Singapore-based Vauld, formerly Bank of Hodlers, a crypto trading and lending service, raises $25M Series A led by Peter Thiel's Valar Ventures
Context & Ripple Effects
Valar Ventures is running a repeat playbook in Asia-Pacific crypto-fintech: the Thiel-backed firm led BlockFi's $18.3M Series A back in 2019, then a $18.6M round for Singapore robo-advisor Syfe in 2020, and most recently Hong Kong-based XanPool's $27M raise. Vauld is the next entry — and its rebrand from Bank of Hodlers to Vauld alongside the raise signals a shift from niche crypto savings toward a broader consumer trading-and-lending platform.
The competitive bar is already set by peers in the same city-state: AscendEX recently pulled in $50M at a $455M valuation on the strength of its Singapore base, so a $25M Series A positions Vauld as an earlier-stage challenger that now has the capital to close the product gap.
First-order effects
- Vauld gets the war chest to scale its combined trading-plus-lending product beyond its original Bank of Hodlers footprint, directly competing with BlockFi — the same model Valar backed two years earlier.
Second-order effects
- Valar's portfolio now spans crypto lending (BlockFi), fiat-crypto settlement rails (XanPool), and digital wealth management (Syfe), creating natural bundling and referral paths among portfolio companies that standalone competitors like AscendEX lack.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, Southeast Asia consolidates as the hub for retail crypto credit platforms — with Singapore-headquartered firms competing on integrated trading, yield, and settlement rather than single-product offerings.
The trend: Peter Thiel's Valar Ventures is methodically assembling an Asia-Pacific crypto-finance portfolio across lending, trading, settlement, and wealth management, with Vauld as its latest Singapore anchor.