Babel Finance
CryptoHong Kong
New to Unitard
💀 Dead / Bankrupt
Peak $2 BillionToday
~-100%
from peak
- 🦄Became a unicorn2021
- 📈Peak valuation$2 Billion ’22
- 💔Became a UnitardJun 2022
- 💸Last valuationWiped out
Capital raised
$120M
Total raised
$83K/day
Raised per day
Total raised averaged per day over approximately 4.0 years from founding to bankruptcy or shutdown. This is not measured cash burn. Methodology
Funding: TechCrunch
Current status
Halted withdrawals (Jun 2022); restructuring
The rise & fall
6 moments · 2018–2022The key moments.
2018
2018
Founded in Hong Kong
Flex Yang's Babel Finance opens as a crypto lender and asset manager, taking deposits and making loans in Bitcoin.
Reuters
2021
2021
Joins the unicorn club
Fresh funding values the Bitcoin lender above $1B as the crypto bull market roars.
TechCrunch
May 2022
May 2022
The peak: an $80M round at $2B$2B
The Series B closes at a $2B valuation. Within weeks, the money and the market are both gone.
Reuters
2022
2022
The $280M hole
Proprietary trading positions blow up in the crypto crash — roughly $280M lost on the firm's own trades.
Reuters
Jun 2022
Jun 2022
Withdrawals freeze — joins the Unitard Club 💔
Barely a month after the $2B round, customers are locked out of their accounts.
Reuters
2022
2022
Restructuring wipes out the equity
Creditor negotiations begin; the $2B valuation from weeks earlier goes to zero.
Reuters
$2Bof peak value erased · 4 years
How it happened
Babel Finance was a crypto lender that hit a $2B valuation in a May 2022 Series B. Weeks later it froze customer withdrawals after losing roughly $280M in proprietary trades during the market crash. It entered restructuring, wiping out equity value.
Source: Reuters; lost ~$280M in prop trades
Founder
- Flex YangFounder & former CEONo public profile matched
