Monat: Dezember 2022

• Celsius Network is set to hold auctions for its assets in January 2023.
• 30 potential bidders have already signed non-disclosure agreements.
• The crypto lender has also been given a green light to return some of the customers’ funds.

The bankrupt crypto lender Celsius Network is set to hold an auction of its assets on January 10 and it has already received 30 potential bidders. The auction was originally set to be held on December 15 this year but has since been pushed to next year.

With the bidding deadline of December 12 already passed, 125 parties have been contacted so far and 30 potential bidders have already signed non-disclosure agreements.

The assets set to be auctioned include Celsius retail platform and mining business.

The crypto lender has received several bids proposing different business structures and potential transactions from bidders looking to acquire its assets. For example, some have suggested migrating Celsius customers to the acquirer’s platform along with the assets.

Celsius also revealed that it has received a number of single-asset bids.

As of November 25, Celsius company held crypto assets worth about $2.6 billion. However, even with that many assets, Celsius is still $1.2 billion short of being able to pay off its debts even if it were to combine its crypto assets with its non-crypto assets.

Despite filing for bankruptcy on July 13 this year, the Celsius mining operations have been successful, generating positive operating cash flow every month this year as the company continues to deploy additional mining rigs.

Reopening withdrawals

On December 20, bankruptcy judge Martin Glenn approved a motion that Celsius had filed on September 1 and allowed the company to reopen withdrawals for some of its customers.

 The assets that will be eligible for withdrawal are “ineligible Withhold Assets,” the amounts less than $7,575 held in the custody program, and funds that were transferred from the Earn or Borrow Program into the custody program within 90 days of Celsius filing for the Chapter 11.

The post Celsius to return customer funds as January auction attracts 30 bidders appeared first on CoinJournal.

• Poor record keeping is making the unwinding of the collapse FTX exchange difficult.
• The new FTX management is trying to trace millions of dollars from several bank accounts.
• So far, the new management has identified over $1 billion.

FTX’s new management, which took over from the founder Sam Bankman-Fried, on Tuesday told a procedural hearing that it has identified assets worth more than $1 billion since it started a strategic review of its assets. It also said that it had located about $720 million held by US financial institutions, which it is yet to consolidate.

The US financial institutions were authorized to hold funds by the US Department of Justice and about $500 million are already confirmed held in US institutions.

The new FTX chief financial officer (CFO), Mary Cilia speaking under oath during the bankruptcy hearings said:

“We are reaching out to all of those banks and changing the signatories on the accounts so that we can get access to the accounts and move the cash as much as we can to authorized depository institutions.”

$423 million held at a single broker

The CFO also mentioned that about $423 million held by US authorities are from a single broker though she never mentioned the broker by name. Cilia said, “$485 million are already in an authorized deposit institution”

Besides the funds held in the US, there is about $130 million in cash that is locked up in Japan where local authorities have ring-fenced the funds for local customers.

Steve Coverick, a senior director at FTX’s financial advisors Alvarez & Marsal told the hearing that the new management is working to identify FTX’s international crypto assets and transfer them to cold wallets using custodial providers like Bitgo, which FTX hired in November.

Difficulties in winding up FTX

While the Chapter 11 bankruptcy hearings are supposed to wind up the FTX exchange, there have been complications due to poor record keeping and weak governance under the former CEO, SBF. The new management is being forced to look for details by reviewing customer terms and conditions stored in a variety of places including Slack and Google Drive.

As a result, the exchange is yet to file a statement of its financial position or of its assets as required under the US bankruptcy law. It however estimates it could do so in April next year.

The post The new FTX management has located $1B in assets, including $720M cash appeared first on CoinJournal.