Celsius Initiates $125M Transfer to Exchanges, FTX, And Alameda Follow-Suit

Jimmy Aki
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Bankrupt crypto lending firm Celsius has initiated transfers to centralized exchanges in a bid to pay back its creditors.

540k ETH Still On Its Records

Blockchain analytics platform Arkham Intelligence reported a $125 million transfer from Celsius protocol in a January 13 tweet on X (formerly Twitter).

The firm further broke down the transaction, revealing that an initial $95.5 million was moved to the Coinbase exchange and $29.7 million to another centralized crypto exchange, Falcon X, on the same day.

However, according to a blog post by Arkham Intelligence, Celsius still has a long way to go. The “unbank yourself” decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol still holds 540,000 Ether tokens worth $1.4 billion – at the time of publication – on its records.

While the fund transfers have been initiated, there has not been a specific date when creditors will begin receiving their digital funds.

Celsius’ latest steps follow a previous unstaking event, which saw it unlock a whopping 206,000 Ether tokens worth $407 million on January 5.

Providing insights into this move, the DeFi firm stated that it is rebalancing and recalling all of its digital assets to have ample liquidity to meet future needs.

According to the Celsius team, led by Alex Mashinsky in its heyday, the bulk of the funds would be deployed towards covering the legal fees incurred during the restructuring process soon after its bankruptcy declaration in July 2022.

The team also stated that part of the $407 million would be channeled towards offsetting their financial obligations to their creditors.

The DeFi protocol has also said it will distribute more BTC and ETH assets in the coming months, as outlined earlier in its recovery plan document.

Blockchain analytics firm Nansen also took a peek into the current pending ETH withdrawal requests and disclosed that over a third of these requests belong to the Celsius Network.

FTX, Alameda Also Initiate Transfers to CEX

The 2022 crypto winter was a tough one for most blockchain-facing businesses as it recorded the collapse of the Terra blockchain as well as the much-beloved centralized trading platform FTX and its sister company, Alameda.

Following its bankruptcy, FTX, alongside its CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, who is standing trial for fraud and other charges, has also attempted to address its obligations to creditors.

According to a post on X, blockchain analytics firm Spot on Chain disclosed that FTX and its venture capital arm, Alameda Research, jointly moved $11.72 million.

Details posted by Spot on Chain show that 200 Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC) worth $9.39 million was transferred to the Binance exchange. A similar 1,000 Ether tokens worth $2.33 million were moved to the Coinbase platform.

Meanwhile, FTX has not had smooth sailing in meeting its financial obligations to its creditors. The exchange, now run by an administrative team led by John Ray, has so far recovered over $7 billion in liquid assets, according to an interim report.

Nonetheless, the report noted a total of $8.7 billion in misappropriated assets have been identified. $6.4 billion is said to be in either fiat or stablecoin-backed assets.

The report also details that the FTX platform did not properly differentiate its company accounts from customer funds.

About Jimmy Aki PRO INVESTOR

Based in the UK, Jimmy is an economic researcher with outstanding hands-on and heads-on experience in Macroeconomic finance analysis, forecasting and planning. He has honed his skills having worked cross-continental as a finance analyst, which gives him inter-cultural experience. He currently has a strong passion for regulation and macroeconomic trends as it allows him peek under the global bonnet to see how the world works.