Tag: Voyager Digital

Crypto collapse: No cashing out from Binance US, Catherine Coley lawyers up, Voyager-Binance deal on hold, Celsius

  • By Amy Castor and David Gerard

“Unless they allow crypto crime, all the innovation in crime is going to go overseas, and we’ll fall behind in crime!”

— Doctor Orrery

Binance: This is fine

Your actual money has been locked in Binance US since late March: [Binance.US, archive] 

“Due to recent developments in the banking industry, Binance.US is transitioning to new banking and payment service providers over the next several weeks. Some USD deposit services will be temporarily impacted during the transition. Apple Pay and Google Pay deposits are temporarily unavailable. Wire deposits and withdrawals are temporarily unavailable. For <5% of customers, Debit Card deposits are temporarily unavailable. We are working to restore all services as soon as possible.”

BUSD trading pairs on Binance US are also suspended, and fiat withdrawals for institutional clients are cut off as well. [Twitter] 

Catherine Coley has shown up alive and well! Coley was the CEO of Binance US until April 2021, when she abruptly left the company. Coley hasn’t said a word to the press or social media since — to the point where crypto people wondered what had happened to her. In the wake of the CFTC suit against Binance, Coley has finally surfaced. She’s hired Sullivan & Cromwell partner James McDonald, a former director of enforcement at the CFTC, for the suit. Coley appears to have started working with McDonald as early as January 2022. [Reuters]

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) is conducting a “targeted review” of Binance’s Australian operation. Oztures Trading misclassified about 500 Australian retail investors as wholesale operators and sold them derivatives that were only for sophisticated investors. [AFR]

“Crypto warning: AK-47s, crooks, and the exchange Aussies should avoid” — David was quoted by news.com.au on the CFTC charges against Binance. “Regulators should also kick the company out of the banking system, cryptocurrency expert David Gerard said.” This story came out exactly as David had hoped it would. (Written by the other guy who originally started Rocknerd. We’re all in the rock journalist to finance journalist pipeline.) [Daily Telegraph, archive]

Voyager’s Binance deal is on hold

Voyager Digital wanted to sell itself to Binance US. The plan included an exculpation clause — that Voyager, the Unsecured Creditors’ Committee, Binance, and any professionals were not “liable at any time for the violation of any applicable law, rule, or regulation governing the solicitation of acceptances or rejections of the Plan or such distributions made pursuant to the Plan.” They wanted this bankruptcy court to grant them broad criminal immunity.

The US government and various regulators objected, and the February 28 version of the plan explicitly carved government action out of the exculpation provision. But the exculpation crept back into the March 2 version of the plan. The government and the regulators objected again, leading to this appeal. This time they are asking that the provision be removed, or else that the whole deal be blocked — at which point Voyager can only go into liquidation.

Judge Jennifer Rearden concurs with the government that exculpation is meant to head off suits between stakeholders in the bankruptcy itself — it’s not there for courts to “prospectively immunize debtors and non-debtors from law enforcement and other actions undertaken by the Government.” As such, she considered the appeal plausible, so has granted the stay. That said, Judge Rearden is painfully aware that Voyager is a melting ice cube, so she wants the government brief by April 4 (today!) and the Voyager and UCC briefs by April 14.

We wonder just what snakes are lurking in the deal such that Voyager and Binance tried to sneak in such a weirdly broad exculpation after it was already knocked back once. [Order & opinion, PDF]

Celsius Network

With less than an hour to go before Celsius’s exclusive right to propose a plan lapsed, Kirkland & Ellis filed the Celsius chapter 11 plan for the NovaWulf deal, which we summarized previously. On April 12, Celsius will file the disclosure statement, which the court has to approve before creditors can vote on the plan. The disclosure statement lists Celsius’ assets, liabilities, and business affairs. [Doc 2358, PDF; Plan summary, PDF]

Shoba Pillay, the examiner in the Celsius bankruptcy, has filed nicely hyperlinked PDFs of her interim and final examiner reports. [Interim report, PDF; final report, PDF]

Pillay’s work is done now. She’s been officially discharged. [Doc 2364, PDF]

Based on the jaw-dropping criminality in the examiner’s reports, the Celsius Unsecured Creditors’ Committee filed a suit on February 14 against past Celsius executives to recover as much money from them as possible. The UCC has now filed a revised complaint. The new filing includes a redline against the previous version of the complaint, starting at page 139 of the PDF — it mainly adds two extra claims of misappropriation. [Doc 2349, PDF]

Good news for casinos

Matt Damon says his crypto.com ad at the 2022 Super Bowl was just because his water nonprofit was short of cash. If only there was a way to do good except by doing a ton of bad! [Gizmodo]

BaFin has lifted a finger and kicked Crypto.com out of Germany. The Singapore exchange was licensed in Malta and wanted to use that license in Germany. But Germany also required that they get a permit to advertise the investment offer, which Crypto.com didn’t bother doing. [The Paypers]

The Bittrex crypto exchange is leaving the US market. The only reason they give is that “regulatory requirements are often unclear and enforced without appropriate discussion or input, resulting in an uneven competitive landscape.” [Bittrex, archive; The Block] 

We suspect the regulations Bittrex has in mind are very clear, and they just couldn’t survive with a legal business model. Bittrex’s volume dropped below 1% of the US market in 2021 and didn’t recover. Last year, they paid $53 million to OFAC and FinCEN for sanctions violations. [Treasury, 2022]

FTX EU LTD (Cyprus) launched a new website for withdrawals. The exchange will be returning funds on account to customers, per Cyprus law. This does not cover all EU customers — just those who were dealing with this particular FTX entity. [PR Newswire; FTX EU]

Paxful, a peer-to-peer bitcoin trading platform, is suspending operations. Paxful claims “regulatory challenges for the industry”— but also that “we unfortunately have had some key staff departures.” Did they depart in a police van, maybe?  [Paxful, archive]

Lost all your money in a dodgy crypto company? Why not trade your bankruptcy claims on a new exchange run by the guys who lost all your money! Brought to you by the founders of the defunct Three Arrows Capital and the troubled CoinFLEX, OPNX is currently only doing spot trading in cryptos but promises to bring trading in bankruptcy claims some time soon. None of the proprietors are in any way on the run and hiding out from regulators, you understand — but they’re all just doing business strictly from Dubai for now. Your lack of funds is safe. [CoinDesk]

The usual good news for bitcoin 

The US government sold 9,861 BTC connected to Silk Road, the first darknet market, on March 14. It intends to sell another 41,490 BTC in four batches over the course of a year. Tether coincidentally printed 2 billion USDT the same day — though the government will only accept real money. [Court filing, PDF; Twitter]

A South Korean court has once again denied the prosecutor’s request to issue an arrest warrant for Terraform Labs co-founder Daniel Shin. This was the second attempt made by South Korean authorities to arrest Shin following the arrest of Do Kwon, Terraform’s other co-founder. [Cointelegraph]

The Seoul Southern District Prosecutor’s Office has confiscated 210 billion KRW ($160 million) in assets — primarily real estate — from eight people connected to Terraform Labs, including Shin and former Terraform vice president Kim Mo. [KBS, in Korean]

Justin Sun of Tron turns out not to be Grenada’s ambassador to the World Trade Organization — he was kicked out when the new administration came in June 2022. So for the past nine months, the “H. E.” in his Twitter name must just have stood for something other than “His Excellency.” After the local news story reporting this came out, Sun first told The Block that he was totally still the ambassador — then tweeted how his term was actually ending as of March 31, 2023, y’see. OK. [GBN; The Block; Twitter]

Posted on by Amy Castor 0

Crypto collapse: Good night Silvergate Bank, unbanking crypto exchanges, Voyager sale to Binance proceeding

  • By Amy Castor and David Gerard

“And it seems to me, you lived your life like a candle in the wind. You’ve abruptly toppled over and you’re burning things. Now there’s one less fiat onramp, for those who’ve been orange pilled. And there is no liquidity, for all the crypto shills.”

— Rycochet on Silvergate Bank

Silvergate Bank: Time wounds all heels

Silvergate was the easiest crypto death pool call this week. The bank has announced it is voluntarily unwinding and liquidating, “in light of recent industry and regulatory developments” — its customers kept treating deposits as their own money or something, and regulators and legislators hated it a whole lot. All deposits will be returned in full. [Press release] 

“The Company is also considering how best to resolve claims and preserve the residual value of its assets, including its proprietary technology and tax assets.” We’re not sure which proprietary technology this means — Silvergate wrote off its investment in Diem, formerly Facebook’s Libra, in its preliminary Q4 2022 accounts, and it just shut down the Silvergate Exchange Network.

FDIC examiners went into Silvergate last week — as we predicted — and have been reviewing Silvergate’s books since. [Bloomberg]

The FDIC was discussing how to keep Silvergate alive — even suggesting a rescue by crypto-related investors. Yeah, right. We suspect they already asked every other bank in the US, none of whom would offer a dollar for this thing.

The big question is: what happens to the loans secured by bitcoins that Silvergate made to MicroStrategy and various bitcoin miners?

Silvergate’s total loan book, bitcoin and otherwise, was $1.4 billion as of September 30, 2022, including the infamous $205 million loan to MicroStrategy. The bitcoin loans are not “bad loans” — they’re not in default, as yet. But they were clearly stupid loans — some idiot thought that lending money to weird companies with insane business models, against an asset that was only up because of a bubble, was a good idea.

So, if Silvergate’s cut up for parts, who takes on these loans?

Loans collateralized with crypto will be a nuisance to transfer because you also need to transfer rights to the collateral (which is sitting in Coinbase Custody, the MSTR loan at least). The MSTR crypto was pledged rather than transferred — there’s a custody account for this specific deal — which is a bit less fiddly. And the bitcoin price is, of course, incredibly volatile, so the collateral itself is risky.

No sane bank is going to want to take on these loans at anywhere near face value. But we expect there will be some buyer who’s interested, at a suitable discount.

If no bank is willing to buy a loan from an insolvent bank, the FDIC tries to close the loan by negotiating with the borrower about possible early repayment. But we don’t expect these loans to end up in that position.

Silvergate Capital stock (NYSE:SI) is a dead cat bouncing between $3.00 and $3.50 today. It was $219 in November 2021. We hope the short sellers have managed to cash out. [Yahoo!]

Frances Coppola on Silvergate: “This is the story of a bank that put all its eggs into an emerging digital basket, believing that providing non-interest-bearing deposit and payment services to crypto exchanges and platforms would be a nice little earner, while completely failing to understand the extraordinary risks involved with such a venture.” [Coppola Comment; Coppola Comment]

Unbanking, on the blockchain

Marco Santori, chief legal officer at Kraken crypto exchange, tells The Block that Kraken is going to start its own crypto bank any day now. With “pens with the little ball chains.” [The Block]

Kraken got itself a Wyoming SPDI charter in 2020 — that’s the same charter as Caitlin Long’s Custodia Bank, which was recently refused an account at the Federal Reserve.

Kraken Bank originally told Decrypt it was aiming to launch in the first quarter of 2021. It’s currently “planning a phased launch” in, er, 2022, apparently. [Kraken, 2020; Decrypt, 2020; Kraken, 2023, archive]

Kraken recently lost US dollar access via Signature Bank for non-corporate customers. In the meantime, Kraken has various other dollar options. The dollar channel for ordinary schlubs is via SynapseFi, “The Launchpad for Financial Innovation” — a payment processor marketing itself hard to crypto companies, though stressing that it never touches crypto itself — or MVB Bank of West Virginia, which thinks there’s a market in “Web3.” [Kraken, archive; SynapseFi; MVB Bank]

UK payments processor BCB Group is angling to take over from Silvergate as the fiat rails to the crypto industry. BCB actually has an FCA license, so the FCA considered they could pass basic money laundering muster at least. BCB launched its BLINC network in 2020; BCB’s recent publicity push is marketing for that. [Coindesk; Coindesk, 2020]

Crypto.com has lost its onramps for actual money, except euros in the European Economic Area and a GBP onramp via BCB — but no US dollar access. [CoinDesk]

Michel de Cryptadamus writes up crypto.com: “At the end of the day we will probably discover that the entire cryptocurrency industry is 5,000 shell companies run by 20 dudes in a foul smelling room in some non-extradition country.” [Cryptadamus]  

Outdoor miners

Crypto miners operating on public land haven’t been paying their taxes. Federal mineral lease operators have been using natural gas to power crypto mining without paying their gas royalties. The miners have been using mobile data centers in containers to evade oversight. [Office of Inspector General, PDF; Gizmodo]

Bitcoin miner Riot Platforms, née Riot Blockchain, has now filed its delayed 10-K for 2022 after the SEC told Riot to restate its accounts. There isn’t a lot that’s exciting here. The bitcoin mining business is knife-edge, bitcoin prices are down, and governments and the general public increasingly loathe bitcoin miners. Riot is branching out into selling its expertise in data center power distribution. Risks to Riot’s business include a pile of lawsuits against executives and directors concerning “allegedly false and misleading statements made in prior securities filings.” [SEC]

Voyager Digital

At the March 7 hearing in the bankruptcy of Voyager Digital, Judge Michael Wiles approved the purchase of Voyager assets by Binance US — assuming Binance US can pass various regulatory hurdles. (LOL.) [Doc 1159, PDF]

SEC staff think Binance US is likely an unregistered securities broker, but their objections weren’t specific enough to convince Judge Wiles to stop the sale. [WSJ]

In the hearing, Binance stressed that it really wants personal information, such as social security numbers, for all Voyager customers. Not just the ones moving to Binance US, but all of them: “Data is at the heart of the deal.” Judge Wiles was not impressed and said that SSNs from the Voyager customers who didn’t go to Binance would definitely not be a thing that Binance got. [Twitter]

More good news for bitcoin

The Financial Conduct Authority is hitting more UK crypto ATMs, this time in east London. No crypto ATM operator in the UK is registered with the FCA for anti-money laundering purposes, so all of them are illegal. [FCA]  

In India, the Financial Intelligence Unit of the Ministry of Finance is now requiring crypto-asset businesses to register with the FIU as reporting entities under AML laws. They also have to do basic know-your-customer — which they weren’t obliged to do before. Local crypto companies are actually positive about this move. [Gazette of India, PDF; CoinDesk]

In the US, the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board warns that crypto exchange “proof of reserves” statements are meaningless garbage. [PCAOB]

FTX in bankruptcy wants to redeem Alameda’s GBTC shares for the bitcoins backing them. Grayscale said no, so FTX is suing for redemption. Remember that Grayscale could now redeem GBTC any time they like — they just choose not to. [Press release]

Easy Money by Ben McKenzie and Jacob Silverman is available for preorder! The release date is July 27. [Amazon US; Amazon UK]

Image: With apologies to Alex Shaeffer.

Posted on by Amy Castor 0

Crypto collapse: Silvergate implosion continues, Signature Bank, Tether lied to banks, Voyager, Celsius

  • By Amy Castor and David Gerard

“I like the Bernie Madoff test: does this have a higher return than Bernie Madoff promised? If so, it’s probably a scam!”

— HappyHippo

Media stardom

Amy wrote about why Bitcoin would rather continue contributing to the destruction of the planet than switch to proof of stake. [MIT Technology Review]

Amy was also quoted in Cointelegraph talking about stablecoins, mostly BUSD. [Cointelegraph]

David did a fun podcast with C. Edward Kelso back in November, about FTX exploding and the ongoing forest fires in the world of pretend nerd money. He also did a video in November with El Podcast. [Anchor.fm; YouTube]

Silvergate’s goose continues cooking

What’s next for crypto’s favorite bank? Will a team of FDIC agents storm Silvergate? The market is expecting an unfriendly resolution. The bank’s stock (NYSE:SI) is 95% down on its one-year price and is still being heavily shorted.

We wrote up Silvergate’s current problems on Thursday. One of the many ways that Silvergate screwed itself over was by putting cash deposits into long-term treasuries. When their panicky crypto customers needed their money, Silvergate had to sell bonds at a loss of $1 billion in Q4 2022. If they had just bought one-month T-bills, they would have been better off — but those don’t pay as much interest. 

Silvergate has paid back its $4.3 billion loan from FHLB-SF, though. [American Banker]

What we still don’t know is who pressured Silvergate to pay back the loan immediately. It’s utterly unclear why they had to liquidate a chunk of mildly underwater securities to pay off FHLB-SF instead of rolling over the advances.

How did Silvergate end up in this situation in the first place? Greed. A banking charter is a literal license to print money. But that wasn’t enough for them. So Silvergate CEO Alan Lane, who joined the bank in 2008, got into cryptocurrency because crypto was an under-served customer base. But Silvergate didn’t stop to ask themselves why it was under-served. Anyway, look at all this free money!

Worse than that, Silvergate de-diversified — they got rid of those tawdry and tedious retail deposits and mortgages that the bank had focused on since the 1980s. This left them at the mercy of the sector crashing, or one large customer collapsing.

Frances Coppola said: “The problem is not the business model, it’s the customers. If your customers are volatile, you’re at risk of runs. And if your customers are fraudsters, you’re at risk of lawsuits.” [Twitter]

On Friday afternoon, Silvergate made a “risk-based decision” to shut down its inter-crypto-exchange payments network, the Silvergate Exchange Network (SEN). [Silvergate website, archive]

This was a major part of Silvergate’s business. The SEN allowed real-time transfers of real money, any time of day or night, which crypto companies loved. It helped Silvergate attract billions of dollars in deposits from crypto exchanges and stablecoin issuers.

Signature Bank’s similar Signet platform is still up and running, for some reason. 

Moody’s just downgraded Silvergate’s credit rating for borrowing from B3 to Ca. This is Moody’s second-lowest grade: “highly speculative and are likely in, or very near, default, with some prospect of recovery in principal and interest.” [Bloomberg; Moody’s, PDF]

MicroStrategy has a loan to pay off to Silvergate — or its successor — by Q1 2025. “For anyone wondering, the loan wouldn’t accelerate b/c of SI insolvency or bankruptcy,” says MicroStrategy. [Twitter]

The MicroStrategy loan is not delinquent — and it has nothing to do with Silvergate’s present crisis. But this loan, and similar loans to bitcoin miners, are part of the thinking that got Silvergate here. If you’re making loans secured by bitcoins at bubble prices, then you’re an idiot.

Signature Bank, crypto’s tiny lifeboat 

There were two banks critical to US crypto. Silvergate on the West Coast and Signature Bank in New York. With the potential collapse of Silvergate, that means $750 billion per year in USD transfers between crypto exchanges is gone. Now it’s all on Signature.

Signature Bank’s 10-K for 2022 is out. [Business Wire; 10-K, PDF] 

Crypto was one-quarter of deposits to Signature in Q3 2022. When FTX crashed in November, crypto companies were caught short and had to withdraw their dollars in a hurry.

Signature could weather this rush because they were diversified, unlike Silvergate. They then claimed in December, and later in their 10-K, that they were totally trying to get out of crypto anyway. The January letter from the Fed, the FDIC, and the OCC warning banks to stay away from crypto probably helped push this opinion along.

(We wonder slightly where all these crypto exchanges are going to get US dollar banking now. If you have any thoughts, let us know!) 

In 2022, Signature’s deposits declined $17.54 billion or 16.5% to 88.59 billion. Most of that ($12.39 billion) was crypto deposits leaving the bank. At the end of last year, the bank’s crypto asset deposits totaled $17.79 billion, or 20% of its deposits. 

Unlike Silvergate, Signature doesn’t lend money to the crypto industry, nor do they have loans secured with crypto. Their relationship with crypto clients is only US dollar deposits and their Signet platform.

But Signature’s stock price (NASDAQ:SBNY) is being dragged down with Silvergate’s. SBNY is 64% down on its one-year price. 

Tether (again)

The Wall Street Journal got hold of some Tether emails. Tether “intermediaries” used faked companies and shell accounts in 2018 to skirt the Bank Secrecy Act and move money for terrorists. Oops. [WSJ]

One of those intermediaries was a major USDT trader in China. On a list of several accounts created for use by Tether and Bitfinex, another account was in Turkey and was allegedly used to launder money raised by Hamas. 

Elsewhere, the sentencing of Tether/Bitfinex US money mule Reggie Fowler has been adjourned again. It’s now scheduled for April 20 at 3:30 p.m. ET. [Twitter]

Voyager Digital: a terminally stupid loan to the cool kids at 3AC

Voyager Digital went broke because a single unsecured loan to Three Arrows Capital was over a quarter of their loan book, and then 3AC went bust. The Unsecured Creditors’ Committee has prepared a report on Voyager’s loan practices in general, but especially that one fatally stupid loan. [Committee Report, PDF] 

Voyager’s rewards program was run at a substantial loss — it was “primarily implemented as a marketing tool.” So Voyager implemented the lending program to fund its rewards program.

Evan Psarapoulos, Voyager’s chief commercial offer, told Ryan Whooley, the company’s treasury director “we have to beef up the team and onboard/lend to riskier borrowers.”

So Voyager ran a super risky lending program. Just in 2022, 3AC, Celsius, and Alameda Research each borrowed more than 25% of Voyager’s total assets at various times. If 3AC hadn’t taken down Voyager, it would have been someone else.

Voyager’s risk committee met through 2022, though Voyager executives didn’t believe the committee had the power to overturn decisions by Psarapoulos or CEO Steve Ehrlich.

Various borrowers sent varying amounts of information to be able to borrow from Voyager. Genesis sent audited financials. Galaxy sent unaudited financials. Celsus and BitGo sent balance sheets. Wintermute sent income statements.

But 3AC sent only a single-sentence statement of their net asset value and had a half-hour phone call with Voyager. Here is the complete text of the letter from 3AC that let them borrow a quarter of Voyager’s assets:

AUM Letter PRIVATE & CONFIDENTIAL

Three Arrows Capital Ltd. (the “Company”)

1-January-2022

To Whom It May Concern,

We confirm the following for Three Arrows Capital Ltd as at 1-January-2022 in millions of USD.

NAV 3,729
On behalf of Three Arrows Capital Ltd.

[signed]

Kyle Davies

Director

Voyager sought out a relationship with 3AC in particular because of “the prestige that 3AC had at the time in the industry.” So 3AC could set its terms. It only wanted to borrow without providing collateral, and, incredibly, it refused to provide audited financial statements.

Psarapoulos figured 3AC was safe because Genesis had lent to 3AC and Voyager thought Genesis’ diligence process was robust. Ehrlich said refusing to provide financials was “not uncommon for hedge funds.”

Voyager’s first loan to 3AC was on March 8, 2022. Two months later, Terra-Luna collapsed.

Tim Lo from 3AC told Voyager in May that 3AC had lost only $100 million in the Terra-Luna collapse. But on June 14, 2022, Lo told Psarapoulos that 3AC directors Zhu Su and Kyle Davies had disappeared, and things were “in bad shape.”

Voyager recalled all its loans. 3AC returned no assets. On June 24, 2022, Voyager issued a notice of default. 3AC entered liquidation on June 27. Voyager filed for Chapter 11 on July 6.

In other Voyager bankruptcy news, Judge Michael Wiles said the SEC had asked him to “stop everybody in their tracks” with its claims that Voyager’s internal VGX token may have been a security. The SEC needs to explain its claim and how to address its concerns. [Reuters]

The Department of Justice, the FTC, New Jersey, and Texas object to wording in Voyager’s latest proposed confirmation order that might purport to restrict government action against Voyager. [Doc 1134, PDF; Doc 1135, PDF; Doc 1136, PDF]

Celsius Network

NovaWulf put in a bid to start a new Celsius company with actual lines of business and issue shares to Celsius creditors. This is now the official Stalking Horse bid. NovaWulf hopes to get the new company up and running by June 2023. We think the plan is a hope-fueled bet on crypto bubbling again, but it’s this or liquidation. [Doc 2150, PDF; Doc 2151, PDF]

Celsius, the UCC, and the Custody ad-hoc group want the court to let them put to creditors a settlement that would get Custody holders “72.5% of their eligible Custody Assets on the effective date of the Debtors’ Plan.” [Doc 2148, PDF]

A 60-day stay, with further discovery, has been agreed upon in the KeyFi v. Celsius suit and countersuit. [Stay order, PDF]

Celsius is moving to compensate cooperating witnesses for their time and effort — both their past help to the examiner and further help Celsius may need going forward — in the cause of recovering money for creditors. [Doc 2147, PDF]

Posted on by Amy Castor 0

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

Bankrupt Voyager Digital’s search for a buyer — notes from the first committee town hall

If you are interested in Voyager Digital’s Chapter 11 proceedings, the official creditors’ committee town hall held on August 11 is a good one to watch. [YouTube, presentation]

The session was put on by committee lawyers Darren Azman, Chuck Gibbs, and Gregg Steinman; the committee’s financial advisor Michael Cordasco; and Jason Raznick, CEO of trading news site Benzinga, who is the chair of the creditors’ committee. 

Azman and Gibbs, both partners at McDermott Will & Emery, did most of the talking. 

The group outlined the bankruptcy process and offered a (very aggressive, perhaps overly optimistic) timeline for how things could pan out. What follows are a few notes I pulled from the meeting. Read through the entire creditor presentation for more. 

Seeking bids for a buyout

Voyager is soliciting bids from companies to acquire its assets. The creditors’ committee is actively involved in the process. A lot of conversations are happening behind the scenes. Formal bids are due on August 26; an auction will occur on August 29.

Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX offered a bid earlier, but the creditors’ committee pooh-poohed the bid. 

“I can tell you that FTX is not the only interested party. The company has received several indications of interest,” said Azman. He added that FTX’s offer was the lowest bid.

By the end of August, he said they should have a good idea of who the winning bidder is and the terms of the sale. 

Bankman-Fried’s FTX and Alameda Research have deep ties to Voyager and its bankruptcy wipeout, stretching back to mid-2021. In the Voyager bankruptcy, Alameda is a borrower, a lender, and a shareholder, so I expect FTX is going to have the strongest interest in purchasing Voyager.

A plan of reorganization

The conclusion of Chapter 11 ends with the confirmation of a plan, which could result in a reorganization — or a liquidation. Voyager has 120 days to come up with a plan, and creditors get to vote on whether to accept a plan.   

But before Voyager can put forth a plan for a vote, the company has to file a written disclosure statement, which the court then has to approve.

The disclosure statement is similar to a securities prospectus. It will contain detailed information about the debtor’s financial affairs, how it got into the mess in the first place, a description of its assets, and a description of claims and liabilities and how those claims will be handled. 

The disclosure statement will have a plan of reorganization attached to it, but the two are separate documents.

After Voyager files its disclosure statement, the court will hold a hearing to decide if the statement has adequate information. The plan must be feasible, meaning that after the plan is confirmed, it will not be followed by a plan to liquidate the company under Chapter 7. 

McDermott Will & Emery expect confirmation of a plan by the end of October and distribution of funds sometime in November. 

This is extremely optimistic! Large bankruptcy proceedings generally take years. In the case of QuadrigaCX, which went dark in early 2019, the creditors are still waiting for disbursement as everything is tied up with the Canada Revenue Agency, which insisted on doing its own audit. Similarly, Mt Gox fell apart in early 2014, and its creditors are also still waiting for their money. 

Voyager’s financials 

As of June 30, Voyager has total assets worth USD $1.26 billion:

  • Operating cash: $140 million  
  • Loan portfolio: $470 million 
  • Various crypto holdings: $655 million  

It has total claims so far of $1.8 billion, leaving a hole in its balance sheet of $550 million. 

These numbers do not include the $270 million in cash held in Metropolitan Commercial Bank’s FBO accounts. The numbers also don’t include the $650 million loan to Three Arrows Capital, which 3AC defaulted on. 

Voyager will need to dip into its operating cash to pay its employees and cover benefits and severance pay. Also, bankruptcies are expensive. As David Gerard and I mentioned in a recent crypto crash update, administrative costs could easily end up being $100 million or more. 

(You can read more about Voyager’s mess here.)

A possible interim distribution? 

The creditors’ committee is pursuing an interim distribution. This is rare and unusual, the lawyers explained in the town hall, and only Voyager can put the motion in front of the judge. 

Azman: “We have had productive conversations with Voyager about making an interim distribution and ultimately we are hopeful they will do so.” 

He says there is no guarantee that it will happen or that it will happen any faster than the plan approval.

I seriously doubt that it will happen at all, but we’ll see. 

Insider investigations

Before Voyager filed for bankruptcy, it formed a special committee of certain directors, Azman explained. Part of the special committee’s mandate is to investigate certain actions of insiders (directors and affiliates of Voyager) “with a particular focus on the loan that Voyager made to Three Arrows Capital.”

The special committee retained a separate law firm to handle the investigation. Ultimately, the special committee will produce a report that presents their views on whether insiders are liable for any wrongdoing. 

“It should not surprise any of you to hear that we, the creditors’ committee, believe preliminarily that there are a number of people and companies that may be liable for wrongdoing and should and will be held accountable,” said Azman. “Thus we are conducting our own investigation of insiders and their potential wrongdoing.” 

If the Voyager special committee concludes there are no claims against insiders then Voyager will seek to release those insiders from all liability under their Chapter 11 claim, he warned.

Azman went on to explain that if Voyager succeeds in doing that, the creditors’ committee will not be able to pursue claims that the company has against those insiders. 

“If the creditors’ committee disagrees with the special committee’s conclusions, we will recommend to creditors that they vote to reject any plan that attempts to release insiders so that they do not receive releases. And second, we will reject the confirmation of the plan on the grounds that the releases are improper.” 

Azman and Gibbs say they’ll be putting on more town halls in the near future to keep Voyager creditors updated on the case. 

Claims are due October 3 and McDermott Will & Emery are posting key documents on their website.

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Posted on by Amy Castor 0