On Friday, Bankruptcy Judge Martin Glenn of the US Southern District Court ordered Celsius Network, a crypto lender, to pay up. The native price of CEL, Celsius Network Tokens, rose sharply in value that day with the price trading at $0.15 and gaining 33% in the past 24 hour.
The judge ordered the Debtors to sell or convert any non-BTC and non-ETH cryptocurrency, crypto tokens, or other cryptocurrency assets to BTC or ETH commencing on or after July 1, 2023. The liquidating of the altcoins is done before a planned distribution to creditors. Celsius is expected to use “commercially reasonable efforts to maximize the value of the Altcoins to be sold or converted to BTC or ETH”, in compliance with any applicable exemptions to the US securities laws.
The SEC recently accused some altcoins that the crypto lender held as securities, such as Binance’s tokens. Other examples of altcoins include Coinbase, Cardano (ADA), Polygon (MATIC), Near (NEAR), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Litecoin (LTC), and Chainlink (LINK). The tokens have been trading higher along with the wider crypto market, and it remains to be determined what impact the offloading may have on the prices.
Celsius filed for bankruptcy in July 2022 after halting customer withdrawals due to crypto-contagion and the collapse of Terra and Three Arrows Capital. Court documents show that the company had been in communication with the SEC, state regulators and other authorities to update their restructuring plan, in which they wanted to distribute crypto only in bitcoin or ether to its creditors.
