In the words of Martin Glenn, “I want this case to move forward. I want creditors to recover as much as they possibly can as soon as they possibly can.”
Martin Glenn, the Judge presiding over the Celsius bankruptcy case, ordered the crypto lender to return a fraction of the assets that it owes to its user base.
In September, Celsius filed a motion with the court to refund $50M of investors’ assets in its Custody accounts. As per the court filing, Celsius has 58,300 clients’ crypto assets worth $210.02M trapped in Custody accounts.
The filing also revealed that Celsius holds over $43.8M in "Pure Custody" Accounts. At Wednesday’s court hearing, Glenn ordered the crypto lending firm to return 100% of these funds to its customers.
The order also mandates Celsius to return the tokens that users moved from Earn or Borrow products into Custody wallets as long as the "aggregate value of all property" transferred was below $7,575.
Meanwhile, Celsius held over $4.3B in its Earn accounts as of July 2022. Celsius argued that its clients relinquished ownership of these assets after they agreed to invest their coins in its Earn product.
It is worth noting that the court has yet to rule on the ownership of Celsius’ Earn and Withhold accounts.
Celsius has also received approval from the court to submit its restructuring plan by February 15, 2023, with the embattled crypto lender adding,
“We continue to collaborate with the UCC, U.S. Trustee, and all key stakeholders in our cases and look forward to addressing matters related to all customers as we move ahead in our cases.”
