BlockFi’s Zac Prince Leaves Crypto, Joins Real Estate Tech Startup Re Cost Seg

As BlockFi settles with the estates of FTX and Alameda Research, which could lead to a full recovery for the bankrupt crypto lender’s users, Zac Prince, BlockFi founder and now former CEO, is leaving the company and crypto altogether for a real estate tech startup called Re Cost Seg.

“I considered starting another crypto company after my time at BlockFi. I’m passionate about the space and believe in it as much as when I started BlockFi,” Prince told CoinDesk in an interview. “However, my wife advised against it due to the craziness and volatility of the crypto industry. She suggested I do something less high-octane.”

So Prince has landed at Re Cost Seg, an opportunity he heard about via X. Re Cost Seg provides cost segregation studies for real estate investors, enabling them to accelerate property depreciation and save money on taxes.

Usually, these types of services are only available to large institutional-size landlords due to their cost, making them out of reach to the “Mom and Pop” scale landlords, which make up 70% of the residential rental owners in the U.S. according to data from the National Association of Realtors.

“This company is democratizing access to these cost segregation studies,” Prince said, adding that there were similarities to how BlockFi provided a tax-efficient way to use crypto proceeds. “Our products will save you money on taxes like nobody wants to pay more taxes. Everybody loves saving money on taxes.”

Prince said there were plenty of lessons learned during BlockFi’s better days that he can apply to Re Cost Seg, like the importance of customer service.

“We were the first company in the crypto lending category to have a phone number that people could call,” he said.

Prince also said there’s a fast and furious development cycle in crypto that he wants to bring to the TradFi real estate space.

“In five years, we launched four consumer-facing products and an institutional platform, along with internal tools and processes for efficient product development,” he said.

“In marketing, crypto is unique with its 24/7 media cycle, so learning to navigate that and developing strategies, such as partnering with big podcasters, was key,” he continued. I also learned a lot about team building; we had a phenomenal team at BlockFi, many of whom are staying in the crypto industry, and some have even started new crypto companies, which makes me proud.”

Even though Prince has moved on from BlockFi, he says his crypto will remain on the platform until all of the lender’s former clients have been made whole.

“As part of our bankruptcy process, I always kept all of my crypto at BlockFi. I said I’d give up any recovery rights to my crypto until BlockFi clients get 100% back,” he said.

Prince explained during the interview that BlockFi went bankrupt because FTX and its affiliates were lent money –this arrangement was fully disclosed in BlockFi’s terms and conditions – and didn’t pay it back, something he also said on the stand during Sam Bankman-Fried’s trial.

“At the beginning of our bankruptcy, the lawyers for FTX took a hostile position, claiming BlockFi owed them money, which we found absurd since FTX and its affiliates owed us money,” he said. “It’s validating to see the outcome in BlockFi’s favor, and the impact on client recoveries is significant.”

In a post on X, Prince said there were many things he would have done differently or changed in hindsight, but the most significant was BlockFi’s relationship with FTX.

“I testified at the SBF trial, which was helpful in terms of enabling justice through a guilty verdict, but the real goal and focus for me (and the remaining BlockFi team) was and remains to return as much value to clients as possible,” he wrote in the post.

For a while, BlockFi’s clients were made entirely whole, and it didn’t seem like a realistic conclusion to the bankruptcy process. In January 2023, during the dark days of crypto winter, bankruptcy claims for BlockFi were trading at 30 cents on the dollar.

“The people that bought the bankruptcy claims made a killing,” Prince concluded.