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Celsius Moves $59M of Altcoins in Possible Prelude to Converting Into BTC, ETH
A U.S. bankruptcy court previously granted the crypto lender permission to sell its altcoin holdings for bitcoin and ether starting in July.
Updated Jul 17, 2023, 3:16 p.m. Published Jul 17, 2023, 3:10 p.m.
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Bankrupt crypto lender Celsius Network deposited a total of $59.4 million of cryptocurrencies to institutional crypto exchange FalconX early Monday, potentially to sell them for bitcoin (BTC) and ether (ETH) after a U.S. bankruptcy court late last month gave its go-ahead for the move.
The maneuver could apply significant sell pressure on the tokens’ prices due to deteriorated liquidity, crypto analytics firm Kaiko noted in a report last week.
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Blockchain data by Arkham Intelligence shows that a Celsius-controlled crypto wallet sent $13.6 million in Polygon’s MATIC, $10.7 million in Chainlink’s LINK, $7.3 million in AAVE to a FalconX deposit address.
In an earlier batch of transactions on Monday, the company transferred another $8.5 million in LINK, $7.8 million in Synthetix’s SNX and $3 million in Binance’s BNB token. The firm also sent more than a million dollars worth of, ZRX, 1INCH and Tether’s gold-pegged stablecoin XAUT.
The moves followed a U.S. bankruptcy judge’s decision on June 30 to allow the embattled lender to convert its stash of smaller tokens worth some $170 million to the two largest cryptocurrencies by market cap starting this month. Celsius filed for bankruptcy protection last summer after halting withdrawals. Its former chief executive, Alex Mashinsky, was arraigned Thursday on fraud charges by the Department of Justice (DOJ).
Recently, Celsius moved some $64 million of tokens out from custody wallets to its over-the-counter deposit wallet, foreshadowing potential token sales.
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