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Celsius to Potentially Sell More Than $170M in ADA, MATIC, SOL and Altcoins for BTC, ETH

Court documents from last November give a rough picture of the lender’s altcoin holdings.

Updated Jun 30, 2023, 6:33 p.m. Published Jun 30, 2023, 6:10 p.m.
Celsius Thermometer (Unsplash/Modified by CoinDesk)
Celsius Thermometer (Unsplash/Modified by CoinDesk)

Crypto lending company Celsius may begin selling its major holdings in Cardano (ADA), Polygon (MATIC), Solana (SOL) and a handful of other altcoins on July 1 following approval by the judge overseeing its bankruptcy proceedings.

According to court documents from last December, Celsius controlled 90 million MATIC, 103 million ADA, 161,000 SOL, 3.3 million LINK, 1.8 million polkadot (DOT), 200,000 litecoin (LTC) and 106,000 AAVE on November 25, 2022. It was not entirely clear what the company’s current positions are in those assets and how much of those are to be excluded from the sale.

Those positions were cumulatively worth over $170 million at press time. Celsius has millions of dollars more in stablecoins as well as 650 million of its own CEL token. That tranche is theoretically worth nearly $100 million, according to Coinmarketcap, but it was unclear whether Celsius could liquidate its native asset.

Nevertheless, bankruptcy Judge Martin Glenn’s all-clear means Celsius will soon begin exiting many of its positions in favor of bitcoin and ether, the two assets that will ultimately be distributed to creditors who have waited nearly a year for their money back.

Celsius “may sell or convert any non-BTC and non-ETH cryptocurrency, crypto tokens, or other cryptocurrency assets other than such tokens that are associated with Withhold or Custody accounts … to BTC or ETH commencing on or after July 1, 2023,” Judge Glenn’s ruling said.

(Celsius court documents)
(Celsius court documents)
Danny Nelson

Danny is CoinDesk's managing editor for Data & Tokens. He formerly ran investigations for the Tufts Daily. At CoinDesk, his beats include (but are not limited to): federal policy, regulation, securities law, exchanges, the Solana ecosystem, smart money doing dumb things, dumb money doing smart things and tungsten cubes. He owns BTC, ETH and SOL tokens, as well as the LinksDAO NFT.

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