Michael Shaulov: The Check Point Engineer Who Built Fireblocks Into the Institutional Crypto Custody Standard
Fireblocks co-founder/CEO. Check Point alumnus. Built the MPC custody standard securing $10T+ in digital asset transfers. $8B+ valuation. The cybersecurity-to-crypto pipeline personified.
Michael Shaulov is the co-founder and CEO of Fireblocks — the Israeli-founded institutional digital asset infrastructure platform that has secured the transfer of over $10 trillion in digital assets. Unit 8200 alumnus. Former Check Point engineer.
In 2017, Shaulov and co-founders Pavel Berengoltz and Idan Ofrat investigated a $200 million North Korean cryptocurrency theft. They concluded the institutional custody model was structurally broken — private keys stored in hardware security modules were a single point of failure. They left Check Point in 2018 and built Fireblocks on multi-party computation (MPC) technology: cryptographic key-shares distributed across multiple locations, eliminating the single-key vulnerability.
From Check Point's Cybersecurity DNA to the Crypto Custody Standard
The Check Point-to-crypto pipeline is one of the defining talent corridors in Israeli tech. Gil Shwed built the firewall. Nir Zuk left Check Point and built Palo Alto Networks. Shaulov left Check Point and built the institutional crypto custody standard. The pattern: cybersecurity engineers identifying structural vulnerabilities in adjacent markets and building infrastructure companies to fix them.
Fireblocks raised over $550 million in venture capital, reaching a valuation above $8 billion. Investors include Sequoia Capital, Paradigm, Coatue, Ribbit Capital, and BNY Mellon. The platform serves over 1,800 institutional clients including banks, exchanges, lending platforms, and payment providers. Headquartered in New York with R&D in Tel Aviv.
Where Shaulov Sits in the Israeli Crypto Builder Cohort
Shaulov, alongside Eli Ben-Sasson (StarkWare) and Yoni Assia (eToro), forms the top tier of Israeli crypto founders by company valuation and institutional impact. Fireblocks is infrastructure — the plumbing. StarkWare is protocol — the math. eToro is distribution — the consumer interface. Three Israeli companies, three different layers of the digital asset stack.
