What Is Happening With Crypto Lending Platform Celsius?
At 10:10 p.m. ET on Jun. 12, Celsius Network announced that it will pause all withdrawals, swaps, and transfers between accounts on its cryptocurrency lending platform.
"We are taking this action today to put Celsius in a better position to honor, over time, its withdrawal obligations," the announcement reads. "We are taking this necessary action for the benefit of our entire community in order to stabilize liquidity and operations while we take steps to preserve and protect assets."
Despite this pause, Celsius did confirm that its operation will continue, rewards will continue to accrue during this down time, and more information will be provided to its community soon.
The lending platform claims that an unspecified clause in its Terms of Use allows for this process to take place. But some Celsius users are concerned about suffering liquidations due to unresolved margin calls and loan repayments.
"These restrictions mean you can't resolve a margin call even when you already have sufficient spare funds in Celsius," one user, JarJarosz, tweeted this morning.
"I have USDC in my account that I want to use to repay my loan that has a margin call right now, but I can't even repay the loan because of the transfer freeze," another user, flyingspoon8891, said. "If the market tanks, Celsius will liquidate my collateral even though I can pay off my loan."
Celsius has not yet responded to these concerns.
This unsettling news comes six months after a $115 million hack of BadgerDAO, a decentralized collective of developers, strategists, and content creators who support new Bitcoin-focused products, which cost Celsius $54 million according to on-chain data from Etherscan.
As of Jun. 13, Celsius claimed 151,534 BTC in assets, which is equivalent to more than $3.5 billion. In August 2021, Celsius reached more than $20 billion in total assets held.
The network's native token, CEL, is down nearly 30 percent today to 29.7 cents. This is a long way from its all-time high of $8.01 per token. CEL hasn't seen levels this low since 2020.
Celsius isn't the only cryptocurrency tanking today. Bitcoin is down more than 12 percent to $23,253 and Ethereum is down more than 19 percent to $1,227.
This is a developing story. Lucky Trader will update as needed when additional details emerge.
Celsius Network did not immediately respond to Lucky Trader's request for comment.
