Meet The Women Of The Blockchain: Yaxi Zhu, Partner at GBIC
By: Yitzi Weiner
Tags: Bitcoin, Blockchain, Women In Tech, Inspiration, Founders

I had the pleasure to interview Yaxi Zhu. Yaxi is a partner at a global, multi-dimensional cryptocurrency and blockchain fund — GBIC. She is the head of the Chinese division and is in charge of the investment opportunities that are based in that region. With a background in traditional finance and consulting, as well as 2 years of a professional poker career in China, Yaxi discovered the benefits of blockchain and cryptocurrencies as they pertain to international transactions, which led her to learning about this innovative technology and then later founding GBIC among with her global partners.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! What is your “backstory”?

Thank you for organizing this! After I graduated college, I started my career at a consulting firm and then moved on to a hedge fund where I learned about BTC through market research for my clients. After the first 3 years of out of college professional experience, I spent 2 years as a team pro for POKERSTARS. I traveled around the world to play tournaments which was an amazing experience, however the difficulty in that was bringing cash back home due to foreign exchange control and other variables. Because of these difficulties, players used and continue using Pokerstar dollars to pay for everything like tournament buy-ins, hotels, flights etc. At that time Bitcoin was also becoming very popular as a payment form because of its convenience and transparency — that’s how I first started realizing its potential which then led me to eventually buying and trading Bitcoin. I started researching and really digging deep into the potential of blockchain technologies, and after realizing the incredible value it brings to the world, co-founded Global Blockchain Innovative Capital (aka. GBIC) with my partners. GBIC is a full spectrum incubator focused on delivering strategic values to blockchain projects.

Can you tell me about the most interesting projects you are working on now?

I work with a lot of brilliant people who are building revolutionary companies, but the one that’s closest to my heart right now is Teex. It’s a project from Jiao Tong Universities’ Distributed System Labs. Its main key differentiating factors are private smart contracts on public blockchain, trusted execution environment and layer 2 solution. I’m very impressed by both the tech and the team behind it. The Lab has been studying this topic for more than 20 years and has an immense amount of experience in the field, which is a rarity in this very young space.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

I’m grateful for and want to say thank you to my partners. I really wouldn’t be where I am today without their constant support and drive to improve GBIC and each other. They put in so much of their time and themselves into what we’re building, which always makes me feel like I’m part of an unstoppable force. They set the bar really high, which is amazing because and I always have someone to learn from.

What are the 5 things that most excite you about blockchain and crypto? Why?

1. ICO valuations have demonstrated that there is a lot of young and innovative people with good ideas, and a community willing to support them. Maybe these links haven’t been created in the past due to failures of traditional finance. Crypto / ICOs are pushing for more value for projects, users, and investors; and less rake for middlemen.

2. Excited about watching traditional finance industry have some competition. It will incentivize them to make improvements. The objective isn’t necessarily to disrupt traditional finance. But with competition, it will also push them to improve their own technologies and services.

3. Excited about convenient money transfer and the opportunities it is giving people from all corners of the world.

4. Excited about flippening (a moment when BTC will no longer have #1 MCAP). It will be interesting to see how relevant BTC can remain when it’s not #1 on the list.

5. Excited about Eth sharding — a major breakthrough in the space. Scaling TPS (Transactions Per Second) with number of nodes, while maintaining decentralization is a key step forward.

What are the 5 things worry you about blockchain and crypto? Why?

1. Fundamentalism and maximalism within certain cryptocurrency communities are becoming quite toxic. People are caught up being too close minded about a particular coin or idea.

2. Mainstream media not giving cryptocurrency a fair chance. Misinformation and click bait titles are not helping educate people about blockchain.

3. Number of scams and ill-intentioned people will always be an issue. We need to work together as a community to protect new comers and ourselves from bad actors.

4. Ease of access/usability and security is still an issue for the regular person. Crypto needs to bridge this gap before it’s widely adopted.

5. Safety for crypto investors is becoming an issue as well. Kidnapping, ransoming and blackmail are a big concern. There have been quite a lot of cases in recent news and regardless of anything, people’s safety needs to be put first.