Celsius Price Pumps 17% After Plan Emerges to Refocus Business

The price of CEL, a token issued by the troubled crypto lender Celsius Network, pumped around 17% in the market today as news broke that the company is exploring new business areas to stay alive.

At its highest, CEL reached $2.135 after punching through a key resistance level at around $2.04. At its peak the token was up more than 45% since the pump started at around 7:00 am UTC on Wednesday.

Since this morning, however, CEL has given back some of its gains, and was as of 11:40 am UTC trading at $1.74. It is up 17.4% for the past 24 hours and up close to 27% for the past 7 days.

From a technical outlook, CEL now looks strong and potentially set for further gains towards the highs from this morning. Still, it is worth noting that the price remains a far cry from the highs seen during a massive pump in mid-August, when CEL briefly touched the $4.6 level.

The price pump today followed news that Celsius CEO Alex Mashinsky plans to rebuild Celsius as a crypto custodian. The CEO and Oren Blonstein, another Celsius executive, said they hope to encourage prospective customers to store their cryptocurrencies with them, Cryptonews.com reported earlier today.

The new plan has been put forth as Celsius continues with court proceedings after filing for bankruptcy protection under Chapter 11 of the US bankruptcy code in July. The filing revealed a hole in Celsius’ balance sheet of close to $1.2bn.

The CEL token has been exceptionally volatile since Celsius first froze withdrawals for customers, and later filed for bankruptcy protection. The freezing of withdrawals came after a prolonged ‘bank run’ among Celsius’ customers, triggered by social media rumors about difficulties the company allegedly faced.

For now, however, June 13 – the date Celsius halted withdrawals – still marks the bottom for the CEL price. Since the bottom, the token has gained more than 1,000% in the market.

CEL remains the 66^th most valuable cryptoasset by market capitalization, ahead of well-known tokens like NEO and Synthetix Network (SNX), per CoinGecko.