Tag: Judge Martin Glenn

Celsius hearing, December 8: Selling GK8 to Galaxy Digital

  • By Amy Castor and David Gerard
  • It’ll take a lot of Patreon money to buy us apartments in the Bahamas, but you’ll never know if you don’t try! Here’s Amy’s, and here’s David’s. Give so we can point and laugh at SBF some more.

Celsius is bankrupt, with liabilities that are hugely greater than its assets. So they’re selling what can be sold — such as subsidiaries that are solvent going concerns.

Celsius bought Israeli crypto custody company GK8 in October 2021 for $115 million — $100 million in cash, and the rest in their own CEL tokens.

Now Celsius wants to sell GK8 to Mike Novogratz’s Galaxy Digital for $44 million, plus $100,000 assumed liabilities (debts that Galaxy will be responsible for). This is a huge loss — but Galaxy was the only qualified bidder. [Notice of successful bidder, PDF]

Galaxy wants GK8’s assets free and clear. The tricky bit is whether creditors in the bankruptcy have any claims against Celsius subsidiaries and affiliates. So the December 8 hearing was about this sale. [Amended agenda, PDF]

Judge Martin Glenn, who is overseeing the bankruptcy, was inclined to approve the sale — if the tricky details can be resolved.

This was a “hybrid hearing,” taking place both in the Southern District of New York courtroom and over Zoom. This hearing was on Thursday after a long, exhausting week of hours of hearings on Monday on Earn accounts and more hours of hearings on Wednesday on Custody and Withhold accounts.

Lawyers were dumping GK8 documents on Judge Glenn at the last minute on Wednesday, so he was up late the night before reading them — much to his displeasure. Everyone knows Celsius is running out of money. The holidays are coming up, and the mood was tense. The judge blew up at the lawyers more than once. 

Why does Galaxy Digital want GK8?

Galaxy Digital is Mike Novogratz’s crypto hedge fund. Galaxy is publicly traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange (GLXY.TO). Its stock is down 83% in the last year.

GK8 was founded in 2018 by two former Israeli government cybersecurity experts, Lior Lamesh and Shahar Shamai, the CEO and CTO of the company. Even though the firm has forty employees, these two pretty much are the company.

Celsius had planned to integrate GK8’s custody product into its own platform. But alas, Celsius filed for bankruptcy in July. So it started shopping for a buyer for GK8.

GK8 is a going concern — but it doesn’t seem ever to have made money. In fact, it needs funds to keep going.

We don’t understand what Galaxy wants GK8 for. This sale doesn’t make sense.

This could be an acquihire — Galaxy wants the founders, and the founders insist on bringing the company.

Or the sale could be Galaxy attempting to plug a hole in its books by buying a custody firm — if they account for assets in custody US-style, as company money with a liability, and not as customer money. (Now, you might think that resolving this would mean eventually stiffing the customers.)

But we’re speculating here. Maybe Novogratz will get a GK8 tattoo to go with his Terra-Luna tattoo?

We just know that Celsius needs to sell GK8 as soon as possible — and Galaxy Digital are a keen buyer, and GK8 would be very happy to go to Galaxy.

Do Celsius customers have a claim against GK8?

Do creditors have claims against just particular Celsius entities, or do they also have claims against Celsius subsidiaries and close affiliates? Such as ones the company wants to sell?

Celsius and the Unsecured Creditors’ Committee (UCC) both feel that Celsius’ terms of use — in all eight versions — made it clear that depositors were contracting with Celsius Network LLC and its affiliates. 

But Andrew LeBlanc from Milbank, for the preferred equity holders in Celsius, had a different interpretation of the terms of service: “there are limitations in the documents that exclude claims against affiliates.”  

Celsius, the UCC, and the preferred equity holders want the court to approve a briefing schedule that would allow them to clear a path for Celsius to come up with a reorganization plan. Here’s the briefing schedule. [Doc 1338, PDF]

Judge Martin Glenn said this is a gating issue — a blocker on a reorganization plan — and he wants it resolved sooner rather than later. He told the lawyers to gather their extrinsic evidence — evidence of contractual intent that isn’t written in the contract — so they can work out everything in a single hearing. 

“I don’t want this being prolonged. I think this is an important issue,” said the judge. He told Patrick Nash (Kirkland & Ellis), Andrew Zatz (White & Case), and LeBlanc to revise the briefing schedule accordingly.

Why the sale of GK8 assets is messy

Celsius will run out of cash by early 2023. It needs this GK8 sale to go through soon. Here’s the sale motion. [Doc 1615, PDF]

Dan Latona from Kirkland, for Celsius, told the court that the GK8 sale was a result of “hard-fought and arms-length negotiations between the debtors and potential bidders and their respective advisors.”

Judge Glenn cut him off immediately to point out that this wasn’t just Celsius and the advisors negotiating — GK8 insiders also heavily negotiated, insisting on employment contracts and transfer of all potential avoidance claims, so that Galaxy could buy GK8 assets clear of any reclamation rights. “I have real questions on whether this is an arms-length transaction,” he said.

An avoidance action is an action to undo (avoid) certain transactions that the debtor engaged in before the bankruptcy. These include clawbacks.

Centerview, an investment banking advisor, managed the marketing and bidding. The GK8 sale started as an equity sale but morphed into an asset sale. In his declaration, Centerview’s Ryan Keilty said: “During the second round, all prospective bidders indicated an asset sale was the only structure in which bidders were willing to bid.” [Doc 1622, PDF]

Keilty explained that Celsius would have preferred an equity sale, as “a path of least resistance” — but the bidders insisted on an asset sale, given the backdrop of potentially billions of dollars of exposure in customer-related claims. 

Galaxy’s bid was conditioned on retaining GK8 founders Lamesh and Shamai. In turn, Lamesh and Shamai were unwilling to continue with Galaxy without certainty as to their future. On December 2, the parties struck an agreement: Galaxy would pay $44 million in cash, plus $100,000 of assumed liabilities for GK8.

To complete the sale, Celsius filed Chapter 11 for the GK8 corporate entity. They want approval to appoint Celsius CEO Chris Ferraro as a foreign representative and to file recognition proceedings in Israel to seek enforcement of the sale order. Later in the hearing, Judge Glenn approved first-day motions for GK8.

The asset purchase agreement contemplates assuming all operational liabilities. “The purpose of the sale is to insulate the GK8 assets from the hang of potential Celsius account-related claims,” said Latona.

Avoidance claims

GK8 has forty employees. Judge Glenn was concerned that if any of them had crypto on Celsius and withdrew those assets within 90 days (if retail buyers), a year (if insiders), or even up to two years (in the case of fraudulent conveyance) before Celsius filed bankruptcy, it might raise so-called “avoidance issues.” 

Judge Glenn wanted to know if anyone had looked into potential avoidance claims. “If that analysis showed there were $50 million in claims for the individuals, the $44 million price tag just disappeared. You’re getting nothing.”

Latona for Celsius said was unlikely it would be $50 million in avoidance actions, but the judge pushed on this topic. “How do you know?”

The judge, who had only just read some of the GK8 filings — because they were all sprung on him the day before — went ballistic. “You’ve provided the court with zero analysis of the potential avoidance claims against any of these people. Maybe there aren’t any. But I don’t know whether you are proposing to transfer a valuable asset of the estate to Galaxy. And I am not approving a sale until I understand that, with evidence.” 

Latona stressed that the legal claims would have little if any value. Zatz for the UCC said that avoidance claims, if any, would remain property of the bankruptcy estate, and are not being transferred.

The judge was somewhat mollified by Latona and Zatz. But he still wanted one or more declarations along with a memorandum of law summarizing the analysis that Zatz provided about specific provisions of the purchase agreement — i.e., what potential claims are being transferred to Galaxy and what claims remain with Celsius. 

Shara Cornell for the US Trustee thought GK8 should have its own creditors’ committee. Cornell also noted that GK8 hadn’t filed schedules yet. Judge Glenn said he couldn’t imagine there being a separate creditors’ committee for GK8, and overruled her objections. 

Ron D’Aversa from Orrick, for Galaxy Digital, worried that Judge Glenn’s additional request for memorandums of law and declarations would delay the GK8 sale: “The timeline, the sequence, along with everything else in this agreement was painstakingly negotiated for months,” he told the court. 

Judge Glenn, who had already been doing double time reading Celsius bankruptcy filings all week, didn’t like being told he had to move faster. He ripped into D’Aversa: “You are not going to cram down unreasonable deadlines for me to act. So go back to your client and tell them that you can either negotiate now for a revised schedule or you can just blow up the deal. And that is too bad, as far as I am concerned, but don’t tell me that I have to act today or tomorrow or Monday, because it isn’t going to happen.”

Pro se creditor Simon Dixon asked if the GK8 deal could be settled in bitcoin, rather than dollars. Galaxy has an OTC (over-the-counter) trading desk, so in his mind, this made sense. “Any sale in bitcoin would be very beneficial to the estate” — that is, creditors could get their bitcoins back. The judge told Dixon that was not going to happen. 

Judge Glenn said he would withhold a ruling on the GK8 asset sale until he got memoranda of law and one or more declarations specifically addressing the issues regarding the avoidance claims. But he was “tentatively inclined to approve the sale of the GK8 assets.”

Latona and Zatz said they would both do a filing in support of the sale by Monday at 5 p.m. 

First-day motions and uncontested matters

Judge Glenn granted several administrative motions, including the motion allowing Celsius CEO Chris Ferarro to represent GK8 as a foreign entity in Israel. [Doc 1626, PDF; Doc 1628, PDF; Doc 1637, PDF) 

Celsius wants to repay a DeFi loan of $3.26 million loan in USDC and get back collateral (wrapped BTC and USDC) worth $7.5 million. The revised order just says that the judge has to rule that Earn is a property of the estate. [Doc 1360, PDF; Doc 1636, PDF]

The judge said that Celsius could go ahead and pay back the loans — but the collateral would have to be held in a separate wallet subject to the court’s determination on whether Earn assets are property of the estate, which he hadn’t ruled on yet.

What’s next?

An omnibus hearing in the Celsius bankruptcy is scheduled for December 20. We expect that issues in the sale of GK8 will be in that somewhere. Further omnibus hearings are scheduled for January 24, 2023, and February 15, 2023. [Doc 1393, PDF]

It’s important to keep in mind that this week’s hearings have been furious arguments over the alignment of the deck chairs on the Titanic. But the iceberg is still there. Celsius is flat broke. There’s no business. There are pennies left for creditors at best. Celsius is a shambling zombie. It should have been liquidated in July.

There’s also the much-anticipated final version of the Examiner’s Report, including the question of whether Celsius was operating a Ponzi. And there are still multiple state regulators looking to issue charges against Celsius, and possibly against founder Alex Mashinsky personally. The fun stuff should really get going in 2023.

Posted on by Amy Castor 1

Celsius hearings, December 5: Whose stablecoins are these? KERP bonuses, new deadline for restructuring plan

  • By Amy Castor and David Gerard
  • Send us money! Our work is funded via our Patreons — here’s Amy’s, and here’s David’s. Your monthly contributions help greatly!

The Celsius Network bankruptcy held two hearings on Monday, December 5. The first was to establish ownership of Earn accounts and see if Celsius can sell $18 million in stablecoins. The second was an omnibus hearing, dealing with multiple motions. Amy sat through six tedious hours of this, so you wouldn’t have to. [Agenda, PDF; Agenda, PDF]

A Chapter 11 bankruptcy generally has two outcomes: a bankruptcy sale (known as a “363 sale”) and the confirmation of a plan of reorganization. Celsius wants to find a buyer for this ransacked corpse. But first, they have to decide who owns what. They can only sell what’s theirs to sell. The morning hearing was bitter arguments about the spare change in the stiff’s pockets.

Celsius is burning cash at a furious rate. They have no idea how to even coherently propose an ongoing business. So they need to keep finding new ways to keep up the farce and pay tens of millions in advisor and professional fees per month.

The word “liquidation” came up a few times in the first hearing. This ice cube is melting fast.

Whose are the stablecoins?

Celsius wants permission to sell $18 million in stablecoins to pay for ongoing business operations. The stablecoins are held in Earn accounts — Celsius’ main product. You would deposit cryptos and be paid interest on them.

But do the stablecoins belong to the bankruptcy estate or do they belong to the individual Earn account holders? This is what Judge Martin Glenn needs to decide.

Celsius will be out of cash to pay ongoing bills — payroll, vendors, and expensive professionals for the bankruptcy — by late February or early March. The burn rate for Chapter 11 legal costs and professional fees is $15 million to $20 million per month. Celsius needs a cash injection by January or March 2023 the latest. [Doc 1328, PDF]

Interim CEO Chris Ferraro says that right now, the bitcoin mining business is cash positive (which surprises us) — but that too will need a cash infusion by March 2023. 

Celsius (the debtors) and the Unsecured Creditors’ Committee (UCC) think the stablecoins belong to the bankruptcy estate, which would give them the right to sell the coins for cash. But the account holders want their personal money back.

The stablecoins that Celsius wants to sell add up to $18,111,551. That’s 16,549,259 USDT, 1,119,089 NCDAI, 360,743 BUSD, and some shrapnel. Alvarez & Marsal’s Robert Campagna, Celsius’ restructuring advisor, admitted that the stablecoins buy them just a month of continued operations.

“If we sell $18 million now and have access to cash, we can always buy stablecoins again later,” said Campagna. LOL, like Celsius is going to have cash later. But anyway.

If Celsius is allowed to sell the stablecoins, the funds will not be used to cover the bitcoin mining operations. [Doc 1325, PDF]

So what happens after they burn through their stablecoins? Other sources of money include the settlement with Prime Trust, worth around $17 million — but Prime Trust will refund in crypto, not cash. Celsius also hopes for $44 million from the potential sale of Celsius’ custody solution GK8 to Galaxy Digital. GK8 is an Israeli firm that Celsius bought in November 2021 for $115 million. So they’ll take a 60% loss.

Other options to keep the business afloat include intercompany loans and debtor-in-possession financing — but those carry their own risks, Ferraro said. “They require us to post collateral and risk that coins would not be returned if the coins drop in value.” 

What company is going to lend money to Celsius? What collateral? What bank? What?

What did I just sign?

The terms of service for the Earn product changed a lot — in ways that contradicted what Celsius founder Alex Mashinsky had told customers.

Celsius updated its terms eight times between 2018 and September 2022, asking customers to accept changes each time by clicking a box. If they didn’t click on the box, they couldn’t access their coins.

Later versions of the terms, such as version six, more clearly asserted that Celsius owned the deposited cryptos — as is normal with any bank or investment firm, who then have a liability to the depositors. Even as Mashinsky said things that sounded like the investors owned their deposits.

Many small creditors objected that they weren’t aware of the important changes, or that they didn’t even agree to the changed terms.  

More than 90% of Earn account holders signed off on version six of the terms of service, per court filings. These customers held the majority of the coins in the Earn program.

Oren Blonstein, Celsius’ chief compliance officer, was called to the stand. Here are his original and supplementary declaration. [Doc 1327, PDF; Doc 1584, PDF]

Blonstein spent his time at Celsius administering the company’s compliance with the Bank Secrecy Act — money laundering law.

The state attorneys — Layla Milligan for Texas and Karen Cordry for multiple other states — went in hard on Blonstein.

Blonstein told Milligan that they tracked customer activity including acceptance of the terms of use.

This is an amazing interchange between Milligan and Blonstein (as quickly noted by Amy, please excuse errors):

Milligan: To your knowledge, was the business ever in compliance with money transmission laws? 

Blonstein: My understanding is based on a discussion with money transmission laws. 

Milligan: But you are not aware if the company was in compliance with state or federal securities laws?

Blonstein: Yes, correct. 

Cordry closely questioned Blonstein on how they flagged the change of terms — if the changes were ever called out to the customers. Judge Glenn asked Blonstein if the change of ownership in particular was brought to the customers’ attention.

Blonstein admits they didn’t flag the changes, but the customers had to tick the box and agree before they could proceed. Nor was the prior version of the terms available for a customer to compare them.

But Blonstein didn’t think any of this was a substantive issue: “I viewed the wording on the Earn program as you are giving coins to the company to use.”

The stablecoins will likely go to the estate

Despite the arguments over ownership of the stablecoins, Judge Glenn was leaning toward putting them into the bankruptcy estate — because that’s what the terms said, and that’s what you’d expect of an investment product.

Judge Glenn seemed skeptical of the terms meaning anything other than that Celsius owned the coins and had a liability to the depositor. “It was a lending platform, so they had to deploy the assets. There wasn’t a commitment to pay back specific assets.”

It wasn’t like Celsius would use the money to gamble in a “slot machine in Monte Carlo” — they’d use it to pay the bills, noted the judge.

He was also more comfortable if the stablecoins were converted to actual dollars anyway, given how crazy crypto is right now: “The dollars will frankly be safer than crypto.”

Shara Cornell for the US Trustee and Layla Milligan for Texas were not happy. Celsius had not complied with state regulations. The terms of service may have been an illegal contract, and thus void, Milligan argued. 

Judge Glenn responded that ownership of Earn cryptos had been a “gating issue” (an obstacle to recovery) ever since Celsius filed for bankruptcy in July 2022. “They didn’t only just spring this on anyone.”

Celsius had failed hard at compliance, but any buyer would have to comply with regulations — and if Celsius had broken securities laws, “you’ll get your pound of flesh against them,” he told Milligan.

Judge Glenn said that he wouldn’t rule on the stablecoins this week. But we think he’s going to let Celsius sell the coins. Matt Levine at Bloomberg concurred — because not having the money to pay back a liability is what “bankruptcy” means. [Bloomberg]

KERP motion

Celsius employees have been running away screaming. In early 2022, the company had over 900 employees. They are now down to 167 employees. Attrition is a real problem. 

In the afternoon omnibus hearing, Judge Glenn approved Celsius’ Key Employee Retention Plan (KERP) to give out up to $2.8 million in bonuses to 59 key employees, so they don’t quit. Previously, he had denied the motion because Celsius and their lawyers had blacked everything pertinent out. [Doc 1426, PDF; Bloomberg]

You can’t really say no to a KERP if a company is trying to stay a going concern. We know very well that Celsius is a shambling zombie — but while it’s in Chapter 11, the judge probably has to treat it otherwise. 

Celsius lawyers also need to look into who transferred crypto within 90 days of the bankruptcy filing. Those employees will not get bonuses.

Most of the KERP payments will be no more than $75,000. Salaries for the KERP employees range from $25,000 to $425,000.

Celsius will totally come up with a plan, honest

Next, Judge Glenn agreed to grant Celsius’ motion to extend exclusivity  — the exclusive right to come up with a new business plan — until February 15.  

After a Chapter 11 filing, you normally have 120 days to come up with a bankruptcy plan. Celsius still doesn’t have a plan. Judge Glenn said that this is not unusual for large companies. The court can extend the period of exclusivity, though the total period with extensions cannot exceed 18 months.

Once that exclusivity period is up, any party in the bankruptcy can introduce their own reorganization plan. There are already some plans being floated by Celsius creditors. More court time — and bankruptcy estate money — will then be spent discussing all the plans.

Kirkland’s Patrick Nash, appearing for Celsius, wanted to avoid such a free-for-all. Celsius is working to sell the GK8 custody business, and they are working with the UCC on a reorganization they can both agree on. The US Trustee also agreed on extending exclusivity. 

Judge Glenn concurred that lifting exclusivity now would lead to a free-for-all. He worried that a pile of new plans would be “a crushing load on my chambers.” Remember, he has to actually read all these hundreds of pages of legal filings.

The judge can see that Celsius is a melting ice cube and it’s just consuming money. But Celsius has to come up with something. He granted the motion.

For Celsius, this is just a game that they have to play to keep shambling forward and paying themselves from creditor funds. 

Celsius v. Stone et al. 

Jason Stone of KeyFi was Celsius’ DeFi trading guy. Stone is suing Celsius for non-payment. Celsius has countersued, calling Stone incompetent and a thief.

Later in the hearing, Judge Glenn denied a motion by KeyFi and Stone to dismiss Celsius’ counterclaims. [Doc 17, PDF]. 

Stone is being represented by Kyle Roche, formerly of Roche Freedman. He is now in his own practice. Roche is not an eloquent courtroom speaker. He rambles interminably, and Judge Glenn was getting noticeably annoyed at him.

Roche said that Celsius’s claim should be dismissed because the issue is a contractual dispute, and Stone was authorized to transfer the assets in dispute to KeyFi under an asset purchase agreement. Celsius argued that Stone was not a party to the cited APA.

Judge Glenn said he would be denying the motion for now. He told the parties to complete discovery before a scheduled January hearing on Celsius’ motion for a preliminary injunction in the dispute — and he didn’t want them dragging their feet.

Roche said he had collected 150,000 documents as part of discovery. Glenn asked when Roche would produce the documents. Roche said that he had been busy because his grandmother died.

Prime Trust

Judge Glenn approved the settlement with Prime Trust, returning $17 million in cryptos to Celsius that Prime had been holding since the two stopped doing business in June 2021. [Doc 20; PDF]  

Celsius gets cryptos, not the actual dollars it needs to pay the bankruptcy professionals — hence why they want to sell the stablecoins to pay the bills.

Next time

We’ll be writing up the December 7 hearing on who owns the Custody and Withhold accounts and the December 8 hearing on the GK8 sale. Send Amy money for eardrops! [Agenda, PDF; Agenda, PDF]

Posted on by Amy Castor 3

Crypto collapse: Bitcoin stagnant, selling Celsius and Voyager, how 3AC died

“I kept up the bluff, hoping that I might eventually hit upon some workable plan to pay all my creditors in full.” 

— Charles Ponzi, The Rise of Mr. Ponzi

Crypto has crashed, and some of our readers are asking us why the price of bitcoin has been holding steady at around $19,000 to $20,000 for the past few months. Why won’t it go down further?

We think the price of bitcoin is a high wire act. If the price drops too low, some leveraged large holders could go bust. So the number needs to be kept pumped above that level. If the price goes up too far, the suckers — not just retail, but the bitcoin miners — may be tempted to cash out at last.  

The idea is to pump just enough to keep the price up — but not so much that suckers dump their bitcoins directly into the pump.

If too many bagholders try to sell, what quickly becomes obvious is there are no actual buyers. At least, none with real money. 

The party is over. Retail investors have all gone home, so there are no more suckers getting in line to pump the price up anymore. Coinbase’s 10-Q showed a drop in retail dollars.

In addition to a dearth of real dollars, there’s also been a dearth of fresh tethers coming in since June. That dearth lasted until October 25 — when a billion tethers were printed and prices suddenly jumped 10%, just in time to liquidate a pile of short-margin traders on FTX.

Bitcoin miners in North America have been taking on increased debt, so there’s still no real incentive for them to sell their bitcoin. Core Scientific is the exception, as we note below, because they’re running out of cash — not least because they’re stuck with hosting Celsius.

Bitcoin derivatives — assets that derive their value from bitcoin — aren’t doing well either. The ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF (BITO) tracks the CME’s bitcoin futures. These are just bets in dollars on the price of bitcoin. Bloomberg Intelligence analyst James Seyffart says: “If you just want exposure to Bitcoin” — i.e., not doing anything so gauche as touching a bitcoin — “BITO is the best option in the ETF landscape, at least in the US.” But in the more than a year that it’s existed, BITO has performed even worse than bitcoin itself. BITO holders have mostly stayed holding, so its holders are just like bitcoin bagholders too. [Bloomberg] 

Celsius: the state of play

Celsius Network is dead. It’s an ex-parrot. Most of the back-and-forth in the bankruptcy is over the spare change that might be in the corpse’s pockets. Also, the spare change is being nibbled away by lawyers’ fees and operational costs. So the creditors think it’s time to see what they can get by just selling it all for parts.

At the same time, Celsius is saying “I’m not dead yet!” and throwing up plans to come back to life. That’s the difference between a Chapter 7 liquidation and a Chapter 11 reorganization — Celsius has to pretend it has a future.

And also, the US Trustee got an examiner on the case, to see just what happened here — if this bankruptcy was the result of ineptitude … or of Celsius being a scam. 

The examiner’s report is a wild card. It could blow up the whole bankruptcy proceeding. We think the Trustee, who is part of the Department of Justice, suspects Celsius is a crime scene.

Celsius’ bidding process approved

Judge Martin Glenn has approved the bidding procedure plan for Celsius to sell virtually all of its assets — including its mining business. He is quite concerned that this business is, in bankruptcy jargon, a “melting ice cube,” and wants to make the sale happen for the sake of the creditors. [Memorandum Opinion and Order, PDF]

The initial bid deadline is November 21. Final bids are due on December 12. An auction, if necessary, is scheduled for December 15.

The court directed the Trustee to “promptly” appoint a privacy ombudsman with experience in consumer privacy laws to protect consumer data. The Trustee has appointed Lucy L. Thompson. [Appointment, PDF; Order, PDF]

The Trustee, the examiner, and the consumer privacy ombudsman will be able to listen in on the auction — but they can’t interfere.

Celsius is required to submit any stalking horse approval to the court. A stalking horse is a bid that is arranged in advance to prevent other bidders from making lowball offers.  

The final deadline for bids falls after the examiner begins to reveal her findings. An interim report is due on November 18, and an initial report is due on December 10.

Your keys, whose coins?

The court has yet to decide whether the contents of Celsius Custody and Withhold accounts belong to the individual customers, or to the bankruptcy estate. 

The issues are set to be heard on December 7 and 8, and they’ll raise a host of questions about what constitutes ownership in crypto. If someone else controls the keys to your crypto, is that really your crypto? There is no straightforward answer to this.

In a letter filed with the court on October 17, Judge Glenn notes: “cases involving cryptocurrency may raise legal issues for which there are no controlling legal precedents in this Circuit or elsewhere in the United States or in other countries in which cases arise.”

So, he’ll be using the Law Commission of England and Wales’ lengthy and detailed “Digital Assets Consultation Paper” as his framework in this case. [Doc 1073, PDF; Consulting Paper]

We think he’ll be particularly interested in Chapter 16 of the paper, which specifically talks about custody and what happens in an insolvency. 

This is surprisingly big news for US crypto in general — it will introduce a whole swathe of legal thinking that’s entirely new for US crypto regulation and jurisprudence. This may turn out to be a lasting consequence of the Celsius bankruptcy.

Who owns cryptos in custody is already fraught. A few months ago, it turned out that cryptos held in Coinbase Custody are not the customer’s cryptos, being held by Coinbase — instead, they’re assets of Coinbase that are liabilities Coinbase has to the customer, just like cryptos on deposit on the Coinbase trading platform. This is precisely not what Coinbase was selling Custody to its customers as! But that’s how SEC regulations said to account for it.

No equity committee for you

Judge Glenn has denied the motion for an official equity committee, which would have allowed Celsius investors to bill their professional fees to the bankruptcy estate. We discussed this motion last time.

It’s actually not uncommon for equity security holders to request the appointment of official equity committees to represent their interests in bankruptcy cases — and to get a formal seat at the negotiations table. 

But in this case, Judge Glenn wasn’t convinced. He thinks the equity investors already have adequate representation in the form of existing stakeholders, particularly the board of directors, who literally represent the owners of the company. The court also feels there is little chance investors will recoup any of their $400 million — it’s normal in bankruptcy for equity holders to get zero — and the costs involved are unlikely to benefit the estate. [Doc 1166, PDF]

The equity investors also want Celsius to list liabilities and assets in dollars, not crypto — which is quite normal even for volatile and illiquid assets like crypto. [Doc 1183, PDF] 

Discharge objections

The purpose of filing Chapter 11 is to wipe out debt and start anew. But a party can object to the discharge of a particular debt — or the entire bankruptcy case — by filing an adversary proceeding, as we detailed last time.

In Chapter 11, the deadline to file objections to dischargeability is 60 days after the first creditors’ meeting. Celsius has agreed with state regulators to extend the states’ deadline by six months, to April 18, so the states can finish their investigations. And they’ve agreed on the same with the Federal Trade Commission. [Doc 1107, PDF; Order, PDF]

The Securities and Exchange Commission wants to extend its deadline to January 17. If Celsius raised money in a way that knowingly violated securities law or other laws — which they totally did, come on — then those debts might not be dischargeable. [Order, PDF]

Other Celsius stuff

As we mentioned last time, Core Scientific doesn’t want to keep paying the ever-increasing electricity bills for hosting Celsius’ bitcoin mining. Core Scientific, Celsius, and the Unsecured Creditors’ Committee are asking Judge Glenn to schedule a hearing on the matter on or after November 9. [Scheduling, PDF]

Celsius’ bills are a big problem for Core Scientific, who are already short on cash. Core Scientific dumped $20 million of bitcoin in September, and still only has $27 million in cash on hand — they burned through $25 million in the last month. They are on the verge of filing for bankruptcy themselves: [SEC]

“Furthermore, the Company may seek alternative sources of equity or debt financing, delay capital expenditures or evaluate potential asset sales, and potentially could seek relief under the applicable bankruptcy or insolvency laws. In the event of a bankruptcy proceeding or insolvency, or restructuring of our capital structure, holders of the Company’s common stock could suffer a total loss of their investment.”

Data Finnovation thinks he’s found Tether’s loans to Celsius, which are a major point of contention in the Celsius bankruptcy. “We found the Tether-Celsius loans, Tether’s equity investment into Celsius, and can therefore prove a lot about both defects in the Celsius business model and questionable conduct by Tether.” [Data Finnovation] 

There’s failing upward, and then there’s whatever this is: ex-Celsius exec Aaron Lovine joins JPMorgan as the new executive director of crypto regulatory policy! [Reuters]  

The next Celsius omnibus hearing is November 1. The November 30 omnibus hearing has been rescheduled for December 5. [Doc 1169, PDF]  

Voyager Digital 

Voyager is trying to sell itself off to FTX US. The deal is still tentative. Texas is concerned that FTX is offering unregistered securities to US retail customers. New York is sniffing around Voyager as well.

Voyager’s sale to FTX is part of Voyager’s broader bankruptcy plan, which creditors need to vote on next month. If they vote yes, the court still has to confirm the plan. A hearing for plan confirmation is set for December 8. In the meantime, Judge Micheal Wiles wants Voyager to stay open to better offers. 

The sale to FTX is valued at about $1.4 billion, of which $51 million is in cash. As part of the sale, FTX US would move customers onto its platform and return them 72% of their claims. [Second Amended Plan, PDF; Bloomberg; Bloomberg Law, archive]

Only creditors who transition to FTX US will receive crypto — customers who don’t go to FTX US will receive cash from the bankruptcy estate. FTX US doesn’t support Voyager’s VGX token, but it has offered to purchase all VGX for $10 million.

Voyager is pushing the FTX sale plan hard. Creditors have until November 29 to cast their votes. [Voyager, archive]

We mentioned on October 16 that Texas objected to the Voyager sale because the state was going after FTX, and then the rest of the crypto media covered the story the day after we posted it. The Texas Tribune spoke to Joe Rotunda, Director of the TSSA Enforcement Division, who discovered that FTX would let him trade securities from his Austin office. [Texas Tribune]

In its response to objections, Voyager holds that the sale to FTX is within its business judgment. For Texas’ objections regarding FTX, they’re adding a note that nothing should be construed as restraining state regulators. [Doc 558, PDF, Doc 559, PDF]

The New York Department of Financial Services has applied for an order lifting the automatic bankruptcy stay on an action against Voyager to “permit DFS to proceed with an investigation into whether the Debtors, or any one of them, have engaged in fraudulent activity and/or violated applicable law with respect to unlicensed cryptocurrency business activities within New York.”

There’s a provision in section 362 of the Bankruptcy Code for “police action” to proceed during a stay. Payment of a fine might be delayed — but that shouldn’t stop an investigation. The DFS outlines why it thinks it could just proceed anyway — but it’s asking nicely. There’s a hearing on November 15. [Doc 573, PDF] 

The fall of Three Arrows Capital

Kadhim Shubber from the Financial Times spotted a hilarious detail in a disclosure statement that Voyager filed on October 17 — on precisely how Three Arrows Capital screwed them over. [Doc 540, PDF, p47 on; Twitter]

Terraform Labs’ UST and luna tokens collapsed in mid-May. This sent 3AC bust, immediately — they were up to their necks in Terraform’s Anchor protocol and had a ton of UST.

Voyager asked their debtors if they had been affected by the UST-luna crash. Voyager’s contact at 3AC assured them everything was fine.

Later that month, 3AC reached out to Voyager asking to borrow even more from them — when 3AC was already 25% of Voyager’s loan book. Voyager said no.

Celsius froze withdrawals on June 12. Voyager again reached out to its debtors, asking how things were. Their 3AC contact assured Voyager on June 13 that 3AC was not exposed to Celsius.

Voyager put out a press release on June 14 assuring everyone that everything was fine. [Press release, archive]

Upon seeing the press release, Voyager’s 3AC contact called them straight away and told them that the founders of 3AC had gone silent and weren’t answering queries from their own employees. Their contact suggested that Voyager should recall all of its loans to 3AC immediately. This was the point at which Voyager knew that it, too, was bust.

We now know, of course, that 3AC’s founders had skipped Singapore sometime in late May — as soon as they realized there was no way to come back from the UST-luna collapse. They just locked the office doors and vanished. We even have a photo of the mail piling up on the office floor.

(You can tell it’s a rug pull from the lack of a carpet.)

Teneo is the court-appointed receiver in 3AC’s bankruptcy. Teneo wants US Judge Martin Glenn — yes, the same one overseeing Celsius — to let them subpoena 3AC founders Zhu and Davies via Twitter and email.

Teneo previously requested that Advocatus Law, the Singapore law firm representing the founders, accept the service of papers. Advocatus resisted. [Doc 54; Doc 55; The Block] 

The CFTC and SEC are looking into the collapse of 3AC, according to “people familiar with the matter.” The question is whether 3AC broke any laws by misleading investors about the strength of its balance sheet and not registering with the agencies. [Bloomberg] 

Terra-Luna

Laura Shin’s podcast with Terraform Labs founder Do Kwon is now up! David Z. Morris at CoinDesk dissects it, straight-up calling Kwon a sociopath. [Unchained; CoinDesk]

Posted on by Amy Castor 4

Celsius Network bankruptcy hearing, Thursday 20 October 2022

A hearing in the Celsius bankruptcy was held via Zoom at 10 a.m. Eastern on 20 October. Anyone could listen in — so I did, and took copious notes.

David helped me go through the notes, add comments and analysis, and polish things up. Next thing you know, we have another blog post.

If you’re curious about melting ice cubes and stalking horses, head on over to David’s blog. [David Gerard]

Image: Judge Martin Glenn

Posted on by Amy Castor 3

Celsius second bankruptcy hearing — court approves setting more customer funds on fire

On August 14, Celsius filed a Budget and Coin Report, which put into full view the ongoing train wreck. The company is burning through piles of “cash,” while creditors watch in horror as their remaining hopes of recovering lost money go up in smoke before their eyes. [Docket 447] 

To generate 18% returns on its Earn product, Celsius dived head-first into some stunningly risky “investments” and lost $1.2 billion in customer funds, at least. The company filed for Chapter 11 on July 13. 

Now, Celsius founder Alex Mashinsky wants creditors to put their faith into another reckless gamble. The company is shifting its entire business model from crypto lending to bitcoin mining — with ludicrous plans to mine its way out of bankruptcy. 

Over a three-month period from August through October, Celsius is allocating $14 million to payroll, $57.3 million to mining,* and $33 million to restructuring costs. By the end of October, Celsius will be operating hugely in the red.

Bitcoin mining is a money-losing proposition, as David Gerard and I detailed in an earlier report. Celsius’ mining business, headquartered in Texas, is currently burning through $19 million of customer money per month. In July, they only mined 432 BTC, worth $8.6 million!

Celsius argues this is because its facilities aren’t fully operational yet — but the facilities will be fully operational if the court will allow them to keep throwing more money into the flames.

All Celsius and its lawyers need to do is to convince creditors — and the judge — that the business will be profitable one day in the fabulous future.    

On August 16, two days after filing its budget report, Celsius had its second-day bankruptcy hearing. The judge ultimately signed off on a motion allowing Celsius to sell mined bitcoin to fund its mining operations but withheld approving a motion authorizing the debtor to sell stocks and shares due to Celsius obfuscating what they were really selling. 

What follows are my notes and comments on the hearing. 

Second-Day Hearing

Judge Martin Glenn began the two-hour hearing by noting that the court has received hundreds of letters from Celsius customers. The letters are all being filed in the docket. “Some have raised important issues that will have to be addressed in this case,” he said.

Molly White has been pulling out excerpts of these letters, and they are indeed heart-wrenching. These are real people, some of whom have lost their life savings because they believed the promises of Celsius founder Alex Mashinsky. [Molly White]

Celsius’s lead lawyer at Kirkland & Ellis, Josh Sussberg, was the first to present at the hearing. Before delving into a nine-page PowerPoint, he took a moment to rant about the “relentless” and “inaccurate” media coverage surrounding the bankruptcy. Sussberg said he’s told Celsius “to take the repeated punches,” and not respond. [Celsius presentation]

Sussberg has clearly been in close talks with Mashinsky, who has a pattern of deflecting blame. When Celsius initially filed for bankruptcy, Mashinsky pinned his company’s failure on “misinformation” in the media and on social media for encouraging customers to withdraw $1 billion in funds over five days in May. Mashinsky’s new message is that the banks are lying, the media is lying, but you can trust me with your money, even though I just lost it all.  

Sussberg noted the elephant in the room: everyone knows that Celsius will run out of money by the end of October. He said that Celsius is working to expedite a restructuring plan that will lead to the company being liquid.  

Celsius is also trying to sell its business and its digital assets to a third party. “We have multiple offers outstanding with several more coming in,” said Sussberg. 

In addition to the official unsecured creditors’ committee, two ad-hoc creditors’ groups have formed. One is for custodial holders, represented by Togut, Segal & Segal. They have $180 million in claims. The other, represented by Troutman Pepper, is for withhold account holders. These were customers in states where Celsius was not licensed. When they tried to withdraw funds, the money went into holding accounts. They represent $14.5 million in claims. Kirkland has been in talks with both groups, Sussberg said. 

Celsius is not seeking to dollarize claims on the petition date. Instead, it wants to return crypto. In other words, Celsius is counting on the markets to rebound — i.e., bitcoin will moon again and everyone’s problems will be solved.  

Interestingly, the creditors also do not want to dollarize claims. Greg Pesce at White & Case, the lead lawyer for the creditors’ committee, said that they too want an in-kind recovery of coins. 

Pesce said the committee has begun its own investigation into Celsius in the hopes of recovering more money for creditors, as they believe they are the only ones able to fight for the customers’ interests. Their search will take them “across the globe, across the country, and across the blockchain.”  

In addition to the possibility of identifying potential insider trading, Pesce seems to be alluding to the Tether loan. Tether loaned Celsius $840 million in USDT backed by bitcoin, and then sold the bitcoin Celsius loaned as collateral just before Celsius filed for bankruptcy. Any attempts to retrieve that bitcoin will be a sideshow in and of itself.

Judge Glenn notes that Celsius’ Earn product attracted lots of government investigations into whether Celsius was selling unregistered securities. The Securities and Exchange Commission has been looking into Celsius since January. Celsius had already been thrown out of Alabama, New Jersey, Texas, and Kentucky for unregistered offerings of securities.

“Since the debtor business model was so heavily dependent on the so-called Earn accounts, and given the number of securities regulator investigations as to whether the debtors were engaged in the sale of unregistered securities, what is the business model going forward?” 

“That’s the $64,000 question,” Pesce responded.

Celsius had 1.7 million customers at the time it filed its petition. About 58,000 held crypto in Celsius’ custody accounts — they might get their crypto back first depending on whether they are deemed secured or unsecured creditors. 

Judge Glenn wants to resolve the custodial accounts sooner rather than later. But Celsius didn’t set up its custodial business until April 2022, and he wants to make sure custodial accounts weren’t a vehicle for insider trading: 

“I am certainly going to want to know whether there are insiders and employees with custodial accounts and whether any of them were able to transfer crypto assets from other accounts into the custodial accounts — and what did they know at the time they made the transfer? Were they contemplating that the business was trending negative and the best way for them to individually protect the value of their accounts was to try and transfer assets into custodial accounts?”

Judge Glenn previously ordered all versions of Celsius’ terms of service going back to 2018. He wanted to trace through all of the changes made over time to determine what is and what isn’t the property of the bankruptcy estate. “Little did I know there were going to be 1,100 pages of them,” he said.   

Bitcoin sell motion

After the presentations, the hearing moved on to the motions.  

Celsius wants to sell bitcoin generated by its mining business and use the cash to fund its mining operations. “We are still in the capital-intensive part of the business and also, importantly, we don’t have all of the mining rigs,” said Sussberg.  

US Trustee attorney Shara Cornell said the Trustee needs more information to form an opinion on the matter: “As of today, we still do not know what expenses are being paid or what bitcoin is being sold,” she said. “We know what the debtors expect to generate but we have no idea what it is going to cost to generate any of that.” 

Cornell said that the Trustee is considering hiring an examiner to address Celsius’ rampant transparency issues. She noted that Celsius said it planned to file a long-term mining plan. “Maybe what we need to do is put this motion on hold until we have more information.”

(Update: Just after I published this story, the Trustee entered a motion for the appointment of an examiner. This is a big deal!)

Surprisingly, Pesce said the creditors’ committee has not made a decision on the mining. Frankly. I was sort of expecting the creditors to push for a liquidation.  

Not all Celsius customers support the idea. 

If they raised a virtual hand during the Zoom hearing, creditors were allowed to speak. One creditor said: “We didn’t sign up to be part of the mining business. We signed up to be part of an exchange. As a fellow miner, I don’t see it being very profitable in the long run.” 

Judge Glenn approved a motion to allow Celsius to sell bitcoin generated from its mining business, but he clearly had reservations: “At bottom, this is a business judgment decision that may turn out to be very wrong, but we will see.” [Order 187]

Not so ‘de minimis’ after all

Celsius wants to sell assets that they claim are “de minimis” and “non-core” to the business to bring in more cash for operating expenses. It turns out these are notes/bonds and equity in other crypto companies, but Celsius never bothered to tell anyone. 

De minimus means too small to be taken into consideration. Debtors can sell assets free and clear of liens. But sales of bankruptcy estate property must be approved by the bankruptcy court.  

Prior to the hearing, the Trustee had objected to the motion, saying the debtor hadn’t provided enough information for the Trustee to evaluate the motion. [Docket 400]

Trustee attorney Shara Cornell told Judge Glenn: “The motion makes it sound like the debtor is selling office furniture or similar hard-type assets that they no longer need. One of our questions in objection had to do with whether or not that might be mining equipment. But what they are actually looking to sell are equities and stocks. And that, in our opinion, is not a de minimis.” 

Judge: “Did you find out what stock they were talking about?” Cornell: “No.” 

Judge Glenn declined to approve the de minimis sales motion and told Celsius to work it out further with the Trustee. Even he was surprised. 

“Certainly I had no inkling the debtor was proposing to sell millions of dollars of equity or notes/investments in other crypto businesses. Those were not what I would normally consider to be de minimis assets, so I want some better definition.”  

Celsius’ business model going forward is all predicated on number go up and making sure the boys get paid. I’m not sure how long this will drag on before the “restructuring” turns into a liquidation, and Celsius management is booted. Likely not before Celsius burns through the rest of their customers’ funds, pays as many of their friends as possible, and the bankruptcy attorneys make their millions. 

The next Celsius hearing is September 1. 

*Celsius calls running mining rigs “hosting.” 

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Posted on by Amy Castor 0