The company transferred Wrapped Bitcoin (wBTC) tokens into Bitcoin in March.
In the midst of its ongoing bankruptcy and restructuring process, Celsius‘ wallets have been quite active. Over the past week, the troubled cryptocurrency lender—which continues to be among the largest companies with a staked ETH portfolio—has transferred about $900 million worth of the digital asset.
Ether Movement of Celsius
The blockchain intelligence company Arkham provided data showing that Celsius transferred about $20 million of ETH to Wintermute OTC and Custody Withdrawals. The bankrupt cryptocurrency lending firm subsequently transferred 30,800 ETH, which at the time of writing was worth around $57 million, to a smart contract called “Figment ETH2 Beacon Depositor 1.”
Since the crypto lender’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing in July, the transaction to Figment, a non-custodial service, was one of its largest money transfers.
In addition, Arkham noted that Celsius released the $779 million in ETH it had staked using the Lido liquid staking derivatives technology, which enabled withdrawals on May 15 after upgrading to v2. The fact that many organizations that withdrew their staked ETH have already started re-staking them since mid-April does not surprise us about Celsius’s fund movement.
Simon Dixon, a founding member of Bitcoin and a creditor of Celsius, commented on the activity and suggested that the company might be “lining up for staking directly without Lido in the middle.” The platforms’ restructuring and creditor repayment plans may also include using the withdrawn ether.
The Celsius Story So Far
Earlier this month, Celsius made it possible for eligible customers to withdraw the final 6% of distributable custody assets from the platform after a court’s consent. Up until January of this year, the same users—the majority of whom have ever held funds in custody accounts—were only permitted to withdraw up to 94% of their assets.
The repayment action was seen as a step forward for the now-defunct crypto lender, which had previously frozen user withdrawals in June due to intense pressure following the abrupt failure of blockchain project Terra and the subsequent collapse of the cryptocurrency market.
In response to allegations of poor record-keeping and glaring deficiencies in its internal systems, Celsius filed for consolidating US and UK firms.
By concealing the “failing health” of the lending platform, its founder Alex Mashinsky is said to have defrauded investors out of billions of dollars in cryptocurrency. The executive, who resigned as CEO in September, filed a response in an effort to have the New York State case against him dismissed.