to return the funds to the user.

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It was later revealed that the sender was the crypto company Paxos. The fee was the result of an internal system error. Once ownership was confirmed, Wang Chun kept his word and returned the funds.

Wang Chun spent most of his life in China, but in 2016, he moved to Thailand and later to South Korea. In August 2023, he obtained Maltese citizenship and has operated from there ever since.

The space mission

In August 2024, SpaceX — founded by entrepreneur Elon Musk — announced the Fram2 private crewed mission on the Crew Dragon spacecraft, led by Wang Chun.

For the past two and a half years, Wang Chun has been actively preparing for the flight, taking part in every stage — from the original idea and planning to defining the spacecraft’s trajectory and selecting the crew.

"This mission opens a new chapter in space exploration. I’ve read many science fiction books about the first missions to Mars, usually led by NASA or some fictional government. Few imagine that such missions could be privately led. But now I truly believe that one day we will reach Mars — and it may be a person or a company, not a country, who gets there first," Wang Chun said.

While his social media page on X used to be filled with travel photos and impressions from around the world, over the past month he has focused exclusively on sharing details about the mission’s preparations.

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Training, flight rehearsals, sleep schedule adjustments, and pre-flight quarantine — just a few of the things that have occupied Wang Chun recently. When asked in the comments whether he was nervous about the mission, he replied that the nerves were gone long ago — the last time he felt anxious was in May 2023, when he first presented Fram2 in Miami.

All thanks to Bitcoin

Wang Chun’s story isn’t just about a private space mission — it’s a testament to how Bitcoin can change the course of a person’s life. Thanks to early investments in digital gold, he gained not only financial freedom but the ability to pursue a long-standing dream: to go to space.

Of course, Wang Chun didn’t literally pay $1 for his journey. But that was the price of Bitcoin when he began investing — and that moment laid the foundation for a future in which such a dream could become reality. In the end, Fram2 became a symbol of how vision, belief in an idea, and persistence can open a path to space for someone who once simply believed in crypto.