Celsius Network Weighs Offers for Mining Crypto

Celsius Network has reportedly received multiple bids for its platform and operations for mining crypto.

The bankrupt cryptocurrency lender told a bankruptcy court Tuesday (Dec. 20) that it has received offers for its retail platform, its mining business and a combination of both, Bloomberg reported Tuesday (Dec. 20).

The terms of the bids weren’t disclosed, and the firm’s advisors haven’t decided whether to sell pieces of the firm, to sell the firm as a whole or to aim for a different restructuring plan, according to the report.

The advisors will work with the potential buyer pool of 30 buyers to improve the bids and announce next steps in mid-January, the report said.

A company presentation introduced in court showed that Celsius Network held crypto worth $2.6 billion as of Nov. 25, that there’s a gap of $1.2 billion between the value of all its assets and its debts, that its crypto mining operations are generating positive operating cash flow and that the firm continues to build out those operations, the report said.

Celsius Network filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy July 13, a month after it had frozen customer accounts.

The company got into trouble by offering big yields to crypto depositors while making big loans that were backed by insufficient collateral. That left Celsius Network vulnerable to a market downturn.

The company froze withdrawals, swaps and transfers in June — in a “difficult but necessary” step to prevent a run and losses to customers, a member of the board of directors said at the time — and then filed for bankruptcy in July.

On Dec. 7, a judge ordered Celsius Network to return cryptocurrency in custody accounts to customers — a group of coins that was worth $44 million in September — and to return some coins that had been moved from interest-bearing accounts to custody accounts shortly before the firm’s bankruptcy filing.

The latter order applied to the coins involved in transfers that were under $7,500 — a group that was worth about $11 million in September — while the others remain with Celsius Network.

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