SpaceX has tapped a crypto native for its first interplanetary crew: Chun Wang, best known in blockchain circles as a co‑founder of major Bitcoin mining pool F2Pool.
SpaceX’s announcement names Wang as a crew member on Starship’s first human interplanetary mission to Mars. The two‑year trip is billed as an expedition that will travel beyond the Earth‑Moon system, perform a flyby of the Red Planet, and then return to Earth. Before that deep‑space outing, Wang will join Dennis and Akiko Tito on a week‑long commercial circumlunar Starship mission that is planned to fly within 200 km of the Moon’s surface — a test designed to push Starship’s systems for long‑duration, deep‑space flights.
Wang’s space résumé already includes Fram2, the privately funded polar flight he proposed in 2023 and later commanded — the first crewed mission to fly over Earth’s poles. He holds Maltese citizenship.
Crypto pedigree
Wang co‑founded F2Pool, once the world’s largest Bitcoin mining pool and today still one of the dominant operators. Mining pools let individual miners combine computing power to increase their chances of earning block rewards. According to MiningPoolStats, F2Pool currently controls about 111.35 exahashes per second (EH/s) — roughly 10.2% of Bitcoin’s total hashrate — ranking third behind Foundry (303.84 EH/s) and AntPool (183 EH/s).
Wang has also branched into proof‑of‑stake infrastructure: he founded Stakefish, a non‑custodial validator service that lets users stake across multiple blockchains including Ethereum.
SpaceX’s Bitcoin stash
The crypto connection deepens on the corporate side. In its S‑1 registration filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission ahead of a planned June 12 IPO, SpaceX disclosed holding 18,712 BTC as of March 31. At recent prices that stack is worth roughly $1.45 billion, and the filing shows a cost basis of about $35,320 per Bitcoin — implying a substantial unrealized gain given Bitcoin’s current trading level (around $77,300).
Why it matters
A high‑profile figure rooted in both Bitcoin mining and staking infrastructure joining SpaceX’s crew list is symbolic for the industry: crypto builders are visibly moving from Earthbound infrastructure to a seat on humanity’s next frontier. Meanwhile, SpaceX’s public Bitcoin holdings add another institutional data point for traders and treasuries watchers — a reminder that major private companies are holding meaningful crypto exposure heading into a potentially transformative period for both space and digital assets.
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