Last week, we jumped in and gave some thoughts on Celsius' plan
to "pay back" their holders.
But the plot, well, let's just say it's gotten "thicc" with two C's.
We're going to try to straighten out the good, the bad and the criminal.
Let's get it!
Welcome to BitBoy Crypto!
My name is Ben.
Today, we are going to be breaking down the Celsius situation.
There's so many interesting twists and turns to the story
that there's probably going to be a lot more behind this one.
But we just want to catch you up to where we're at.
Obviously, if you watched the live stream earlier today,
you saw I was hot!
But the truth is I'm hot every day.
I can't help it. I guess it's my genetics.
But the point here is,
I personally have been harmed by Celsius.
My company has been harmed by Celsius.
But that doesn't have anything to do with why we are on top of this story right now.
We are on top of this story
because they are trying to do retail clawbacks
and take money back from people who were able to withdraw their funds
before the exchange was discovered to be insolvent
and everything was frozen and the bankruptcy occurred.
This is going to hurt the average person.
And even more so what scares me the most
is people are talking about suicide over this situation.
Of course, if you need help in that, you got any suicidal ideation,
make sure to reach out to somebody and get some help for that.
Your life is worth living.
I lost all my money in crypto twice.
And look at me now.
So it is possible to pull yourself up from the bootstraps in the world of crypto.
It's a fast-moving, fast-changing environment.
But let's break down what's going on with Celsius.
Celsius bankruptcy chooses NovaWulf's bid to exit from bankruptcy.
Under the proposal by Celsius,
most creditors would receive a one-time payment of crypto
while those with larger claims would get equity in a new Celsius!
Man, that sounds fun, doesn't it?
I tell you what, where do I sign up?
Bankrupt crypto lender Celsius Network has chosen NovaWulf Digital Management,
not through the traditional bidding structure,
which is quite interesting.
They chose NovaWulf as sponsor for its proposed Chapter 11 restructuring plan,
after Kirkland & Ellis lied to the judge, by the way,
which will see the investment advisory firm take over the operations of a new company
and most customers estimated to recover up to 70% of their funds.
But the 70% that they will be able to recover is $5,000 or less,
meaning all the people who are hurt the most on the platform,
well, they're not, let's say, getting their money back.
The plan notes the new board will have no "Celsius founder involvement or relationship."
NovaWulf will also make a direct cash contribution
of between $45 million to $55 million to the new firm,
which, by the way,
not even enough to cover their law bill.
So, how are they sponsoring the Chapter 11?
I'm very confused by that.
And then we have, of course, we talked about the plan highlights.
Under the plan, creditors with claims valued $5,000 and below on the petition date
will be placed in a "Convenience Class," receiving "a one-time distribution of liquid crypto."
It's estimated the option will provide over 85% of Celsius customers,
and this is a very important number,
with around 70% of recovery.
What are they trying to do here?
They're trying to buy votes for the plan.
That's what they're trying to do.
They're saying,
"Hey, all the little guys, we need numbers.
So if you could, show up and vote for the plan so you get your money back,"
whereas these people have $300 on the exchange,
whereas people with $10 million on the exchange,
they get totally screwed.
Those with a claim over $5,000 who opt out of the Convenience Class
will receive a payment of the residual crypto after the payments.
In addition, they will receive ownership in NewCo through equity and management share tokens,
which we've been told is now called the asset share token,
or as I affectionately call it,
the ass token.
Alright. Moving on.
Celsius publishes list of users eligible to withdraw majority of crypto assets.
You just can't make this stuff up, guys.
Eligible creditors will not be able to withdraw their funds from Celsius
till they update their accounts with AML and KYC requirements.
Celsius just released an official update on upcoming withdrawals on January 31,
providing the list of users eligible to withdraw approximately 94% of qualified custody assets.
The firm laid out the process in a 1,411-page court filing.
Do you why lawyers make documents that have so many pages?
So you don't read it and they can hide what's actually going on.
Celsius stressed that eligible users would be asked to update their Celsius account
with certain required information.
They requested AML and KYC policies.
The filing also notes that it's not yet known whether eligible users
will be able to withdraw the remaining 6% of the assets.
Oh, my gosh.
The examiner report also revealed that Celsius used the accounting software QuickBooks.
That's right.
What your local plumber is using,
that's what Celsius used too.
Great job.
Somebody needs to unclog their pipes.
I think the real thing that people need to understand here is,
how do they come to these decisions of who gets paid and who doesn't get paid?
And we also know that there's a lot of questions
that Alex Mashinsky left unanswered when it comes to Celsius.
They failed to record 7,000 intercompany transfers worth billions
leading up to the bankruptcy.
Are you figuring it out yet?
Tch, tch!
A lack of record-keeping could make it impossible to "fully reconstruct"
the bankrupt crypto lender's multi-billion-dollar intercompany claim,
court filings show.
But let me tell you,
the bad actors in the story,
they're going to be revealed.
It's going to be obvious who they are.
We already know who they are.
So, they're trying to pull a ruse, pull a fast one,
by hiding all of these different things that occurred.
But we're not going to let them do it.
There is much more to this story.
And we're going to be writing our own chapter.
Celsius Network LLC filed Thursday's statement on the amount
and type of any potential claims it held against its affiliates
in response to a February 9 court order.
The approximately $9.1 billion intercompany claim
held by Celsius Network LLC against Celsius Network Limited (CNL)
based on books and records "does not take into account the shortfalls in record keeping"---
including an estimated 7,000 unrecorded transactions.
Following "months of analysis,"
the best estimate for the full claim held by the LLC against CNL is $3.5 billion,
the filing said.
"Hmmm. Let's see."
"We're thinking $3.5 billion!"
Guys.
Oh, my gosh.
You know, the more you get into this,
the more you realize this doesn't look like mismanagement.
Remember they tried to paint Sam as just a poor little victim
that didn't know what he was doing?
A company that mismanaged everybody's funds.
You see, mismanagement is a civil route, but it's not criminal.
What has occurred here are criminal activities by criminals.
Celsius deliberately misled its users,
in addition to having poor business practices,
according to a recent report.
Court examiner lambastes Celsius and Mashinsky over business practices.
Now, of course, to my understanding, this report was complete waste.
None of the quotes in here were done under oath,
meaning that people could have said anything that they wanted to say here.
And this is more money, millions of dollars,
that Celsius used that will not be gotten back.
Celsius showed poor risk management.
Has there ever been a more undervalued statement than that one right there?
Now, what they're saying here is,
they didn't actually figure out for sure if they cooked books or not,
but at bare minimum, they showed poor risk management.
And I tell you,
this story here it says
they lambaste Celsius and Mashinsky.
Well, we're about to lambaste some people ourselves.
But before we lambaste some people,
make sure,
if you're interested in this stuff,
if holding these people accountable is something that strikes a nerve to you,
make sure to join our policy Discord.
I'm actually going to be heading next week to Washington DC,
have some talks with some politicians.
We'll be moving forward.
We're going to put this link down below in the chat
so you guys can join the BitSquad Policy page.
Love to get you in there.
I'm probably going to be doing an AMA in the policy Discord.
So make sure to get your butt in there.
Sign up, get a Discord account and make that happen.
Link is in the description.
So now back to the story.
Remember this, guys.
You have some people who are getting 70% back.
People like me,
we may get 35% back
and we might get a share of the ass token, as it is called,
that we will be getting from Celsius in a new company NewCo that nobody wants.
But these people here,
who are these people?
These people were able to liquidate 100% of their holdings
before Celsius went bankrupt.
So let's check out and see who these people are.
We have this. This is $2 billion worth of crypto. Okay?
We're going to look at who some of these actors are.
Power Block had $21 million.
Druk Holding had $17 million on there.
Tian Wei Christopher: $34 million
Harrison Charles: $64 million
This doesn't include, by the way--
this is a separate list than the list we'll look at another time
that includes Fireblocks, BitMEX and EquitiesFirst.
These are companies that the law firms have decided
not to pursue the money that they owe Celsius.
They would rather do retail clawbacks and go after you,
try to get your $40,000,
than going after BitMEX that owes them $73 million,
or EquitiesFirst that owes them $350 million.
Between those three companies, half a billion dollars.
They are the lawyers aren't going after, but they want to go after you.
Big shocker.
Alright. Let's check this out.
Let's look at who these people are here.
Druk Holding
Druk Holding and Investments,
well, they're a commercial arm of the Royal Government of Bhutan,
established in 2007.
What is Bhutan?
No, this is not a scary futon.
This is a landlocked country that borders China.
So giving preference to countries and governments.
How about that?
Who is Coinmerce?
"Give your money a future."
Well, the only way to give your money a future is to get
some insider information and pull it off with Celsius.
Yes, it is a European trading platform able to get their money off.
Very interesting.
Let's look at the next one.
Power Block
Yes, Power Block and SmartFi, they are one and the same.
What is this?
Power Block Coin's market expertise and experience
SmartFi traces its origins back to 2017,
when a company called Power Block Coin was formed.
They processed over a billion dollars worth of transactions last year.
Let's figure out why they got preferential treatment.
Moving on.
We have Quoine Pte.
It's a financial technology company headquartered in Japan
with offices in Singapore, that's big, and Vietnam.
Founded in 2014,
their core product is Liquid,
a highly sophisticated cryptocurrency trading platform supporting fiat
and dozens of cryptocurrencies.
It's one of the largest exchanges in Asia.
Hmmm. Interesting.
Do you know who owned Liquid?
That's right. Alameda and FTX.
Shocker!
Liquid is actually the company that screwed over NuGenesis or NuCoin,
if you remember, when we were talking with Hussein Faraj quite a bit.
So big surprise here.
They've got pull.
"FTX-owned Liquid announces plan to return customer funds."
This is from the end of last year.
Told you we don't make this stuff up, people.
FTX owns Liquid.
You cannot make this stuff up.
And they got preferential treatment.
And they got to pull all their funds off.
Liquid, man, we're coming for you.
So, once again, we come back to this list.
Companies got 100%--
companies and people.
It's governments.
It's friends.
It's exchanges.
It's anyone who Celsius wanted to say,
"Hey, we want to do something special for you. Let's tell you what's happening."
And here's the funny thing about this list when you look at it.
When you look at this list,
a lot of these people,
we don't even know who the F they are.
They're just random people.
There doesn't seem to be any connection between them and anything in crypto.
So either these are super anonymous people and maybe even Satoshi is on this list,
or maybe these are bridges for other funders who had money on Celsius,
like, I don't know, maybe FTX,
maybe other governments,
maybe other exchanges, if you're picking up what I'm putting down.
For others, some of these are CFOs from exchanges.
Some of these are Chinese billionaires who sued Evergrande.
Some are innovators in the beauty industry,
in the IT industry.
And, yes, one of them, even a senior council member
for none other than Fidelity.
The TradFi centralized finance spaghetti with crypto.
It needs to be untangled.
And they get all their money back.
And remember, Celsius, well,
they gave all their money back to their friends,
but all the people that they owed money to,
all the customer funds that they stole on the site,
well, those customers,
well, I guess you're high and dry.
You may get 70% back if you had $12 on the platform.
So here's some interesting numbers on Twitter here from Lilly Fee.
"Quite some numbers,
would be interesting to see the dates as well."
According to Mashinsky,
they had $10.6 billion TVL in total liabilities locked
when Celsius went down.
TVL: $10.6 billion
Registration: 5,732
First time customers: 1,382
Inflows: $194.84 million
Outflows: About half a billion dollars
Net transfers: -$300 million
Net Bitcoin: -5,300 Bitcoin
Net ETH: -52,000 ETH
Net stables: -22 million
And who would have thought anything was going wrong?
Hard to see anything going wrong with all these negatives.
And if you guys know, my guy, I talked to this morning on the live stream, Greg,
make sure to send Greg an email and a phone call,
"of the UCC should step down,
his dealings with NovaWulf prior to this bid gives it a bad look."
Of course, he worked for White & Case.
"And with NovaWulf buying up claims beforehand is shady as hell.
Something is not adding up right."
If you remember this morning when I talked to him on the phone,
which props to old Greg for calling in.
I told him. I told him he was talking to a lot of people.
Old Greg, of course.
This guy's life should be made miserable, by the way.
We should pester this guy nonstop until these changes are made.
We want no clawbacks.
We want our money back.
We want everyone treated the same.
You can't retail clawback random folks
and then remember this list and let these people go free.
Absolutely no way.
But if you remember this morning,
Greg said, "Oh, you need to get your story straight.
NovaWulf, oh, no, the facts are they had a great bid."
Well, interesting.
He dealt with NovaWulf prior to his dealings with the bankruptcy.
I'm sure that, Greg, old Greg,
call me, Greg, call me, Greg,
I'm sure it's a coincidence, right?
I'm sure it's coincidence, Greg.
I don't like your tone, Greg.
I don't like your tone.
I told him, I said,
"Oh, if you think this isn't a good tone, you should see me on a bad day."
"The corruption is sickening, we had a much better deal
and because of this inside colluding
at the expense of tens of thousands of people's lives,
this has been dragged out as long as possible,
there's a reason it was also dropped on midnight before,
it's evil."
This plan is evil. 100%.
This plan is not settled, though.
We have to continue to make our voice heard against Celsius,
against the UCC,
against Thomas DiFiore,
against Chris Ferraro,
against Keith Wofford,
against Greg Pesce,
against NovaWulf Digital,
against Kirkland & Ellis,
against Case & White LLP, or White & Case.
I can never remember what it is.
I don't know if you want your case whitened or your white casened.
I don't know.
But the fact is these are all bad actors.
And they will all be held accountable.
And we are going to make sure, if it is the last thing I do,
my last dying breath is to scream
"F this company! We don't want your ass token!"
then that's what I'm going to do.
BitBoy out.
Be blessed.