Crypto lending and borrowing service BlockFi raises $30M Series B led by Valar Ventures, bringing its total raised to over $100M
The latest funding round pushed BlockFi's total funding to over $100 million. — Ethereum — Crypto lending and borrowing service BlockFi today announced …
Context & Ripple Effects
BlockFi's raise closes out a fast first act: a $52.5M round led by Mike Novogratz's Galaxy Digital in 2018, then an $18.3M Series A also led by Valar Ventures in 2019. Valar coming back to lead the Series B is a repeat-backer signal that the Peter Thiel-backed firm sees the crypto lending thesis compounding rather than needing rescue.
What makes this data point worth tracking is where the arc goes next: BlockFi rides the cycle up to a $350M Series D at a $3B valuation in March 2021, then by mid-2022 sources report it raising a down round at a $1B valuation. This $30M Series B sits at the base of a boom-and-bust valuation curve that mirrors crypto markets themselves.
First-order effects
- BlockFi crosses $100M in total raised with its lead investor unchanged from the Series A, giving it the balance sheet to push into the new products and markets it flagged when Valar first backed it.
- Valar Ventures doubles its position in the company, concentrating ownership among a small set of crypto-native and Thiel-network backers rather than broadening the cap table.
Second-order effects
- Institutional crypto funds take note of the repeat-lead pattern: within six months Morgan Creek Digital leads a larger $50M Series C, showing specialized crypto investors moving up the round ladder behind Valar's template.
- Rival crypto lenders face a better-capitalized BlockFi whose funding cadence — roughly a round every six to twelve months through this stretch — sets the pace they must match to compete on rates and product breadth.
Third-order effects
- The full sequence — $100M+ raised by 2020, a $3B mark in 2021, a reported $1B down round in 2022 — shows crypto lender private valuations tracking the underlying asset cycle almost one-to-one, a caution for anyone underwriting these platforms off peak-round marks.
- If the pattern holds, crypto lending consolidates around a few heavily funded balance-sheet players whose solvency depends on collateral values they do not control, inviting the regulatory scrutiny that follows any consumer credit business built on volatile assets.
The trend: Crypto lending platforms are running a venture-funding cycle that amplifies, rather than hedges, the boom-bust rhythm of the crypto assets on their balance sheets.