Bitcoin Forum

GM crypto fam,

As I was doing my regular Friday "catching up" routine. I came across this story, and I'm not sure I understand everything.

So, a court declared that $4.2B worth of customer deposits belong to Celsius, allowing the company to use the digital assets in bankruptcy proceedings. But what happens to the customers now? Will they ever get repaid?

Source:

https://app.getresponse.com/view.html?x=a62b&m=BVxpy5&mc=9I&s=BtgXWnG&u=QcLhh&z=ESSrIqt&

https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2023/01/05/celsius-earn-assets-belong-to-bankrupt-crypto-lender-judge-rules/

The $4.2 billion "earn products" will become part of the assets that will be liquidated. Priority of proceeds distribution will go to secured creditors. The customers get paid of whatever is left of liquidated assets. That's the process that I know.

The Judge's decision looks unfair but the terms and condition which those customers agreed are pretty clear.

The customers wouldn't get their money back because based on the terms of service, Celsius only responsible to refund if they have money left, but since the bankruptcy make the Celsius doesn't have any money, they didn't need to refund. Every customers during creating new accounts must check to agree with the Celsius's terms of service, so they must not mad since they're careless and not think twice before put their money to Celsius.

With a lot of money staked by customers Im sure the 4.2B isnt enough to refund all their clients. Also Im not sure if the money would be use for that purpose but definitely some of it will be credited for that, at least even fraction of money by the customers will be saved.

But this is how the process works so sorry for those. They already have no money left hence applying for that bankrupcy.

The strategy by Celsius is clear. They don't want to repay current left funds to investors, so they can continue milking the 4.2$ billion through wages which are paid to the company's employees, including the CEO and his first tier team. They are earning more time to do this, so once the case is finished and they are sentenced to repay left funds to investors (probably in years from now), there will be only pennies left, because the rest of the money will be already gone to the scammers' pockets and to pay for operational costs of the business. Pennies are everything investors are going to retrieve.

This was a pretty crazy ruling by the judge in my opinion and should set off some major red flags for anyone placing their funds in someone else's hands.  It would be foolish to think that other companies can't gamble with your money and find the same outcome if things go wrong.  It seems like a pretty good deal for them.  Take customer funds, gamble them on the most outrageous nonsense possible in hopes of making x1000 on the customer money.  Then if things go wrong you say, "oops, I'm sorry" and file for bankruptcy.  It's a shame this is what the industry has evolved into and you'd expect more from big players, but it goes to show that these people who are after your money are criminals who hide behind ridiculous laws.  Don't trust them.

And I think it would be innocence from our side to think other crypto lending companies don't have similar points on their terms and conditions to seize investors' funds anytime, without major negative consequences for themselves. They are totally covered and protected by lawyers advisors. Since these companies deal with billion of dollars, they have the best (or the most unscrupulous) professionals by their side. And as we already have an example of how judges act in such cases, it's really better to avoid lending platforms for passive income investments, because after all, the justice isn't going to defend investors, rather it's going to decide in favour of the scammers.

And this shows once again why it is such a bad idea to let someone else dictate your financial future by giving them your money while at the same time you give them the discretion to do whatever they want with it, but this should not be surprising, the more the time passes the more centralized companies in this market begin to resemble traditional banks, and instead of some kind of opposition we see users accepting such a transition wholeheartedly, and while it is disappointing it seems this transition is not going to stop and as such we should expect more and bigger cases like this one.

With all of the events that have come from these centralized platforms and now with the judge giving the verdict that Celcius is the rightful owner of people's fund deposited in them, this will make everyone rage and will stop trusting them anymore.
At least to those that have a bad experience with them, they'll start to trust their funds on any of them and if they'll use the service, it's like the exact amount that they want to have it there and no longer with excess money to be kept there which is good.

When I saw this decision by the judge, I was like "What the F!!!" and I almost spilled my coffee at that time (glad I didn't or else, I don't have any keyboard to use now :D).

Anyway, this is a wake-up call for us investors especially for those who are putting their assets in lending platforms or not only on lending platform but on any platform that we must and always read the terms and conditions before putting our assets there.

Feel sorry for those who lost their money in Celsius, but that's how crypto is without any regulations. Companies will create a platform, put some interesting feature and then when shit comes out, they will just say shit things and will just file a bankruptcy. Just look at SBF now. Committed fraud but now he's free and living with his parents.

This situation is different than FTX or MtGox because they lend them their crypto for lending and got paid back in yield. With FTX or MtGox none of those funds were lent. Maybe a small amount for those who used FTX lend but most users never agreed to lend out their crypto.

Gemini earn however is in the same situation. All people there lent out their crypto to earn a yield and the judge for that case might also deed the same outcome.
So far no chapter 11 yet but the way dcg is handling all of this most likely it’s the path that will be taken.

Once the bankruptcy status has been granted to celsius, no customer will get their money back. They will have to liquidate all their assets and their creditors (read financial institutions) will get the proceeds. Once the creditors are paid back, the customers will get a refund if anything remains in their account after all these payments. Bankruptcy essentially means that the retail creditors will lose their money.

So all the best!

If the customer truly comprehends what Celcius offer they should have known better. If they truly read and agreed to their terms of service they should have known better. Unfortunately, who does even read an ToS/TnC and Privacy Policy, those two documents might be the biggest lie on the internet.

And for those who are wandering about the particular ToS parts, ask yourself whether such a ruling is probable or not. Here is the snipped parts I quoted, the emphasis is not changed:



With such agreement from both parties, the debtors and creditors, I think the probability of the ruling being discharged is unlikely.

Do you also have the same thoughts as me that there is something wrong with the judge's decision and Celsius made an agreement with the judge handling the case.
The money saved by the customer should still be the right of each of them instead of the judge declaring that Celsius won in court and declaring all the money saved legally belonged to Celsius.
However, I would not be surprised if there was indeed an act of bribery to be able to win a trial, especially since there was a large amount of money involved in the case and somehow it would have been done to win it.

Yeah, you nailed it. I'm actually thinking if the judge has got some freebies under his table from Celcius. That's the first thing that has come to my mind because of the decision.
It's easy to say that based on the ruling or what, but judging it logically, we can say that it's the customer's fund and not Celcius. But anyway, it's sad for the part of those customers that have their funds on it and can't do anything with the verdict.

This is why it's best to read the fine print before trying to put some money on anything. While the judge's decision is pretty clear on this one favoring Celsius, it is because they know that the customers agreed to this kind of setup in the first place. Had it not been the case, pretty sure it will be a pretty lengthy battle before they get those funds or even a fraction of it that they can use to their bankruptcy. But yeah, awarding $4.2b without regard on the investors is a dick move IMO. Without the investors' and customers' fund, Celsius wouldn't be able to take off in the first place.

I think with all the terms and conditions that are laid out in front of you and not reading it. Line by line would be definitely a hard thing to get out or really make a statement of it since the customers agreed to the conditions making it not a liability by the company, they are really just going to use it for recovering or something other than that probably paying employees and other stuff like that, and it said that the customers have to pay for it. I do hope they make some kind of assurance to users or something.

If I am not wrong, during times like these there is a law that prevents all debtors to get 100% of the funds. You first pay the customers a max number, something like 25k or something if I am not wrong, don't remember the exact number to be fair, and they get their money, if you invested 100 dollars, you get that 100 back, if invested 5k, get that 5k back, but if you invested 10 million, you only get the max.

So, whatever left will go to whatever payment needed for the bankruptcy and that's it. Means, it's not like customers get zero, but the rich are hurt by this a lot more than the poor people and that is one of the few cases where poor are protected in American law.

Why do both of you ignore the obvious? You are welcome to speculate that the system corrupts and so on. But since you are saying by judging it logically, why don't you inspect the snipped parts of the court order document I have quoted on this thread above?

It is absurd to have scepticism on the court itself while you didn't address any minuscule parts of the court documents. Actually, if you really do believe the ruling is indeed rigged, you should address your rationale about why you think the funds are deserved to be kept as the user's ownership.

I didn't ignore the obvious and my bad if it looks like it is and given thoughts and that's it. I've read what you've said and it's a sad fact that many of us don't read the terms and conditions and yet we're willing to deposit a lot of money onto these platforms.
Yeah, it's been written and the users have no longer jurisdiction since they've agreed to the terms given to them. Well, what I've said is just my own opinion and logical thinking which may not be appropriate if it's all about the process that has gone through.

is there no way possible whatsoever for the customer to get back their money?

The sad thing is that crypto became so big that the amounts we are talking about are huge as well, like 4 billion dollars? When mt.gox happened it wasn't anywhere near this and that is the biggest crypto scam that ever happened, it was just hundreds of millions of dollars that was stolen, of course when we look at it right now it's a lot more but when it happened that was the price.

Nowadays the smallest news that we are discussing here is 4 billion dollars, and that's not really hurting the market anymore neither. All in all, I have to say that whatever this news is, right or wrong, true or false, deserved or not, it's still just a lot of money.

And the numbers will keep raising as not only the price of bitcoin will keep growing over the years, but it is my impression that each new generation of newbies we watch becoming part of the market are less and less interested on what is behind bitcoin and its reason to exist and they only want to obtain profits, which means companies like Celsius will keep appearing, thriving and crashing in an endless cycle from which there is no escape since I doubt most of those newbies will ever learn to stay away from these kind of projects.

No. Scammers have permission from the judge to continue using depositors' funds to run their operations. Their strategy is to milk most money as possible paying their own wages as company's employees, so once the deadline for the recovery is over, there will be only pennies left for creditors. If the judge had decided the opposite then it would have been possible to retrieve funds partially. But that is not the case, so next time better to avoid these platforms.

The users of those platforms really need to read what kind of terms they are accepting when they sign up to them, they basically gave their funds away to Celsius and while it is completely unfair, the law only cares about what is legal and not about the unfairness of the situation, and I hope anyone which has not suffered because of something similar looks at this example and learns from it, as this is much cheaper than the alternative.

And that is not an exclusivity of Celsius. Any crypto lending platform or exchange going bankrupt would lead investors and customers (unsecured creditors) to the same infamous fate. There isn't any insurance program which covers users from crypto platforms in case of bankruptcies, with the exception of Nexo, maybe, which claims to be insured up to 250$ million dollars.

However, before this scandal I thought these platforms were safe to invest, since they are regulated businesses, therefore the justice would stay by the side of the victims. After all, it's also a good lesson that we shouldn't act expecting the law forces are going to save our skin in case something goes wrong. In fact, it's more likely the opposite happens.

It is easy to think justice would prevail but anyone who has at some point had to deal with the law knows this is not the truth, most of the time the one which wins is the one with the best and most expensive lawyers and the one which could force others to sign an advantageous contract for himself, and it does not take a genius to understand Celsius is the one which had all advantages since the beginning, even if at the same time Celsius is the one at fault here.

This is a very disgusting strategy done by Celsius's owner making them change their terms and condition according to their favor.  I hope victims file an appeal to reverse the decision and be granted and make these scammers pay for their fraud attempts.  I also think the judge siding with Celsius is taken care of.  I wonder how much that judge cut on the fund.  I hope I am wrong but I the idea of the possibility that the judge had been bought keeps on entering my mind.

Well good news for creditors that is owed money from Celsius. It is granted permission from the judge to convert altcoins for Bitcoin and Ethereum.   
They did start this converting on this last weekend.  This is part of new owners Fahrenheit deal with the sec.
https://www.theblock.co/post/237887/celsius-moves-70-million-of-altcoins-following-ruling-it-can-swap-to-bitcoin-and-ether

This question may be difficult for me to answer. It's a policy on a platform, of course, but if there is a special notice there is an opportunity to withdraw, if not, well, be prepared to lose your investment. Yes. If the condition is like that it is sad and makes us regret and blame ourselves. So we have to be selective in placing the money we collect to invest in a trading platform.

Well there is some more good news for investors who are still owed money from Celsius. They have agreed to take $25 Million from GK8 and give $24 Million for legal expenses, and $1 Million to be given to the group.

But still some people do not think the $24 Million will cover total legal expenses. And the $1 Million is unfair. https://www.coindesk.com/business/2023/07/18/celsius-estate-settles-with-series-b-holders-over-proceeds-of-gk8-sale