Block72

At Block72 we believe that investing into and developing talent is one of the key factors when it comes to creating a successful working product. Team motivation, curiosity and unity are the driving forces behind brands and companies that are changing our world for the better on the daily basis. As a consulting firm that specializes in innovative blockchain technologies, we more than ever want to emphasize the importance of humanizing our industry and shining a light on the brilliant minds behind it all.

With that said, before introducing Block72 and familiarizing our readers with our services, mission and aspirations, we would like to briefly introduce to you our 6 Partners who are sleeplessly working on improving our industry.

Block72 had a very organic start. It was founded by the core team of GBIC (Global Blockchain Innovative Capital), a global multi-strategy crypto fund — Mike Chen, Richard Lee, Kevin Chen, Sinhae Lee, Yaxi Zhu and Terence Che. Mike, Terence and Richard were classmates at Columbia University, who got interested in the blockchain industry while still in school. Being in the middle of NYC, surrounded by an extremely fast-paced environment and bustling innovation, they got introduced to blockchain technologies through cryptocurrency trading in 2016. While many were looking into learning about blockchain and cryptocurrencies as a hobby, our Partners saw something groundbreaking in these technologies and took a more serious approach by creating GBIC, which was initially founded as an Arbitrage Fund and later took on a more investment-heavy approach.

As GBIC industry reputation became more and more established due to successful investments and constant network building, the demand for their services started growing rapidly, which led to a need in team increase. After opening up the first office in NYC in 2017, the Partners saw an opportunity to start building up their network in China. At that time, Kevin and Yaxi had already built extensive networks there, and coming from different backgrounds and with years of professional experience in management and traditional consulting, they were the perfect candidates to take on Partner roles which soon led to the opening of GBIC’s second office, located in Shanghai.

Soon after, GBIC got its another strong Partner addition — Sinhae Lee. Sinhae is an MBA graduate from Stanford with years of work experience in Silicon Valley. Similarly to Mike, Richard and Terence, she also got exposed to the blockchain world through school and by being submerged into an innovative environment in San Francisco..and the rest is history. Sinhae is a South Korean Native so shortly after Sinhae joined as an official Partner, we proudly opened our 3rd office in Seoul, South Korea.

How did we transition into Consulting?

What always differentiated GBIC from other Investment Funds in the industry is our passion for the projects we invested in and a more VC-like approach. To us this indicated that not only were we there to help worthy projects with investor relations, funding, and building a working product, but it was our duty to help them with brand awareness through assisting with Marketing, Public Relations and Team Development to ensure their post-ICO success. Once the word about our approach and the success rate of our clients got out to the industry, we started receiving an overwhelming amount of requests for marketing and public relations advising. At that point we already were over capacity and started becoming more and more selective with the projects that we chose to invest into, however we also saw a rapidly growing demand for our marketing services. After bouncing ideas off of our industry Partner, a highly regarded Blockchain Investment Fund — FBG Capital, we realized that their team was also looking into consulting opportunities due to a high demand in marketing and public relations services from their clients, so without wasting any time we decided to seize the opportunity by creating Block72 as a Joint Venture — the Consulting Arm of GBIC and FBG.

By the end of 2017, the core Partnership team for both GBIC and Block72 had been formed and by March of 2018 we exceeded 20 team members globally. Block72 started growing exponentially and only a few months after we hit a 20 team member mark — we doubled it. We are currently at more than 50 team members globally, with an addition of a new office in Beijing and we don’t plan on stopping. Our goal is to become the go-to blockchain consulting agency in the World and we are more than ever sure that because of our 24/7 approach, enthusiasm and dedication to our clients, we are rapidly approaching that target.

We want to thank our partners, clients and industry friends for supporting our initiatives and developing the infrastructure for this incredible industry with us.