Babel Finance, a Chinese Crypto Lending platform, has written $380 million in digital currency loans since its founding.
As reported by Coindesk on Thursday the company’s outstanding loans jumped from $52 million worth of USDT as of Q1 last year to $289 million as of the end of the year.
Last June, the company reported that it issued $110 million crypto loans since its launch, putting the recently reported figure 245 percent higher.
Babel Finance co-founder Flex Yang revealed that the increase in demand in the crypto lending market followed the price surge of Bitcoin in the spot trading market. Also, 70 percent of the loans generated by the company are for crypto interbank lenders, including Genesis and BlockFi.
The Bitcoin price drop also created a demand for the lending market from the miners who did not want to sell their tokens at a lower market price.
Based in Hong Kong, BabelFinance offers an array of crypto-related services, including the management of digital assets, deposits, and loans. The growing demand in the crypto lending market also encouraged major investors in the region, including ZhenFund, Lightspeed China Partners, NEO Global Capital to back the Chinese firm.
Previously known as BabelBank, the main operations of the bank are concentrated on Chinese investors in Beijing.
The demand for crypto lending is also driving other market players, including Blockhcain.com and Silvergate Bank, to enter the arena catering institutional clients.
Investors also bullish in the crypto sector
The Coindesk report also outlined that the lender recently closed its pre-Series A funding round in which it received funds from Dragonfly Capital and Parallel Ventures.
Though the exact investment value of the round is not revealed, it has valued the firm between $50 million to $100 million.
“The purpose of the fund raise is to help us expand the network of our overseas partners since our cashflow and reserve ratio are healthy at the moment,” Yang told the publication.
The company is also planning to conduct another funding round aiming to raise $10 million to $20 million, which will put its valuation between $100 million to $200 million.
