Babylon (BABY)

This Month’s Top 5 Notable Rounds👇 • RAIN ( @raincards ): $338.5M | Series C | Global payment cards • BLACKOPAL ( @blackopal_fi ): $200M | Debt | LatAm tokenized receivables • TRES ( @TresDotFinance ): $148.6M | M&A | Web3 accounting infra • $BABY ( @babylonlabs_io ): $111M | Undisclosed | Bitcoin security & staking • $ZTC ( @zen_chain ): $10M | Undisclosed | BTC–ETH interoperability Fintech rails + Bitcoin infra quietly pulling the biggest checks.

Just saw that A16Z raised $15 billion, saying this amount will account for 18% of the total U.S. venture capital for a year, used to ensure the U.S. tech sector's leading position. It also emphasizes starting from AI and Crypto. I’m especially curious: what Crypto projects has A16Z actually invested in to put this at such a high strategic level? So I used AI to quickly check and looked through a few cases from the past half year. The result shows that the projects A16Z spent the most money on recently are Kalshi and PolyMarket, two prediction markets 😂 Especially Kalshi, which A16Z led in two consecutive rounds, with the exact amount undisclosed. Considering that the D round was the lead, and the E round was a participation round but the valuation has already reached $11 billion. I estimate that just for those two Kalshi rounds, A16Z may have invested about $200 million 😂. That's two hundred million dollars. In other words, the $15 billion A16Z raised this time, purely in terms of amount, is only enough to fund dozens of projects like Kalshi. Honestly, I’m a bit surprised. Prediction markets, from a technical standpoint, may not be worth much; I even doubt that a ten‑person team with matching‑trade experience and some Vibe Coding could build the product without hype. If we have to name a moat for Kalshi, it might be its licensing—after a long legal battle with the CFTC, it finally obtained a DCM license. ---separator--- That said, the story of prediction markets can be both small and large. Like what happened yesterday: a spokesperson suddenly stopped speaking at a very strange moment, causing the overall trend on prediction markets to flip dramatically (although this is likely a coincidence). Thus a view emerged: prediction markets might someday affect real‑world outcomes—if you wager enough money, you could potentially “push” a result to happen in reality. If you tell the story in that direction, it can indeed be elevated to the level of “national interest”. For example, opening contracts on foreign politics in prediction markets—such as a certain president taking office or a certain candidate losing an election—allowing capital to execute hidden trades that might actually cause the outcome in reality. ---separator--- You say what barriers Kalshi has, and it seems there aren’t many. Few U.S. institutions hold a DCM license, but there are a few. Instead, the VC money poured in can turn the track into an oligopolistic structure. Who gets funded becomes the “big boss”; those not funded, even with good technology, may struggle to stand out. So A16Z can rationalize its stance. If someday a prediction market contract could directly change another country’s political landscape, you could say it actually aligns with the so‑called capital investment protecting national interests...

#Babylon project secured a $15 million investment from #a16z by purchasing #BABY tokens. The funding will support the shift from collateralized to decentralized lending, integrating Bitcoin into #DeFi without bridges, unlocking frozen trillion-dollar liquidity. This step aims to activate idle assets through encrypted technologies that ensure security without intermediaries. #Bitcoin https://t.co/QpNtt6qYaA

When The Block takes notice, it’s usually because something fundamental is happening. We are grateful to see @TheBlock__ and @DangaWrites cover @a16zcrypto's investment in the Babylon Project and Trustless Bitcoin Vaults. "The development of this infrastructure is also designed to expand the utility of the protocol’s native token." The focus is simple: unlocking native Bitcoin as productive collateral, without custody or wrappers. Read More👇

a16z Crypto invested $15 million to purchase Babylon's BABY token, raising the project's total capital to $103 million, aiming to boost the Trustless Bitcoin Vaults infrastructure. Details: https://t.co/UByD3o7TBi https://t.co/wgdHnMemZu

the $baby people one of the hardest communities ngl