Michael Blum

Michael had quite interesting life circumstances. From German parents, he was born in Hong Kong. This meant he has two nationalities, both German and Chinese which would come handy later in his life.

During his early years, Blum spent most of his time traveling since his father was a German businessman working in China. He studied in private schools in Hong Kong mostly surrounded by British and German kids. Nonetheless, he had a lot of contact with Chinese culture and assimilated a lot of it.

Being a smart kid he always showed a talent for human sciences. He had a hand for analytical thinking and always was intrigued by politics. This led him to pursue a career related to international affairs.

College Years

Right after school, Blum left for the United States. Coming from an influential and affluent family, he had the chance to study in the States. In one of the most well known and regarded Universities, Yale. There he got his degree in Economics and International Relationships.

Career

Being a graduate from such a well-known institution, Blum had the opportunity to work for many big-brand companies. His charisma and credentials laid him jobs at PayPal, Virgin, Vision Inc, and many other industry big names. During the first years of his career, Michael Blum focused on The Venture Capital Arena. Blum’s main focus was to explore potential opportunities for the companies and make them grow at an accelerated rate.

Blum was quite successful at the task. He started as a country manager and rapidly climbed the ranks. In almost no time, Blum was given the position in charge of overseeing the firm’s business for all Asia and the pacific.

This rapid growth both in career as well as financially, is what afforded Blum his ticket to space. During his time working for PayPal, Blum was able to save up for a ticket for SpaceShipTwo from Virgin Galactic. The ticket price was around 200 000 dollars US.

After he gained experience in Silicon Valley, Blum decided to move into Wall Street.

Entrepreneurship

After his adventures in the corporate world, Blum’s interest in business kept getting bigger. He was set in creating his own companies, many believe, he wanted to have more control over what he could and couldn’t do inside the business. He went on to try many business adventures, some successful and many not so much. But all tinted with weird deals, missed links and financial books that did not make much sense.

His quick hands and talent with financial manipulations not only helped him close huge investment deals. These skills helped him create many successful deals for himself.

In 2005 Blum founded Hedgeye Risk Management, a company that had many troubles with clients for accusations of money disappearing and mismanagement of assets. Nonetheless, Blum is still the President of the company.

After creating his first company, Blum partnered with his brother to create an investment fund. They worked on this project from 2006 to 2008.

This fund was located in Macau, which many consider the Chinese center of gambling and addiction. During that time, Blum also formed the Asia Leisure Capital (ALC) with three partners.

Those were both heavily focused on the casino business of the region. A sector Blum was extremely interested in. Once Blum had a taste of how much money the Casino business can bring, he was hooked. During this time, Blum got to know the underground world surrounding gambling closer. He met many people from this underground such as traffickers of various substances. He got a look into the world of prostitution, exotic animals and pretty much everything illegal going on in Asia.

Michael Blum | No Matter the Consequences, He Always Wanted More

The underworld

By getting deeper and deeper into this world, Blum’s interest grew exponentially. He thought there was too much money to be made there. His investment fund started working with many Casinos of the region which led Blum to rub elbows with big names in the industry. Blum quickly realized how tightly close the Casino business was linked with both prostitution as well as all kinds of illicit substances.  

Blum spent many years working with these people and making a fortune. Many believed Blum tampered with the financial books from those institutions to make even more money from the deals. But that was not the only way he was making money.

At some point in 2008, Blum met quite an important personality from the underground of the Casino business. Someone whose main interest was trafficking all kinds of goods, including exotic animals. After Blum helped him with a couple of financial arrangements in fund, the trafficker decided to pay Blum’s favors with a gift. He gave Blum a tiger cub, quite rare and valuable.

This is how Blum’s interest in exotic animals and trafficking was born. From this point, for a couple of years, Blum used his contacts and fortune to gather a small collection of exotic cats and birds. And it was at this point when he started experimenting with darknet.

The DarkNet

Blum knew about the capabilities of the DarkNet for a while but since he was working for corporate America he had trouble experimenting with it. But now since Blum had his own companies and many links to criminal organizations he thought that would be a great time to start. Blum also knew many of the drug lords in the Area used DarkNet to sell not only drugs but a variety of products to America and other markets.

This is what inspired him to start with a small scale adventure. Blum was not happy only having wild exotic animals, he wanted to make money out of them, so he did. He set up a traffic operation from Asia right to the United States. He, along with his acquaintances who was the one that presented him the tiger, started selling. They sent wild cats to Oklahoma as well as Florida. Many believe this operation was significant in creating the crisis that the states would face during the next decade. An overpopulation of wild exotic cats and the creation of many clandestine zoologies plaguing the region for the next several years.

This was an adventure short-lived. Blum lost interest after a couple of years, mostly because of how much work and risk were involved with the animals. He left that side of the business and focused on the casinos.

New Partnership

In 2013 Blum funded a co-owned scheme fund and management firm. This business was focused on gambling and hospitality business. During this time, Blum received a lot of allegations for dubious claims. Blum, allegedly was involved with money laundering, drug trafficking, many instances of prostitution, among others.

Blum was still extremely interested in space and becoming an astronaut, or rather, a space tourist. He has his ticket for the Virgin’s Spaceship II and is looking forward to that adventure. It was around this time when he started working with P.J King, who had a bachelor’s degree in engineering but spent all his career in Investment funds and businesses.

P.J has also purchased a ticket for the spaceship back in 2004. This new relationship spiked the interest of Blum in the whole space theme. Both P.J King and Michael Blum were closely monitoring Virgin Galactic and heavily investing in it.

In 2014, a big tragedy occurred. During preliminary testing, Spaceship Two failed and the pilot could not make it out alive. This led to the project being postponed and the two gentlemen were left with the tickets in their hands. P.J managed to get his money returned. In the same manner, Blum decided to file a lawsuit that would eventually get his money refunded. Yet both Blum and King were not ready to leave the space business just yet.

Accusations and Lawsuits

After the 2014 incident, the plans to go to space were put on hold. Blum and King started working together in a new company. This was another investment fund, this time for companies in the United States.

In this instance, the business did not go as well as in Asia. Many companies started filing complaints on mismanagement of funds. There were many claims of tampered financial books and many under the table deals made to maximize profit.

Nonetheless, both King and Blum are still in the investment business. As of today, Michael Blum is the president, and chief operating officer of Hedgeye Risk Management. Also managing director of Hong Kong-based Repulse Bay Capital Ltd, a private investment venture.

Many claims are surrounding Michael Blum. Back to his first jobs at Silicon Valley. The reasons for him moving into Asia are unclear and as we have explored, his deals there are very cloudy. Michael Blum is quite a personality with a complicated history. But as of now, all the claims have not been able to defeat his skillful team of lawyers and influential friends. Blum is still in business and that may or may not change soon.