Celsius Owed $439M by Lending Firm EquitiesFirst

Celsius, a crypto lender who filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy Thursday, is owed $439 million by lending firm EquitiesFirst, who is currently repaying the loan at $5 million per month, according to a Financial Times report. 

The debt is made up of $361 million in cash and 3,765 Bitcoins worth almost $79 million at the time of writing, according to Bitpush Terminal data. 

EquitiesFirst, an investment firm that specializes in long-term asset-backed financing, was founded in 2002, and began offering crypto collateralized loans in 2016. In 2019, Celsius began borrowing from EquitiesFirst. 

Two years later, EquitiesFirst asked Celsius to repay a loan in order to unlock their previously collateralized crypto. However, EquitiesFirst wasn’t in a position to pay back the pledged collateral. 

These details came to light in Celsius’ bankruptcy filing Thursday to the U.S. Bankruptcy Court of the Southern District of New York, which showed a $1.2 billion hole in their balance sheet. They had liabilities of $5.5 billion and $4.3 billion in assets. 

Celsius made their fate official on Thursday by filing for bankruptcy which came more than a month after the firm halted withdrawals, Swap and transfers between accounts for an indefinite amount of time. In the past week, Celsius has made tremendous progress paying off loans and freeing up pledged collateral. 

The latest payment occurred on Wednesday in the form of $50 million to decentralized finance (DeFi) crypto protocol Compound, which freed up almost $200 million worth of wrapped Bitcoin. 

Author: Tyler Irvin

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