2023-04-24 23:22:26
© Reuters Coinbase, Gemini to Battle for Celsius Assets, Says Fortune
CriptoFácil – This Tuesday (25), in New York, the asset auction of the cryptocurrency lending company Celsius Network is scheduled. According to a report by Fortune, the exchanges Coinbase (NASDAQ:) and Gemini are on the list of participants that will compete for the assets of Celsius.
In July last year, Celsius declared bankruptcy and blocked customer withdrawals. At the time, the company claimed to have more than 1.7 million users and about 300,000 active users with balances of more than $100. In all, the company said it owed customers $4.7 billion.
In March, as reported by CriptoFácil, the company revealed the first signs of its restructuring plan. The company said it would refund up to 73% of the money investors have on the platform.
Gemini x Coinbase
According to the lawsuit seen by Fortune, one of the new groups seeking control of Celsius is Fahrenheit. The group has the backing of venture capitalist Michael Arrington and former blockchain project CEO and investment banker Ravi Kaza. Additionally, Arrington mentioned that Coinbase is one of the companies backing the Fahrenheit consortium in a since-deleted tweet on April 22, according to a Fortune report.
In the dispute there is also another group called the Blockchain Recovery Investment Committee, which has the support of companies such as the Gemini Trust, the twin brothers Winklevoss, and the fund manager VanEck.
The new bidders come after Celsius announced NovaWulf’s restructuring plan and received a lot of criticism for it. That’s because the plan called for only small lenders, most with less than $5,000 on the platform, to get around 70% of their funds back. The rest would recoup their resources in the form of tokenized equity in something called the Provenance Blockchain, which is an obscure project.
According to a source familiar with the matter, the new bidders’ plans would be better than NovaWulf’s. After all, they have the backing of cryptocurrency veterans who could extract more value from assets. Those Celsius assets include a loan book, stakes in several startups backed by venture capital firms, and a fleet of cryptocurrency mining machines.
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