Bidders for the assets of the Celsius Network, which is undergoing bankruptcy proceedings, included Binance, Galaxy Digital, Bank to the Future, Cumberland and Novawulf. This was reported by Tiffany Fong.
She said the data had come into her hands as far back as late 2022. The journalist decided to publish them after, at one of the latest hearings, Celsius’s lawyers described the bids as ‘unconvincing’.
Rather than selling the assets, they proposed a plan to reorganise the firm into a regulated public company with a token issued to repay creditors’ obligations. According to the lawyers, this would yield greater restitution for investors than liquidating illiquid assets at current discounted prices.
The journalist noted that creditors, like most Celsius employees, have not had the opportunity to assess the platform’s proposals.
According to her data, Binance, for example, was prepared to buy certain cryptocurrencies for $15 million and transfer them to its trading platform. The plan did not contemplate the acquisition of FTT and CEL tokens, some illiquid coins, investments in equity, or the platform’s credit portfolio. The bid included $3 million to reward migrated Celsius users with $50 bonuses. It consisted of $10 in cash or stablecoins and $40 in the form of trading credit.
Galaxy Digital, a crypto merchant bank, proposed to buy about $66.8 million of the platform’s Ethereum assets used in staking. The purchase price implied an 83% discount to the 5-day smoothed moving average of the cryptocurrency’s quotes.
Market maker Cumberland made a bid totaling $1.8 billion. The deal envisaged payments:
- $333 million for stablecoins;
- $583 million for liquid assets (Bitcoin and Ethereum) with a 15% discount to market;
- $854 million for illiquid tokens;
- $11 million for the platform’s alternative investments, representing about 5% of their balance sheet.
Novawulf’s plan envisaged transferring all Celsius assets to a SEC-regulated platform NewCo, wholly owned by the creditors. They would receive proportional restitution of their claims in two tokens — Newco and Rev Share — and would participate in the platform’s trading profits. The company planned to invest up to $120 million in the project.
In Fong’s view, the latest offer was the most appealing and bore a strong resemblance to the token-issuance plan ultimately presented by Celsius’s lawyers.
Earlier, New York prosecutors accused former Celsius CEO Alex Mashinsky of deceiving investors by billions of dollars.
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