Background & Biography
Raphaël Bloch’s route into digital assets began in financial journalism. His current professional biography records reporting roles at Les Echos from December 2016 to March 2020 and L’Express from March 2020 to March 2022, preceded by work at Reuters. Contemporary coverage of The Big Whale’s launch independently confirms that employment sequence. It is a useful foundation for understanding his work: crypto entered an existing interest in companies, markets and financial institutions, rather than replacing an earlier career as a protocol developer.
In April 2022, Bloch, Grégory Raymond and Dimitri Granger launched The Big Whale. Stratégies described the initial product as a specialist Web3 publication combining a free newsletter, a paid newsletter and articles on its website. In a June 2022 interview with Médianes, Bloch explained the move from a salaried newsroom to building a publication with a direct relationship to subscribers. That interview also documented early interaction with readers through Discord and his use of subscription funding for reporting in Argentina.
The business has subsequently changed its positioning. Its current website and the Paris Blockchain Week 2026 speaker biography identify Bloch as co-founder and CEO, while his own announcement describes taking on responsibility for scaling the company across Europe. France remains a documented professional market through his verified journalist directory entry and the publication’s origins. The Big Whale also identifies London and Geneva as important centres for its activities; those company markets should not be confused with a claim about Bloch’s personal residence.
Notable Contributions
Bloch’s clearest individual contributions can be found in his bylined reporting. His July 2023 article on MiCA examined the difficulty of translating an agreed European framework into consistent national supervisory practice. It drew on regulators and legal practitioners to explain why agreement on a legislative text does not settle every question faced by businesses. The contribution was explanatory journalism about implementation, rather than authorship of the legislation or an official interpretation binding on a regulator.
That distinction remains relevant in his later interviews. In December 2025, Bloch interviewed Cometh chief executive Jérôme de Tychey about the company’s authorisation and its plans for decentralised-finance services. The interview format places an operator’s commercial reasoning alongside questions about regulation and market access. Statements by the interviewee remain that person’s claims; publishing them does not make Bloch their guarantor. Read in that way, the piece is evidence of access to operating businesses and of the subjects he brings into public discussion.
His contribution also includes building an information product with other people. In the original subscription model, readers paid for specialist coverage and explanation; by 2026, The Big Whale was presenting research, briefings and events to banks, asset managers, advisers and public institutions. Its website now includes a benchmark on digital-asset adoption by French banks, fintechs and asset managers. These are company products, produced through a wider team, and should not all be credited to Bloch as individual research or editorial work.
Bloch’s own account of the first half of 2026 describes a more pronounced shift toward market intelligence, including proprietary data, professional networks and AI-assisted processing. He also describes expansion of events into additional markets and plans for further products. These statements establish management’s direction, not independently audited financial performance or proof that every announced product has launched. They make the company’s changing business model a more useful subject of coverage than a static description of it as a crypto newsletter.
Convening is a further part of his public role. The Big Whale’s profile documents his moderation of institutional discussions in Paris and London covering staking, stablecoins, tokenisation and lending through decentralised protocols. These settings bring together people who approach the same technology from different operational positions, including banks, custodians and infrastructure providers. Moderating a discussion can shape which questions get asked, but it does not establish responsibility for the products presented by participants or the decisions subsequently made by attendees.
Why Katharos.ai Follows Raphaël Bloch
Katharos.ai follows Bloch because specialist information businesses help determine which developments receive sustained attention. His reporting on MiCA implementation provides a concrete example: the practical consistency of supervision matters to a business even after the headline vote is over. Interviews and briefings can likewise make institutional constraints more visible than a token-price narrative would. The value to monitor is the quality of the evidence and explanation, including whether the limitations of a source’s claims remain clear.
His career also offers a view of how the economics of digital-assets information are changing. The documented progression from subscriber journalism to institutional intelligence creates questions about who the audience is, what is public and what a client is paying to obtain. Katharos.ai treats this as an evolving business and editorial model. Claims about market leadership, client numbers or commercial success require their own evidence and are not substitutes for an assessment of the underlying work.
Areas to Follow
- The delivery of the institutional-intelligence strategy: which benchmarks, briefings and research products become available, how their methods are explained, and which needs they serve. - Coverage of European market structure: licensing, custody, stablecoins and tokenisation, with careful separation between legislation, supervisory guidance and company plans. - The relationship between interviews, event partnerships and independent analysis: whether readers can tell who is speaking and in what capacity. - European expansion: evidence of sustained reporting and research in additional markets, rather than assuming an event or office announcement establishes comprehensive local coverage. - The contribution of the wider team: clear bylines, research attribution and recognition of co-founders and colleagues as the product range develops.
Reporting Scope
This profile covers Bloch’s public professional work, the documented origins of The Big Whale and its current stated direction. Earlier articles are used as examples of journalism at the time they were published, not as current legal guidance. Company biographies, commercial descriptions and Bloch’s own posts are identified as first-party evidence and checked against independent launch reporting and external professional listings where available. The profile makes no claims about personal investments, wealth or private views, and does not infer that featuring a business amounts to recommending it.
Areas of Influence
Bloch’s primary category is Community, Media & Education. Within it, his particular influence combines specialist financial reporting, explanation of European digital-assets developments and the organisation of professional discussion. His role as a co-founder and CEO also gives him influence over the kind of information products his company builds and the audiences it seeks to serve. Those are identifiable editorial and commercial responsibilities; they do not confer regulatory authority, control over blockchain infrastructure or responsibility for every contribution published under The Big Whale’s name.
Katharos.ai publishes this profile for information, based on the sources listed. Inclusion is not an endorsement of the individual, their organizations, or any investment product.
Source notice: Information and images are attributed to the external sources listed. Katharos.ai does not endorse the subjects or claims described and does not independently certify the authenticity of every source statement or image.