From $700,000 to $4 Billion: How South Korea's Top Crypto VC Was Forged
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From $700,000 to $4 Billion: How South Korea's Top Crypto VC Was Forged
Hashed: Self-made, bottom-up, savage growth.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsHave you heard of Hashed?
In the world of crypto, it may not be as prominent in VC circles as a16z or Paradigm, but when it comes to growth, few can rival it.
Founded in 2017 by four engineers from Korea who pooled together $700,000 for crypto investments, Hashed has, over five years and through more than 150 investments, grown its assets under management to over $4 billion—all without any external limited partners (LPs).
Compared to well-capitalized VCs like a16z or Paradigm, Hashed is truly a self-made, bottom-up, and aggressively growing firm.
How did they achieve such rapid growth? How did Hashed go from $700,000 to $4 billion in just five years?
This article is adapted from The Block’s podcast interview “The Scoop,” featuring Baek Kim, Partner at Hashed, discussing how Hashed is shaping the future of crypto gaming. Translated and compiled by TechFlow volunteers.
TL;DR
1. Lately, capital has been moving across borders in search of better environments. Hashed chooses to go where great founders emerge—such as Southeast Asia and San Francisco—and has observed significant grassroots talent development.
2. Hashed has two major investment themes: decentralized stablecoins and gaming/metaverse. After investing in Axie Infinity, they began exploring how crypto technology could reshape markets in Southeast Asia and other emerging regions, transforming lives. They saw an intrinsic vision in how the metaverse and gaming could solve real problems.
3. The first game developed by the Asian metaverse studio acquired by Hashed is "The League of Kingdoms," launched on Terra and already backed by institutions like Sequoia Capital. Kim believes that fun in games is critically important but currently under-discussed—only genuine enjoyment can create a lasting positive feedback loop.
4. Kim sees today's Hashed as perhaps an evolved form of VC—one that functions like its own DAO. Operating without LPs represents a form of governance and portfolio indexing, enabling them to focus solely on what benefits long-term growth.
5. For sustainable game development, Kim emphasizes content quality—the unique opportunity to build original IPs. As seen with Axie and others, companies can grow from nothing, without distribution channels, purely through community support.
6. Kim constantly thinks about creating economic models that incentivize users to engage with certain accounts or identities. Builders must deeply care about identity design and incentives, and innovate around user behavior—solving this also addresses privacy concerns.
7. Regarding bridges, Kim argues that only when each “city” (blockchain ecosystem) becomes attractive enough will builders construct highways (bridges) between them, due to high demand for cross-chain movement. Current bridge experiences are extremely limited, focusing mostly on asset verification rather than actual usability.
8. Token modeling and governance are key areas Hashed explores. Many new products simply copy existing token models. Kim hopes to develop intuitive, easy-to-understand models so users can focus on real enjoyment and deeper immersion in games and the metaverse.
9. How do we bring the metaverse into daily life? Kim believes event-driven experiences—like attending VR concerts or visiting digital galleries—are crucial. Seamless switching between different metaverses and real life is what matters most. Using this economy as another form of economic activity or social income, Kim sees Web3 as a foundational tool.
10. On why invest in crypto gaming, Kim says the largest digital economies are clearly gaming and esports—the biggest and fastest-growing sectors—which could become a mass-adoption crypto market. Teams like Axie and Sandbox, who genuinely focus on building games and IP instead of just profiting from them, are particularly impressive.
11. Kim admits their biggest mistake was being too conservative in Layer1 investments. Now, he is actively allocating funds and participating across various Layer1 ecosystems to support early-stage founders building on these new chains.
12. Kim is actively collaborating with the South Korean government and anticipates new leadership unveiling concrete plans. Since 2018, Korea had the potential to become the next crypto hub, but was hindered by negative government sentiment. Kim continues pushing to integrate crypto innovations into mainstream industries, believing the crypto wave is unstoppable.
Full Transcript:
Frank: I'm Frank, News Director at The Block. Thanks for tuning in. Today we have a guest, Kim, partner at Hashed. Although we met recently at our New York office, I've invited him onto the show to give me a proper spotlight moment. Great to have you here—I think you guys won some kind of innovation award recently. Honestly, I believe you're one of the best venture firms out there. It's incredible how you pulled this off.
Kim: Thank you, Frank. Maybe it's because we were among the few VCs that invested in Web3 early on.
Frank: From what I know, you primarily operate in Asia, but your headquarters is in California. What does your typical workday look like? Are you constantly traveling? We've had many VCs on the show lately, but topics vary widely—some talk metaverse, others NFTs or different Layer1s. Maybe today we’ll get a taste of something uniquely Eastern.
Kim: Yeah, we’ve been investing in this space for five years now, and travel is constant. We back over 100 founders—about 65% based in Asia, the rest mainly in the U.S. We strive to embed ourselves locally, walking alongside founders from zero to one, so we truly understand local markets. This helps us guide them on target audiences and which Web3 business models can succeed regionally.
Kim: Recently, capital has been crossing borders—some flowing from Asia to the West, or to jurisdictions like Puerto Rico. But we’re doing the opposite: we go where founders emerge. We believe they’ll come from places like Southeast Asia and San Francisco. We’ve expanded our team in Bangalore, India—we now have four people there, three in Singapore, most of the team in Korea, and others in the U.S. We see tremendous grassroots talent rising. I love it—many lack formal credentials or backing from big institutions or VCs, yet they become founders. There’s real vitality here.
Frank: I don’t think it’s wrong for capital to go to Puerto Rico—it might even be my next move, haha. Tell me more about your scale and scope. You mentioned over 100 projects invested in. How do you approach investing, and how broad is your reach?
Kim: Our structure is actually quite unique. Five years ago, we asked ourselves: Why do VC? How should we build a portfolio? All four founding partners came from software engineering and computer science backgrounds. We simply wanted to help the founders we believed in avoid getting lost in Web3.
Honestly, starting anything with crypto in 2016–2017 was terrifying—you couldn’t tell who was legitimate and who was fraudulent. So helping founders launch was critical. Luckily, we knew two strong Web2 founders.
Our first investment was Terra Money in 2017. We helped shape their project design and fundraising. Today, they’ve become one of the largest decentralized stablecoins.
Kim: We have two main investment pillars: decentralized stablecoins and gaming/metaverse. Our first gaming investment was Axie Infinity in 2018. We were their first advisor. We met them in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, trying to understand how crypto could make life easier in Southeast Asia and emerging markets, and how it could change lifestyles. This was before SLP and Play-to-Earn economics emerged, but from then on, we truly saw the inner vision of how metaverse and gaming could solve problems.
So quickly, as you noted, we’ve invested in over 100 founders globally. Without any LPs, our capital has grown to over $4 billion in crypto assets. We still own 100% of the fund.
Now we fully control liquidity to support our founders—whether running governance or delivering the best experience for retail users. We’ve acquired an Asian game studio—a metaverse studio—that’s now our subsidiary.
Our team now numbers around 80, mostly engineers and designers building games atop public blockchains like Terra, Solana, Polygon, and Ethereum. Their first game, 'The League of Kingdoms,' is one of the fastest-growing games. They’ve just raised funding from a16z Crypto and Sequoia Capital. This is the first game launched on Terra and the first built with funding from top U.S. gaming funds. We’re building a positive feedback loop so this game becomes the first to offer both real fun and liquidity governance—something sustainable. I believe fun in games is incredibly important and engaging, but it’s under-discussed today. Only genuine fun creates lasting positive cycles.
Frank: Let’s reflect: from $700,000 to $4 billion. While you’re not the only VC achieving high growth, that scale is still astonishing—especially when I think of funds introduced to me in 2016–2017 that are still only worth a few million today. Your growth is mind-blowing. I agree with your point about positive feedback loops supporting the market. Everyone’s worried about bear markets now, but you’re reinvesting profits from large funds back into the ecosystem. That’s a long-term strategy that supports sustained market stability.
Kim: Exactly. Sometimes we think we represent an evolution of VC—like becoming our own DAO. By operating without LPs, we practice a form of governance and act as an index of our portfolio assets. This comes with responsibility, but allows us to focus entirely on what drives long-term growth. For example, our decision not to dump all our Terra LUNA tokens—even when they dropped to cents during past bear markets—reflected our belief in shared growth. We kept running validators and building the crypto future.
Frank: Your team now has 80 people—engineers, designers, community managers. How did you enter crypto? You mentioned no prior entrepreneurial background, yet now you’re investing in games. How did you build this and make it successful enough for Sequoia and a16z to come knocking?
Kim: We feel lucky. We’re all founders and builders at heart—this was our first investment. We’re proud to have worked with the right founders in the right place at the right time.
We realized the industry has too many gaps. We didn’t want to just sit as ambassadors waiting for founders to fix things—we wanted to do more, to build products ourselves. Our fund has engineers—most work on internal systems, trading platforms, or accounting tools. But we thought: if we have engineers inside, why not do even more? Then we started thinking about career paths for these engineers joining a fund. As former engineers ourselves, we know smart engineers thrive together, not alone—they can tackle diverse, exciting projects.
Kim: Sustainability is crucial in crypto because of boom-and-bust cycles. In bear markets, activity vanishes; in bull markets, excitement returns. But as a fund that also runs a studio, we aim to keep building and adding value even in downturns.
We believe a metaverse-style star studio is the ideal structure—one that enables long-term vision independent of our investment vehicles. So our studio has its own CEO, business development, community, engineers, and designers. They’ve hired methodically, growing to 80 people—now highly sustainable.
Frank: Precisely. When we talk crypto gaming, one thing often comes up: game lifecycle. You have incentives drawing people in, but they’re not always lasting, right? We’ve seen this with Axie and others. How do you create lasting engagement?
Kim: It really depends on game content. I think the current growth of crypto and Web3 offers a unique generational opportunity—to successfully create original IPs. Looking back at history’s greatest stories, they always had original content. There are always Disney-like imitators, but none lead in a new category. This is fresh intellectual property. This is what we saw with Axie and others—they started from nothing, no distribution channels, yet grew from community. That’s exactly what we, as investors and builders, seek.
After this opportunity arises, we can think about what sustains community engagement. What happens to NFT communities when supply floods, unsupported by utility or new content? This is what we explore—and what pushes our founders to care about building sustainable games or NFT communities.
Frank: How much time do you spend playing 'The League of Kingdoms'? Do you play it a lot?
Kim: Not much, actually. And that’s interesting—I can hang out on Discord and still feel part of the game. That’s unique to crypto games. Even with Axie, as early investors, we were part of its journey. Personally, I’m a passionate gamer, but I find more joy discussing my Axies and the game in community spaces than actually playing. To me, the next step is figuring out how to maintain our position in the industry through community content.
Frank: That’s fascinating. Clearly, we’ve discussed some of the games your studio builds. Beyond that, what other trends—like Web3 or metaverse—are shaping VC, and where are you placing your bets?
Kim: As you said, the metaverse vision is a major focus. The other side is related infrastructure—Web3 infrastructure, especially around identity, privacy, and scalability.
I care about identity because, as an APM for certain projects or protocols, my IP address might leak. But it goes deeper: sometimes users use multiple wallets for the same protocol or different strategies—say on dYdX. You might have different accounts managing different leverage or risk models. When those accounts go inactive, how do you know if they truly left, or just switched wallets? Or consolidated into one strategist wallet? That’s an intriguing question.
I think this hinders builders from truly understanding their users. One idea I keep exploring is creating an economic model that incentivizes action within specific accounts or identities. As builders, we must deeply care about these identities, study incentives, and design new features around user behavior. Solving this would finally clarify what privacy means in crypto.
For the past 45 years, there’s been endless debate on privacy in crypto, but nothing truly effective. I think the reason is binary: either completely private or not private at all. If we solve this, it could improve gaming UX, making games more engaging for end users.
Frank: What’s interesting is your assumption: suppose you have this core entity—virtual reality or VR gaming—that generates downstream economic flywheels. So if you have a great metaverse game, to succeed you need privacy tools, better design, better social tools. It almost spawns an independent economy parallel to the real world. How do you see this economy evolving?
Kim: We’re seeing early signs. People now have higher net worth in virtual spaces than in real life—or have access to financial tools via crypto despite lacking traditional banking. In this shift, we ask: how do we bring the metaverse into daily life? Because VR or immersive experiences are event-driven. Think of people going to VR concerts, visiting digital art galleries, sending money to join brand campaigns, or watching Snoop Dogg perform. These are things we already do in real life, right?
We travel to cities for specific content. But entering the metaverse, we care more about seamless transitions. As you said, how can this economy serve as another form of economic activity or social income? I believe Web3 is a major foundational tool in this process.
Frank: So, which companies are bridging the metaverse divide?
Kim: Today, there aren’t many projects focused solely on bridges. But I think the key prerequisite is that each “city” (ecosystem) must first be compelling enough to attract builders to construct highways connecting them—because only then will round-trip demand justify it. Right now, we’re still in the phase of building standalone worlds. Look at Sandbox—it’s mostly empty land with speculative investment. We’re beginning to see collaborations with brands and game studios to create interactive experiences. As activity on Sandbox grows, bridges will become more critical. Builders enabling easier participation will emerge, along with concrete support. But current bridge experiences are very limited—focused on asset attestation, not real usability.
Frank: Current bridges are indeed clunky—kind of like the internet in the early 90s. It’s not user-friendly unless you abstract away the crypto complexity. Traditional internet was in many ways a precursor to VR. Beyond that, what other hurdles do you see for Metaverse projects—or the Metaverse concept itself?
Kim: Another area we deeply consider is metaphysical token models. Think about how Uniswap started—we saw debates over token utility and the true meaning of governance tokens. The same is happening in gaming and Web3. Today, most new products simply copy the same token model.
Then there’s the challenge of creating effective payment mechanisms. From Axie, we’ve seen limitations in current models. We’re asking: how can we have simpler token models? Better structures? So users easily grasp the model’s meaning and focus on real enjoyment—deepening their experience in games and the metaverse.
Frank: You foresaw this trend earlier than almost anyone I know. I remember media reports about your 2018 bet on Axie. What did you see that others missed?
Kim: We were lucky to be among the first crypto funds arguing for gaming, choosing to back founders with our own money. It wasn’t easy—we did it to drive real crypto adoption. We chose gaming as our second pillar after decentralized stablecoins because moving from digital to offline is hard. Why not stay digital? The largest digital economies are clearly gaming and esports—the biggest and fastest-growing, with massive participant appeal. We believed this could be a major crypto adoption gateway. But in 2018–2019, most games in the space were speculative gambling types—Tron-inspired, Batman, Night in America—fundamentally unsustainable. When we pitched this to other funds, we got skepticism: Why invest in games? Why Axie or Sandbox? These teams came from nowhere, outside major tech hubs, and gaming seemed a tiny niche in crypto. But Axie and Sandbox teams were rare—truly passionate about building games and IP, not obsessed with monetizing crypto. Watching them build communities over the years has been amazing.
Frank: So what might the next five years look like?
Kim: Hard to say. We’ve only been in crypto for five years—each year, even each quarter, brings unexpected twists. As a fund, we aim to stay flexible, adaptive, and fast-learning. Our core vision revolves around digitizing and tokenizing assets. As capital scales in this space, the question of interaction loops back to identity and privacy. Today, we say there are 7 billion people globally. In virtual spaces, we could host ten times that—far exceeding physical user bases. This implies larger, more fluid economies. What services will such populations need? What interactive experiences can we provide sustainably? These are faint signals from the future.
Frank: We’ve talked about your successes. What do you see as your biggest mistake?
Kim: I think our biggest mistake, from an investment standpoint, was being too conservative on Layer1s. We wanted to be founder-focused, supporting every builder in that category, pouring energy into helping them. We didn’t spread investments across multiple Layer1s. When new founders came to us showcasing games or apps, we hoped they’d tell us definitively which Layer1 to pick. But now, multi-chain is clearly emerging. Many new Layer1s add tangible value to the ecosystem—something we were overly cautious about early on. Now, we’re actively investing across various Layer1 ecosystems to support early founders building on them.
Kim: I always tell my friends: when you try to do anything in crypto, you must become a super user. Only then do you start seeing massive gaps in the industry. As you mentioned, the biggest gap for super users is bridges—it’s like every city having only one-way streets. You have to figure out how to actually get there, not just turn quickly. We’ve stayed deeply focused on this.
Frank: Let’s return to current events in Asia. South Korea just elected a new, crypto-friendly president—though somewhat more conservative. Will this pro-crypto leader ripple through the crypto world?
Kim: We’ve been working closely with the government as advisors, helping shape crypto strategies, especially around taxation and KYC. Two years ago, we achieved a major win—getting TRIP included in Korea’s financial law, a solid practical advancement. More excitingly, nearly all presidential candidates took positive stances on crypto, almost treating it as a populist proposal. In 2017–2018, Korea was one of the fastest-growing and largest crypto markets—most adults touched crypto at some point. Many earned money; many lost. Crypto significantly impacted their financial and personal lives—something leaders can’t ignore. We expect to see more concrete plans from the new administration.
Since 2018, Korea could have become the top market or next crypto finance hub, but government sentiment turned negative, sparking backlash. I think many officials now recognize this again—more business opportunities mean huge risks for companies and retail investors alike. We’ve partnered with Terra, and one member of our legal and finance team came from Cheong Wa Dae. We’ve done extensive work pushing crypto ideas into the mainstream.
Kim: I believe crypto is unstoppable. In Korea, what’s fascinating is that all major public game publishers are now building their own blockchains and developing Web3 games on them. They’re pouring all their core IPs and content into Web3, restructuring entire companies around this shift because they see it as the future. Interestingly, while the government remains in a gray zone, these public companies are moving forward, launching tokens anyway. They see massive consumer demand and global market potential—they’re just innovating, pushing forward.
Frank: So who wins in the end?
Kim: It’s not either/or. As official advisors, we consult extensively through our studio—we’re co-building many of these games, helping design key aspects. One thing I deeply care about is ensuring they don’t mess this up. I don’t want them to miss a national or industry-wide opportunity—like a big game company launching poorly and killing chances for everyone else. We just want to ensure they follow proper governance rules.
Frank: Last plug—everyone, go play The League of Kingdoms. Thank you so much for joining. See you next time.
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