Bill Tai

Bill Tai has been funding startups as a VC since 1991, and is a leading figure in the Blockchain segment. He is Board Director (Strategy Chair) at Bitfury, and Board Chairman of Hut8, North America's largest publicly listed crypto mining operation. He is creator of the annual Blockchain Summit on Necker Island, holds the title "Yoda" at Airswap, and helped launch Australia's first ICO as Ambassador and Board Advisor to P2P Energy Company Power Ledger. His interest in cryptocurrency predates Bitcoin, starting in 2001 as a contributor to the creation of the currency in SecondLife. He lit up his first Bitcoin Miner in 2009. Originally trained as a chip designer, he joined LSI Logic, a seminal Silicon Valley startup formed by the CEO of Fairchild Semiconductor after earning a BSEE with Honors from University of Illinois. After an MBA at Harvard he was issued Badge #A001 during the formation of TSMC (NYSE:TSM), now among the 20 most valuable technology companies in the world. Currently he is co-founder Chairman of Treasure Data; Board Member of BitFury, Hut8, and Voxer and a lead seed investor in Canva, Color Genomics, Safety Culture, Tweetdeck/Twitter, Wish.com and Zoom Video. He was Founding Chairman & CEO of iAsiaWorks (IPO via Goldman Sachs & Morgan Stanley) and Founding Chairman of IPinfusion (Tokyo:4813) and is Founding Chairman of Treasure Data. He has served as Board Director of 8 publicly listed companies (AWRD EGHT HUT8 IAWK NPIX TMTA TUNE and IMGO) that grew from startups he funded at their formative stages. He serves on the World Economic Forum's Technology Pioneer Committee and is an Adjunct Professor of Innovation at Curtin University in Perth, Australia. He is co-founder of ACTAI Global a 501(c)3 dedicated to preserving the ocean and its related ecosystems.