The Floor Opens the ‘Blockchain Factory’, Looks to China and India

Finance Magnates visited The Floor today to check out its new initiative, the ‘Blockchain Factory’. This is a development programme for blockchain-based startups, several of which arrived today to pitch their business models in the hope of being accepted as members.

The Floor is a fintech centre located in Tel Aviv. Established two years ago, its purpose is to make connections between Israeli financial technology startups and established banks. The Floor itself counts HSBC, Santander, and Intel among its partners – Intel maintains a presence in the centre’s office.

Gil Devora, co-founder of The Floor, told Finance Magnates that The Floor usually accepts only late-stage companies to work with, but it has made an exception for operations that deal with blockchain technology because late stage blockchain companies are relatively rare on the ground, the industry being as new as it is. Moises Cohen, another co-founder, predicted in an interview with Finance Magnates last year that “ten years from now there will be 500 blockchain startups in Israel”.

The biggest blockchain entity that The Floor has collaborated with is Bancor, which raised over 135 million USD in its ICO. Bancor offers a wallet which allows users to convert tokens to other tokens without a middleman, and its ICO was witnessed in real time at the venue.

Another example of a blockchain company with a presence at The Floor is Blackmoon, which “provides a tokenization platform for real-world as well as crypto investment funds”, according to its website.

We were also told us that the hub is looking to expand to Asia, as it wants to establish relationships with financial institutions. It already has a branch in Hong Kong, a plan that we reported on last year. Devora told us that a new centre in Shanghai is already being planned, and the hub intends to open a branch in India after that.

The Floor hired Desmond Marshall three months ago to act to the role of Country MD. Hailing from Hong Kong, Marshall has acted as ICO advisor for more than twenty different companies according to his LinkedIn profile. He is also a member of the Ethereum Alliance and spent three years as a regional manager for Microsoft.