Interview with Hashed Partner: The Asian market will be the main force driving the next bull market
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Interview with Hashed Partner: The Asian market will be the main force driving the next bull market
As we become increasingly mature in the market, more pioneering innovations will emerge in the Asian market, especially during the next market expansion.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsInterview: Fiona, Foresight News
Compilation: Kean, Foresight News
Translation: Peng SUN, Foresight News
When it comes to South Korea's blockchain industry and crypto market, what comes to mind?
The "Kimchi premium"? The Terra collapse? "That man," DK? Or perhaps the upcoming Asia Blockchain Week (KBW), the annual Web3 event in Asia? In fact, compared to these, Hashed—a major but often overlooked player from South Korea in the Web3 world—is more worthy of recognition and remembrance.
Founded in 2017, this cryptocurrency VC firm had no founders with prior VC experience, yet grew from a small team with just $600,000 in capital into a globally influential top-tier crypto venture capital institution. We know that before Terra’s collapse in 2022, Hashed’s assets under management (AUM) reached $4 billion. Although Hashed later confirmed losses of over $3 billion during the LUNA crash, it was not defeated. Over the past year, Hashed has been gradually recovering while actively exploring emerging markets and seeking new opportunities. So, what exactly is Hashed as an organization? What has it focused on over the last one or two years? What are its views on the present and future of the crypto industry? What characteristics define the Korean market? And what efforts has it made in emerging markets? These questions linger.
Out of curiosity, Foresight News exclusively invited Baek Kim, Partner at Hashed—an infectiously passionate crypto entrepreneur—who shared in detail Hashed’s entrepreneurial journey since 2017. From his insights, we can sense the pragmatism, global vision, and firm belief in mass adoption of crypto held by Koreans. Ahead of KBW2023, let’s take an early look at the spirit of Korea and its market through the story of Hashed.
I. Hashed: From 3 Engineers to 250 Employees
Foresight News: Could you first share some details about Hashed’s team, such as size and distribution? Do you invest globally, and how do you handle time zone differences for communication?
Baek Kim (Hashed): We have around 30 employees managing investment operations, based across Korea, Singapore, and the U.S. In terms of team structure, we have an investment team (seven members including partners), finance team, legal team, and a platform team covering portfolio support and research. Additionally, we have scientists and engineers.
Time zone challenges depend on where we're investing. Currently, about 60% of our investments are in Asia, 40% in the U.S., with some presence in Europe, though our primary focus remains on the U.S. and East Asian time zones. For example, if it’s 8:00 AM here in Korea, it’s 3:00 PM in San Francisco or Los Angeles—there’s enough overlap until lunchtime in Korea or Singapore to facilitate internal communication. Then we use other hours for external meetings or individual research. If we were to increase engagement with European time zones, adjustments would be necessary. But so far, our current approach works well. Of course, we also assign teams across different time zones to manage various tasks, ensuring coverage across markets and enabling round-the-clock service to our portfolio companies, especially during emergencies.
Foresight News: Can you explain the relationship between Hashed, Hashed Emergent, and UNOPND, and their respective roles and responsibilities?
Baek Kim (Hashed): Hashed has over 250 employees, and the entire ecosystem totals around 670 people, including those at Hashed Emergent, UNOPND, and others.
We founded Hashed in early 2017. Initially, Hashed resembled an angel group composed of engineers and founders—because Simon, Ryan, and I all came from engineering and founding backgrounds. We started in Korea, which gave us early access to many pioneering crypto figures and founders visiting Korea, like Vitalik, among others. Many teams began coming to Korea, and we hosted events and technical talks for them, offering help with market strategy and token economics. That’s when we realized this could be a great opportunity to grow the industry together. At the same time, we began investing because we believed we could better manage most of the capital ourselves. Back then, only a few funds existed—Polychain wasn’t fully established yet. So, we saw a strong opportunity to build a platform. As angel investors, scaling is difficult, but we believed a fund platform and brand like Hashed could go global.
That’s how Hashed got started. You may know we launched the fund with only $600,000 of our own capital. None of us had worked in crypto VC or finance before—we didn’t even know how to set up a venture fund, let alone a crypto fund. But we sensed an opportunity and wanted to do something meaningful. So initially, we invested our own money, and by the end of 2020, we hadn’t raised a single dollar externally.
Thus, before fundraising, we only managed our main investment vehicle, which we still oversee today. This also means that when our portfolio companies appreciate in value, we don’t need to return profits to LPs like many traditional funds. We’ve built a substantial balance sheet, but we knew we could leverage our network, time, and capital further—not just through passive investment and waiting for returns.
That’s how UNOPND was born. It’s a wholly-owned subsidiary of Hashed, a venture studio dedicated to incubating and building consumer-focused companies in Web3. One of UNOPND’s key focuses is Web3 gaming, and it has already backed numerous Web3 games. League of Kingdoms, a mobile game built on Ethereum, secured additional funding from a16z Crypto and Sequoia Asia. Derby Stars, a P2E horse racing game on Polygon, received follow-on investments from Galaxy Interactive and Jump Crypto. We have another game studio developing an MMOFPS—a mass-market online FPS shooter—which recently completed a funding round. Lastly, there’s Modhaus, a Web3 K-pop music label where NFT holders vote on musical styles and who gets to view songs, among other decisions.
Modhaus successfully selected its first music video via DAO voting, achieving a participation rate of about 37%, with YouTube views reaching approximately 32 million within the first day or two. Therefore, we’ve long been focused on IP content within the metaverse. Our strategy is to build metaverse applications atop the Hashed investment portfolio—including Layer1s, wallets, key management, and developer tools—to create a positive feedback loop: building distribution channels, driving consumer adoption, and entering markets. We’re supporting infrastructure builders while creating real Web3 use cases for consumers.
This is precisely why UNOPND was established. UNOPND now has around 130–140 people, led by Nathan as marketing director, formerly of MakerDAO, focusing on community support and related initiatives.
We never imagined UNOPND would grow this large—it simply evolved based on opportunities guided by our balance sheet.
Hashed Emergent is a fund we launched last year focused on emerging markets, based in Bangalore, India, making investments typically ranging from $100,000 to $500,000. The Hashed Emergent team currently has 15 members covering India, Africa, and the Middle East. Our goal is to drive Web3 adoption and practical use cases. We believe emerging markets will have a massive impact, and there’s a significant gap between quality projects coming out of ETH Africa and ETH India hackathons versus those funded by U.S. funds.
Moreover, many exceptionally talented and innovative founders in these regions struggle due to limited visibility, scarce resources, and fewer investment opportunities, leading to failure despite their potential. We see this as a vast untapped market that allows us to scale faster. Clearly, it’s a daunting challenge with potentially low hit rates, but we aim to enter early—just as we did in the early days of crypto—by attending local meetups and engaging directly.
In fact, we host activities weekly in emerging markets. Whether visiting Indian Institute of Technology campuses or Nairobi, Kenya, we run weekly meetups and hackathons to demonstrate that Hashed Global is genuinely helping local communities. While Twitter is full of narratives about emerging crypto markets, I don’t think anyone is truly committed—especially funds claiming to support these founders and regions. This is our first step, still experimental, but showing excellent results. To date, Hashed Emergent has completed 25 investments across these emerging markets.
II. Empowering Zero-to-One Growth: Market Needs and Compliance-Driven
Foresight News: Beyond direct investment, how does Hashed typically empower its portfolio projects? What methods do you use to help them achieve zero-to-one growth?
Baek Kim (Hashed): As Web3 investors, we see continuous evolution across many areas. When Hashed started, we believed we could help teams understand tokenomics, smart contract technology, consensus mechanisms, and market dynamics.
We believe crypto gaming is undergoing a turbulent and chaotic iteration process. So for us, maintaining close communication with founders is essential. We communicate daily or weekly via Telegram, email, or phone calls with most of our portfolio companies to stay closely aligned. That’s why we have a sizable platform team beyond just the investment team. The platform team considers not only technology and product design but also team-building and market-entry strategies. This varies depending on whether the project is infrastructure or application-layer. For Layer1s, there are broad approaches to ecosystem and economic development. For application-layer projects, it’s more akin to Web2, emphasizing user feedback and competitive positioning.
Therefore, we strive to offer highly tailored support, as our fund prioritizes adoption above all. Specifically, whether it’s apps, games, protocols, or infrastructure, we evaluate whether the team’s product meets market and community needs and whether demand can sustainably grow. Additional support revolves around macroeconomic, policy, and legal aspects, because risk management is critical in crypto VC and growth investing. We must ensure founders build compliant, sustainable products the right way—not fall into short-term thinking or become unadjustable due to regulatory shifts.
We now have four lawyers on staff. These aren’t just crypto lawyers—they work closely with our founders. Obviously, we can’t provide formal legal advice, but we help guide them toward the right direction and connect them with proper assistance. Additionally, we’ve established Hashed Open Research, a new Web3 policy think tank. Recently joined by Yongbeom Kim, First Vice Minister at Korea’s Ministry of Economy and Finance. Mr. Kim previously chaired Korea’s Financial Services Commission and helped draft financial guidelines during the 2017–2018 bull and bear markets. He joined us full-time, not as a part-time advisor. With a PhD in macroeconomics from George Washington University and ten years at the World Bank, he brings deep expertise and provides extensive research and strategic support to our portfolio.
Foresight News: Countries worldwide—including Korea, Japan, the EU, the UK, and the U.S.—are formulating crypto regulations. As a VC, how do you view crypto regulation?
Baek Kim (Hashed): I’m currently working in San Francisco and not directly involved in any country’s regulatory process, but our Korea team collaborates closely with educators, advocates, regulators, researchers, and professors to ensure comprehensive industry understanding and push for constructive change. However, regulation is slow; meaningful progress requires persistence.
III. “Asia Will Be the Main Driver of the Next Bull Run”
Foresight News: From your personal experience, what differences do you see between the U.S. and Asian markets?
Baek Kim (Hashed): Asian countries, especially Southeast Asian nations, differ greatly from each other, making generalizations difficult. African nations vary similarly. From our perspective, the U.S. and European markets have driven innovation in many areas, particularly around core Ethereum developments.
Asian markets have traditionally been speculative and retail-driven, with high volumes in spot and leveraged trading. However, this is gradually changing as more infrastructure builders and project teams emerge in Asia. We believe that as the market matures, Asia will generate increasing groundbreaking innovations—especially during the next market expansion, which we expect to be primarily driven by Asia in one or two years. This will stem from super-applications or super-use cases arising from diverse experiments and iterations, which are already underway.
I believe the U.S. will remain the largest financial market, with the greatest purchasing power and VC activity. It will continue setting the tone for VC investment, financial law, and security regulations, influencing Europe closely. Many Asian countries watch these legislative moves carefully. Yet, we believe much bottom-up innovation may originate in Asia.
Additionally, we observe clear differences between U.S. and Asian founders. Like Europe, the U.S. tends to focus more on crypto-native protocols—privacy, scalability, consensus, cross-chain projects. Asia leans more toward DeFi, gaming, NFTs, and consumer applications. We expect this trend to continue, as launching consumer-facing apps in the U.S. or Europe remains challenging.
Foresight News: What is your view on the overall state of Southeast Asian markets?
Baek Kim (Hashed): Very similar, but I find South Asian entrepreneurs even more proactive—they dare to experiment and challenge the unknown without needing permission or fearing regulation as much as in Japan, Korea, or China.
I believe this drives substantial real-world building—let’s see what unfolds. Long-term, most South Asian countries’ purchasing power and GDP growth significantly outpace developed economies. This will become a primary market for consumer adoption and retail.
Foresight News: What is the current state of Korea’s crypto market? Any advice for projects or ordinary users looking to enter the Korean market?
Baek Kim (Hashed): For many Web3 teams, companies, or protocols, the Korean market seems simple and straightforward—but actually capturing value here is tough.
There are many reasons: language barriers, intense international competition. Traditionally, Korea’s market is unique—one of the few places where U.S. multinational corporations haven’t dominated locally. Whether it’s automakers, smartphones, TVs, music, or internet browsers like Google, foreign services often fail to gain traction. Internet services in Korea are far more complex for local users. E-commerce giants like Amazon don’t succeed here—Korea has its own dominant platforms like Coupang and numerous local suppliers. It’s a fascinating country where local innovation thrives. For instance, Coupang, serving only Korea, went public on the NYSE with a market cap of around $60 billion.
It’s an intriguing market—among the few small, concentrated nations hosting multiple unicorns. This reflects Korea’s concentration of tech capital, education, and training. Because of this, many Layer1s, game studios, or crypto protocols find Korea refreshingly straightforward compared to other markets—you clearly know who to partner with for business development (BD). Nexon, one of the largest game publishers, turned its flagship game MapleStory into a Web3 game with over 100 million active users.
All Layer1s are competing here. SK, one of Korea’s largest conglomerates, wants to move loyalty programs and cashback systems onto Web3. Krafton and Battleground also want to explore Web3 integrations, sparking fierce competition among public chains. Samsung, with its wallet and phones, further intensifies this race. Thus, BD targets are crystal clear, and strong economic returns are expected. In many other markets, you must simultaneously evangelize and nurture ecosystems—a very long game. But in Korea, enterprises can quickly convert into BD clients. I believe this is why founders from Solana, NEAR, Avalanche, Polygon, zkSync, and others frequently visit Korea for BD trips.
The other side is grassroots momentum—technical and highly educated talent are shifting toward Web3, being persuaded, educated, and encouraged to build on these protocols or join teams. Over the past four to five years, many talents self-limited themselves, remaining mere observers of crypto. Even grandparents and youth alike know about cryptocurrencies and local Korean tokens, yet few work full-time in the industry. I believe this is changing—we’re seeing more genuine talent joining, not just retail investors. I’m optimistic, though there’s still a long road ahead. I’m confident we’re moving in the right direction.
Regulatory-wise, it remains a murky gray area. But through Hashed Open Research and other efforts, we’re conducting extensive education to position Korea as one of Web3’s key hubs.
But this doesn’t mean Korea is easy to enter for foreigners or crypto projects—it’s one of the most regulated countries regarding capital flows, currency movement, and venture investment.
So for foreigners, direct market entry isn’t as seamless as a U.S. company entering the EU. Still, the market is indeed vibrant today.
IV. Change and Continuity: Hashed’s Vision for the Industry’s Future
Foresight News: What is Hashed’s investment methodology? How has it evolved over recent years?
Baek Kim (Hashed): None of us had professional investment experience before—this is why we delayed raising external capital for so long. When we used our own money, the internal financial risk was high, but we bore full responsibility and could make independent decisions.
But things change once you have LPs in your fund. In December 2020, we raised $120 million for our first fund, followed by $200 million in December 2021. Most of our LPs are public companies, large conglomerates, and international firms—not many individual or founder-led funds. So it’s a significant responsibility—both empowering and constraining.
Over the past six to seven years, we’ve continuously adjusted, made mistakes, learned, and grown as investors. Though our founders were engineers and entrepreneurs, we now hire top-tier global talent. We’ve recruited technical and financial experts across the U.S., Korea, Singapore, and India, enhancing collaboration and strengthening our platform.
That’s the structural evolution. Overall, I’d say we’re a highly iterative and flexible fund. The only constant is our belief in this market and in mass adoption of Web3. We consistently back exceptional founders and commit to long-term partnerships lasting 5 to 10 years.
Our investment philosophy stems from three core assumptions: First, all assets will eventually be tokenized. Second, human social interaction will increasingly occur in digital spaces. Third, decentralized organizations will outlast and outscale existing organizational models. These are ambitious assumptions, but they still guide our investment decisions and industry research.
Foresight News: How have Hashed’s investment priorities changed from last year to now? Which specific sectors or areas are you currently focusing on?
Baek Kim (Hashed): Geographically, Hashed’s focus hasn’t shifted significantly—we’ve always pursued a global strategy. We’ll continue investing the same way but hire local staff to better support founders on the ground. In terms of thematic focus, we remain centered on infrastructure and gaming. Gaming isn’t just because we enjoy games. More importantly, we believe gaming is the best path to mass adoption of crypto and blockchain infrastructure. We believe greater liquidity and content drive mass adoption, and gaming offers the best content and liquidity for the next decade. Observing younger generations—Gen Z and Gen Alpha—the popularity of IPs like Superman is sharply declining.
Today, many new animated films are based on game-character IPs. We believe the next generation of IP content will emerge from interactive metaverses or games. If crypto can ride this wave, it could enable billion-person adoption. Right now, the only “content” in crypto is price volatility—what you consume is just charts. Too many people spend time on exchanges or related businesses rather than actual consumption. We hope to advance the industry through gaming and IP.
Foresight News: Where do you see future competition and growth drivers for public blockchains? Why are you bullish on them?
Baek Kim (Hashed): I remain very bullish on public blockchains, but actual adoption has been somewhat disappointing relative to expectations. I believe blockchains should act like game publishers—providing infrastructure, marketing, and ecosystem support. The challenge lies in coordinating and sustaining such complex business models, as many chains rely on inflationary incentives to artificially attract capital, users, and developers.
I think the root cause is a lack of genuine demand for real use cases and infrastructure built specifically for serving millions of users or particular mechanisms.
This isn’t surprising—most blockchain games have already been battered by marketing and brand competition. So I hope that during this bear market, significant technological innovations will solve the problems we’ve identified. In the next cycle, we can focus more on specific use cases and verticals, observing how successful projects are built atop public chains. I believe the economic value built on top of infrastructure should exceed the valuation of the infrastructure itself (for Layer1s). I used to be a software engineer at Amazon—while Amazon is among the most valuable companies, the total value of all businesses built on AWS dwarfs Amazon’s own valuation. By contrast, in today’s public chain market, FDVs of chains far exceed the actual commercial value generated on them.
Foresight News: How far along do you think this bear market has progressed, and what catalysts do we need for the next bull run?
Baek Kim (Hashed): During Paris EthCC, I noticed many people were excited, believing the bull market is imminent. But I’m a bit concerned—people seem overly enthusiastic too soon. The market isn’t mature yet, and no fundamental changes have occurred. I’m quite pessimistic about the current market, largely because it still hinges on macroeconomic and policy developments, especially in the second half of this year.
Foresight News: Final question: We hope more people join crypto, but most industry conferences forget this mission—they’re mostly Web3 insiders gathering. So, how do you encourage and help non-Web3 users enter crypto and Web3?
Baek Kim (Hashed): I love spreading new ideas and concepts. My interests extend beyond Web3—robotics, healthcare, AI are all exciting. Personally, I try to do small things or collaborate with committees around me.
I mentor and sponsor blockchain clubs at many universities. A few years ago, my alma mater Carnegie Mellon’s blockchain club had only 5–10 members. Now it’s one of the largest, with 200 registered students. I also established an Innovation Scholars Program at CMU, offering scholarships to aspiring founders. Today, the core members of that club focus heavily on crypto and Web3—similar to many other institutions and communities I’ve supported.
Many of my former colleagues, bosses, and mentors come from gaming backgrounds. Amazon is also interested in this space. So, I’m seen as someone who’s been in crypto for a while—even if others aren’t sure what I do. When they begin their learning journey or explore crypto, I try to proactively reach out. Because I genuinely care.
I recall one thing: At Amazon, I became a better product manager under a senior VP’s mentorship. Later, I left to start Hashed. Years later, he wanted to explore crypto and joined Circle as Head of Product. After leaving, I helped him launch his new startup, which Hashed ultimately led in its funding round. I’m truly happy to support those who helped me early in my career.
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