This week in crypto we’ve seen headlines about Mt. Gox, Celsius (again), Voyager Digital, Bitstamp, Alexander Vinnik, and more. But who takes the cake this week? Let’s tuck in.
No. 3 – Celsius Blowing Hot and Cold
Celsius has been making headlines for a month now, and this week is no different. The lending platform, which is still working out whether it is solvent or not, was able to pay off a $180 million loan from Maker, freeing up some $440 million in capital which it will put towards “creditor demands and customer withdrawals”.
However, any good news was quickly tempered when KeyFi and its CEO Jason Stone filed a lawsuit against the lending platform, accusing it of withholding a “significant sum of money”, lying to the company over the hedging of its assets, and accusing Stone himself of stealing assets.
It never rains but it pours.
No. 2 – Voyager Digital Fails on Reentry
Voyager Digital, the exchange and lending platform that hardly anyone had heard of before it was caught up in the crypto contagion, has had something of a busy week itself. Last Friday it suspended withdrawals as the liquidation of Three Arrows Capital left it with a $650+ million hole in its accounts, while it looked for a way out.
Things were looking up on Tuesday when it announced that withdrawals were being opened up again, but it turned out that this was only for those who had requested them before last Friday’s suspension. As we noted at the time, this did not bode well for the others, and so it turned out, with Voyager Digital entering bankruptcy on Wednesday, meaning that creditors face a battle to get their funds back.
Worse was to come when yesterday it was revealed that the company has misled investors over the extent of the insurance relating to their USD deposits. Voyager had said in a November 2020 tweet that USD deposits of up to $250,000 were covered by FDIC, but it turned out that this was only in the event of Voyager’s bank, Metropolitan Commercial Bank, going bust, rather than the platform itself, leaving those depositors without a safety net.
It never rains but it…oh, done that one.
Um…
What a f******g shambles, how about that?
No.1 – Mt. Gox Users To Get Their Bitcoin Back!
Well, some of it. 141,686 of the 850,000 bitcoin stolen from Mt. Gox between 2012 and 2014 will soon be winging its way back to customers following an eight-year battle, or so says trustee Nobuaki Kobayashi.
Repayments cloud start as soon as next month, with outlets lapping up the idea that these individuals will all dump their holdings the moment they get it, right at the bottom of a f*****g bear market. Honestly, who is teaching them this stuff?
The long-suffering holders will get about 16% of their holdings back in a combination of BTC, BCH and cash, but with bitcoin being worth something like 42x its value at the time of Mt. Gox’s closure it’s not all bad.
Honourable Mentions
While these stories may have been the pick of the bunch, this week has also seen some other belters, including:
Bitstamp suffered a PR blunder after it tried to charge an inactivity fee to users
Alexander Vinnik is out of a French prison and could go straight into an American one
Meta has killed its Novi wallet 15 months after it was announced
We’ll be back next Friday to see which stories catch our eye next week!
