A 17 year old built crypto’s first margin exchange in 4 days, lost $11 BILLION worth of Bitcoin and disappeared
His name was Zhou Tong
In 2010 he was a 16 year old Chinese teenager in Singapore who bought his first Bitcoin for $10
By 2011 he had taught himself to code and decided every existing exchange sucked
So he built his own in FOUR DAYS
He called it Bitcoinica. It wasn’t just another exchange at the time… It was the first crypto margin trading platform in history
Users could bet up to 50 BTC instantly on the price of Bitcoin going up or down
Back then long, short or leverage never existed in crypto until this kid built it
The platform exploded and within months Bitcoinica was doing $40 MILLION per month in volume, second only to Mt. Gox
Zhou personally cleared 2,000 BTC in his first two weeks. Worth $215 MILLION today
Then he had to take school exams
Running the second largest crypto exchange in the world didn’t fit with finals. So he sold the platform to a company called Wendon Group in late 2011
Wendon went all in. They brought in legendary developer Amir Taaki for security. They spent $1 MILLION buying the domain Bitcoin com to give it credibility
They got hacked 4 months later
In March 2012 the hot wallet was drained of 43,554 BTC. The hackers reset passwords on the exchange’s hosting provider Linode and walked in
No multisig existed yet. If you had the password, you had the keys
Two months later they got hit again for 18,000 BTC
In July they got hit a THIRD time for another 40,000 BTC plus $40,000 in cash
Total: 101,554 BTC gone. Over $11 BILLION at today’s prices evaporated from the second largest crypto exchange in the world in a single year
Roger Ver alone lost 24,000 BTC
Then it got weirder
On chain investigators tracked the stolen funds moving through Mt. Gox accounts
They observed coordination between Bitcoinica wallets and Mt. Gox mixing the trail
80 BTC was sent to a wallet belonging to Theymos Michael Marquardt, moderator of Bitcointalk the most influential forum in crypto
The “recovery effort” funds were moving through the same hands that controlled crypto’s main information venues
Theymos was later subpoenaed during the Silk Road and Mt. Gox investigations. The full picture was never resolved
Zhou Tong’s last public move was buying ONE Casascius coin
Casascius coins were physical gold coins minted in 2011, each containing a real Bitcoin private key embedded under a tamper proof hologram
Zhou bought one of THREE remaining 1,000 BTC ultra rare versions for 1,000 BTC
That single coin is worth over $100 MILLION today
Then he disappeared
For years the community speculated whether he was complicit, whether his partners stole the funds, whether he knew the whole time
He hinted at “dishonest partners and employees” in his final Bitcointalk post and never elaborated
All from a kid who couldn’t keep running it because he had finals
“Zhao Tonged” became slang in crypto for getting wiped out by an exchange you trusted
A teenager in Singapore built the future of crypto trading in 4 days, lost the equivalent of a small country’s GDP, walked away with the rarest single item in Bitcoin history, and was never heard from again
The first margin exchange. The first mega hack. The first OG to vanish without a trace
All from a kid who couldn’t keep running it because he had finals
