Moshe Hogeg And The Crypto-Aliyah Moment

Between roughly 2017 and 2021, Tel Aviv hosted one of the densest concentrations of Web3 talent and capital in the world. A meaningful share of that wave ran through Russian-speaking Israeli operators and the Israeli founder layer that grew up around them. Moshe Hogeg was the most visible figure of the period.

This piece is not about the legal proceedings that followed the wave's end. It is about what the wave built, who it trained, and where the talent went next. That is the load-bearing story for the Olam map.

The Singulariteam Era

Hogeg co-founded Singulariteam with Genesis Capital backing in 2014. Singulariteam was one of the first Israeli venture funds explicitly focused on frontier technology — AI, robotics, virtual reality, and what would later become Web3. The fund's portfolio companies included companies that went on to substantial exits and a number that did not.

The Singulariteam team became a training ground for a generation of Tel Aviv operators. Several of the analysts and associates from that period are now running operating roles at later-stage Israeli startups, family offices, and US-based venture funds.

Sirin Labs And The Web3 Wave

Sirin Labs, founded by Hogeg and Kenes Rakishev, ran a 2017 token sale that raised approximately $158 million — one of the largest ICOs of that year. The company's stated goal was a blockchain-native smartphone. The product launched. The market for it was thinner than the capital raise implied.

Sirin was emblematic of the broader 2017–2018 ICO wave. A meaningful share of the global token issuance volume in that period ran through Israeli legal counsel, Israeli technical teams, and Israeli-headquartered foundations. The crypto-aliyah moment was real. Its long-term legacy is the talent pipeline it created.

Beitar Jerusalem

Hogeg purchased a controlling stake in Beitar Jerusalem F.C. in 2018. The club is one of the most storied — and most politically charged — football clubs in Israel. Hogeg's ownership period included a high-profile attempt to bring an Emirati investor into the club in late 2020, in the immediate aftermath of the Abraham Accords. The deal did not close.

Hogeg sold his Beitar stake in 2022. The club has since transitioned through additional ownership changes.

The Crypto-Aliyah Wave In Context

Between 2017 and 2021, Tel Aviv built a deeper Web3 talent base than any city outside San Francisco, New York, and Singapore. Companies and projects that ran through the period included StarkWare, Fireblocks, Kirobo, Bancor, and the early eToro crypto trading layer. StarkWare and Fireblocks went on to become the two largest companies of the wave; Olam's Israeli Crypto & Digital Assets guide profiles both.

The Russian-speaking Israeli operating layer was disproportionately represented across that wave. Founders, technical leads, and early business hires came in meaningful numbers from the 1990s and post-1990s aliyah population. The pattern is the same one that produced Mellanox, Habana Labs, and the Israeli cyber sector — strong technical training, comfortable with international markets, fluent in multiple languages.

Where The Talent Went Next

After the 2022 crypto-market reset, the Tel Aviv Web3 talent base reorganized. Some went to the survivors — StarkWare and Fireblocks scaled through the cycle. Some moved into AI infrastructure and AI cybersecurity, which absorbed engineering talent across Israel through 2023–2025. Some moved into traditional finance roles inside the Israeli investment banking layer and the family-office structures that grew up around the citizenship-era wave.

The crypto-aliyah moment is a chapter in the larger Russian-aliyah business story, not a side note. It produced a generation of operators who now sit inside the Israeli technology economy at a level that earlier waves took twenty years to reach.

Part of the Olam Russian-Aliyah cluster. See the pillar: The Russian-Aliyah Business Economy.