Two new consortiums will bid for bankrupt crypto firm Celsius Network’s assets in an auction set for Tuesday.
According to an April 22 bankruptcy filing, Celsius received two additional qualified bids from new groups of investors, which include major crypto exchanges Gemini and Coinbase.
One of the consortiums is Fahrenheit, backed by venture firm Arrington Capital, and other high-profile investors such as former Algorand CEO Steven Kokinos and investment banker Ravi Kaza.
Arrington Capital CEO Michael Arrington took to Twitter to address the group’s bid, explaining that it would be structured as a new company as opposed to a single asset purchase, and operated with the intention of growing assets to make stakeholders whole.
3/ What has happened to the stakeholders of Celsius is an absolute tragedy and has affected the entire industry. We want to help put the pieces back together and will work tirelessly to do this.
— Michael Arrington 🏴☠️ (@arrington) April 22, 2023
In one of these tweets, Arrington disclosed Coinbase’s participation in the Fahrenheit consortium, but it has since been deleted. According to Fortune, Coinbase declined to comment on the tweet but did not deny involvement in the consortium.
The other consortium is the Blockchain Recovery Investment Committee, backed by Gemini, Van Eck, Plutus Lending and other investors.
These new groups of bidders have thrown a spanner in the works of the existing reorganization plan sponsored by NovaWulf that reached an in-principle agreement in February. Under that proposed plan, Celsius customers could expect to get 70% of their funds back, according to a presentation shared earlier this month.
The stalking horse bidder will now participate in a three-way auction at Kirkland & Ellis’ offices in New York at 2:00 pm ET on April 25.
