Lantern Finance Was Born From Crypto Lending’s Collapse — Here’s What Jung Won Kim and Prince Jindal Built Instead
From BitGo custody and no rehypothecation to XRP-backed loans, crypto trading and live human support, Lantern Finance is trying to build the kind of crypto lending platform its founders wished existed before the failures of 2022. The crypto lending industry learned some painful lessons in 2022. Customers who believed they were simply depositing digital assets or borrowing against their crypto discovered that behind the scenes, some platforms were involved in complex lending relationships, rehypothecation, institutional credit exposure and aggressive risk-taking. When the market turned, several of the biggest names in crypto lending collapsed. Celsius failed. BlockFi entered bankruptcy. Voyager collapsed. Genesis ran into serious credit problems. Billions of dollars in customer assets became trapped in bankruptcy proceedings, and confidence in centralized crypto lending was shattered. For Jung Won Kim and Prince Jindal, the crisis wasn’t something they simply watched from the sidelines. They experienced it as customers. And instead of concluding that crypto-backed lending was fundamentally broken, they came away with a different idea: The concept worked. The structure needed to change. That thinking ultimately became Lantern Finance. From Crypto Lending Customers to Founders Lantern Finance was founded in the aftermath of the 2022 crypto credit crisis by Jung Won Kim and Prince Jindal. Both founders brought experience from traditional finance. Kim’s background included work connected to Capital One and leveraged finance, while Jindal brought experience from Blackstone. But their motivation for launching Lantern came from something more personal. Both had participated in the earlier generation of crypto lending. Kim had become interested in digital assets years earlier after being introduced to Ethereum while working in venture capital. As crypto markets matured, he saw the attraction of centralized platforms that allowed investors to hold digital assets while accessing cash. The idea was simple and powerful. Instead of selling Bitcoin, Ethereum or another digital asset every time liquidity was needed, an investor could pledge the asset as collateral and borrow against it. That allowed the investor to potentially retain long-term exposure to the crypto asset while still accessing dollars. But when several large crypto lenders failed, customers discovered that custody and counterparty risk mattered just as much as interest rates. Kim and Jindal were among those affected by the collapse of platforms associated with the 2022 crypto credit crisis. Their conclusion was not that borrowing against crypto should disappear. They believed the industry needed a lending model built around stronger custody, better risk management, greater transparency and clearer alignment with borrowers. Lantern Finance was created around that philosophy. The Core Principle: Security First Lantern’s approach begins with a straightforward principle: Security first. That principle influences how the company handles borrower collateral. When a Lantern customer pledges cryptocurrency for a loan, Lantern says the loan collateral is held through BitGo Trust, an institutional digital-asset custodian. BitGo provides custody infrastructure used by institutional investors, exchanges and digital-asset businesses. Lantern says borrower collateral is held using cold-storage infrastructure and is not used to fund unrelated speculative activity. That is a critical distinction. When borrowers move crypto into a centralized lending arrangement, they generally give up direct control of those assets while the loan remains outstanding. The important question therefore becomes: Who actually controls the collateral? A borrower should know where the crypto is stored, who controls the keys, whether the assets can be transferred, whether they can be lent to someone else and what happens if the lender itself runs into financial trouble. Lantern has made those questions central to its platform. No Rehypothecation One of Lantern’s most important policies is what it says it does not do. Lantern says it does not rehypothecate borrower collateral. Rehypothecation occurs when collateral pledged by one customer is reused or pledged in another financial transaction. In traditional markets, rehypothecation is not necessarily unusual. But in crypto lending, it can create additional layers of counterparty risk. A customer may believe that his or her Bitcoin is simply sitting somewhere securing a loan. In reality, if those assets have been lent elsewhere, the customer’s collateral may depend on another borrower or institution returning the assets. If that counterparty fails, the original customer’s position can become much more complicated. The 2022 crypto lending collapse exposed exactly how dangerous interconnected credit relationships can become. Lantern says its customers’ pledged collateral is not lent out to generate additional yield and is not used for proprietary trading. That policy directly reflects the lessons that influenced the company’s creation. Institutional-Grade Custody Through BitGo Lantern describes its BitGo arrangement as institutional-grade custody. The company also states that BitGo’s custody structure includes up to $250 million in insurance coverage. That figure should be understood carefully. Insurance does not mean every type of potential loss is automatically covered. Insurance policies have terms, limits, exclusions and specific circumstances under which claims may or may not be paid. But custody through an established institutional provider is still an important factor borrowers may want to consider when comparing lenders. Lantern’s model attempts to separate the custody of loan collateral from the lender’s day-to-day business operations. That is a very different philosophy from the model used by some earlier crypto lending platforms. Lantern Supports More Than Bitcoin Lantern Finance has also differentiated itself by supporting a wider range of digital assets than many crypto lenders. As of October 2026, Lantern lists 13 cryptocurrencies that can be used as collateral for crypto-backed loans: Bitcoin (BTC)Ethereum (ETH)Solana (SOL)XRPLitecoin (LTC)Dogecoin (DOGE)Stellar (XLM)Cardano (ADA)Hedera (HBAR)Bitcoin Cash (BCH)Chainlink (LINK)Sui (SUI)XDC Network (XDC) That broader list matters because the crypto market has evolved far beyond Bitcoin-only portfolios. Many investors now hold substantial positions in XRP, Solana, Cardano, Chainlink and other large-cap digital assets. Lantern Finance gives qualifying holders of those assets another possible way to access liquidity without immediately selling. Borrowing Against XRP For the XRP community in particular, Lantern’s support is notable. Lantern allows eligible borrowers to use XRP as collateral for a crypto-backed loan. That means an XRP holder who needs liquidity may be able to pledge XRP, borrow dollars against the position and
