Blackbird Response to COVID-19

At Blackbird, the safety and wellbeing of our team and community is our highest priority.  

In response to the recent updates on the risk of COVID-19, we have implemented Blackbird’s Coronavirus Policy. It's open-source and we’ll keep updating it as the situation evolves.

This policy (last updated March 2), includes a global employee business travel section to help mitigate the risks of COVID-19.

We are asking all Blackbird staff to refrain from travelling to places that are deemed Level 1 (China, Japan, South Korea, Italy, Iran) and Level 2 (currently, Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, much of the Middle East (due to Iran spread) and African countries with strong China ties) for business purposes.  

In line with this updated policy, we have asked our colleagues who have travelled to these countries to work remotely for 14 days, regardless of whether they are exhibiting any symptoms.  

Some of our staff have decided to take extra measures by self-quarantining and working from home, after returning from international travel, as an extra precaution to protect their teammates and their families.

Should Blackbird operations go remote over the coming weeks and months, we will continue to communicate and operate with minimal interruption to business-as-usual across our offices in Sydney, Melbourne, Auckland, Hobart and Orange.

Should any business operations be impacted, we will communicate these changes ahead of time and do our best to make sure they don’t affect our valued partnerships.

For now, we will be taking meetings with people who have visited Category 1 countries within the last 14 days via conference call or videoconference rather than in person.

We will continue to take business meetings with people who have visited Category 2 countries within the last 14 days outside the Blackbird offices (Sydney, Melbourne, Auckland).  

We appreciate your understanding as we seek to avoid any unnecessary risks to our employees and their families as well as you and others in our community.

Careful consideration will be made as to whether it is necessary for our team to go to large events (eg conferences) which may be attended by a large number of people travelling from overseas, especially from Category 1 and 2 countries. Similarly, we are monitoring the situation before going ahead with our own events and asking people on registration whether they have been to a Category 1 country in the last 14 days — offering video conferencing to these event attendees instead.

We will continue to monitor the status of COVID-19** **as the situation evolves, and will update our policy should new countries be added or removed.

For up-to-date information on the Australian Government’s response to COVID-19 visit the Australian Government Department of Health website.

As a valued member of our community, we appreciate your understanding and believe these measures will help in minimising the impact of associated health risks of COVID-19.

Helpful links:

Coinbase open-source resources

Elad Gil blog post