South Korean Quarter Billion Dollar Crypto Fund

Hashed, Korea's largest blockchain fund and accelerator of the ICON Foundation is uniquely shaping the Korean blockchain industry by finding and nurturing nascent projects.

In an exclusive interview with CryptoSlate, Chief Business Officer, Alex Shin provides his insight into the dynamics, mission, and future of the $250 million digital asset fund.

Founded 18 months ago, Hashed gained international recognition as the fund that brought ICON, a community-focused decentralized network to market - raising nearly 150,000 ETH in its ICO. Since inception, the growth of Hashed went from a mere $600k fund pooled together by only partner investments to almost a quarter billion dollar crypto asset fund- the largest holder of ICON and EOS in Korea.

Starting out as the Blockchain Partners Fund, Hashed has maintained a small team of 12 members- each with entrepreneurial or engineering backgrounds and an idealistic view on blockchain.

The quarter billion dollar crypto fund has a distinct method for company structure, investment decisions, and stake - putting 100% of partners' net worth into the fund and keeping assets only in the tokens invested.

"I think that if you have 99.99% of your net worth into a fund with your friends, you know you're motivated to learn more We structured ourselves as a pure play crypto fund, which means we don't have any bitcoins, we don't have any litecoins, we don't have any eth, we don't even have any fiat. We hold everything in tokens that we invest in."

Hashed did not want to be a typical asset fund and refrained from hiring experts in fund management or venture capitalism to allow space for creative investment decisions.

"What's also unique about us from any other fund out there is we're not really fund managers, we're not really money guys, and I think that allows us to take risks that other hedge funds can't do We could have brought on some fancy, expensive VC guys but our idea was it's not like they know this any better than we do, and we didn't want to get tied down with traditional ideas, which is also why we didn't take any outside money."

"No one has invested in Vietnam except for us We invest in Africa - Nigeria, Kenya - not because we think it'll make us money but because I want to be the first fund to bring a bunch of Africans to Korea to talk about blockchain and the implications it has in Kenya, and maybe the Korean audience will learn something and stop buying Ripple."

Shin further elaborated on the fund's interest to invest in projects based in other Asian countries such as Singapore and China, where blockchain is well into its growth stage of advanced development.