Bitcoinica (2011), operated by Zhou Tong, was Bitcoin’s fir…

Bitcoinica (2011), operated by Zhou Tong, was Bitcoin’s first bucketshop, enabling leveraged trading without asset ownership. Collapsed in 2012 after hacks.
Just-Dice (2013), run by pseudonymous “dooglus,” pioneered Bitcoin casino staking: users pooled funds to earn a profit share from games.
Butterfly Labs shipped the first commercial FPGA miners (2012), like the Single FPGA Miner, bridging GPU and ASIC eras.