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You're listening to the Coin Desk Podcast Network.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to The Hash on a Friday.

You were watching us on Coin Desk TV and listening to us on the Coin Desk Podcast Network.

I'm Jen Sanasi, and on today's show, we got Sunderley Handegama, Will Foxley, and Adam B. Levine.

It's going to be a fun Friday show, everyone. Sondali, you're going to kick us off with our

only real upsetting story of the day. So let's get into it. I know. I always get the upsetting ones.

I feel like I love these. Let's go. Hong Kong crypto lender Babel Finance reportedly

lost $280 million in proprietary trades with customer funds, according to a report by the block.

Real quick, proprietary trading is when a firm or bank invests directly in the market for gains

as opposed to investing or trading

on behalf of clients. Babel suspended withdrawals last month due to liquidity pressures. The firm

reportedly lost around 8,000 Bitcoin and 56,000 ether in June. It's looking to convert the hundreds of millions of dollars of debt

into equity. All this was revealed in a restructuring proposal deck as it looks to get set up

for a line of credit to raise funds. The sad thing is that this is not the first time Babel has

reportedly messed with customer funds. In 2020, CoinDest published

this incredible saga involving leaked recordings of a private conversation with suggested

that Babel leveraged some user funds to long Bitcoin and faced potential default risks

during the Black Thursday market crash in March of 2020.

Following that crash, Babel allegedly asked for credit loans from Tether, so it could

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