Bankrupt crypto lender Celsius Network has filed a complaint against lending firm EquitiesFirst Holdings in a bid to recoup assets.
According to a sealed adversary complaint filed on Sept. 6, Celsius is seeking injunctive relief and a declaratory judgment associated with the “recovery of money/property” — according to the title of the docket.
The filing named both EquitiesFirst and its CEO Alexander Christy as defendants. Additionally, Celsius filed a summons on the same day, requiring that the private lender provide a motion or answer within 35 days.
EquitiesFirst Holdings is an Indianapolis-based private lending company that reportedly owed Celsius Network $439 million as of July 2022.
Celsius first began taking collateralized loans from EquitiesFirst in 2019 to “support its operations” owing to what Alex Mashinsky described in a subsequent bankruptcy filing as a “lack of institutional lending available to cryptocurrency companies,” at the time.
However, in July 2021, Celsius Network sought to retrieve the collateral it had pledged to EquitiesFirst but was informed that the lender could not return the amount Celsius had provided.
As of July 2021, Celsius was owed a total of $509 million by EquitiesFirst. The increase from $439 million to $509 million was due to the loans being over-collateralized. Since September 2021, the debt has been slowly repaid at a rate of $5 million per month.
As of July 2022, EquitiesFirst owed Celsius $439 million, with the debt being comprised of $361 million in cash and 3,765 Bitcoin (BTC).
Related: Alex Mashinsky’s assets frozen by US court as part of criminal case
Celsius Network was among the major casualties of the 2022 bear market, filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on July 14, 2022.
Celsius’ former CEO Alex Mashinky was arrested on July 13 this year, with authorities accusing him of misleading Celsius users and defrauding investors out of billions of dollars.
Notably, The Federal Trade Commission issued Celsius with $4.7 billion in fines for allegedly “duping” users, but suspended the judgement in order for the platform to use the assets as part of its bankruptcy proceedings.
Celsius creditors are currently voting on a settlement plan that — if approved — would see a consortium called Fahrenheit buy Celsius’ assets and return Celsius creditors funds by way of launching a new company.
Magazine: How to protect your crypto in a volatile market — Bitcoin OGs and experts weigh in
Asset manager Teucrium Investment Advisors is set to launch the first XRP-based exchange-traded fund in the US markets, a leveraged XRP (ETF) on the NYSE Arca. The Teucrium 2x Long Daily XRP ETF will seek to offer investors two times the daily return of the XRP (XRP) token with a 1.85% management fee and annual expense ratio, according to the company’s website. The XRP-based ETF will trade under the XXRP ticker beginning April 8. “If you have a short-term high-conviction view on XRP prices, you may consider exploring the Teucrium 2x Long Daily XRP ETF,” the alternative asset manager said. XXRP currently has $2 million worth of net assets. Details of Teucrium’s soon-to-be-launched XXRP ETF. Source: Teucrium Teucrium founder and CEO Sal Gilbertie told Bloomberg on April 7 that investors had shown strong interest in an XRP ETF and hinted that it may file to list more crypto ETFs in the future. Gilbertie was also pleased that XXRP would launch during a market downturn driven largely by US President Donald Trump’s tariffs. “What better time to launch a product than when prices are low?” Gilbertie told Bloomberg. Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas said it was “very odd” to see a new asset’s first ETF come in leveraged form — however, he added that the odds of a spot XRP ETF being approved remain “pretty high.” Source: Eric Balchunas Several spot XRP ETF applications from the likes of Grayscale, Bitwise, Franklin Templeton, Canary Capital and 21Shares are being reviewed by the Securities and Exchange Commission. In February, Balchunas and fellow Bloomberg ETF analyst James Seyffart attributed 65% approval odds to a spot XRP ETF in 2025. Predictions market Polymarket states there is currently a 75% chance that the SEC will approve a spot XRP ETF in 2025. Related: XRP price sell-off set to accelerate in April as inverse cup and handle hints at 25% decline Up until recently, ETF issuers would have seen a different environment for filing for XRP ETFs as Ripple Labs — the creators of the XRP token — and the SEC battled out a four-year court battle over XRP’s security status. That case came to a close last month. Teucrium has amassed over $310 million worth of assets under management since it was founded in 2010. It offers mostly agricultural commodities, such as ETFs tracking the likes of corn, soybeans, sugar and wheat. Magazine: XRP win leaves Ripple and industry with no crypto legal precedent set
Australia’s corporate watchdog has been given the nod to shut down 95 “hydra” companies that it suspects engaged in crypto investment and romance scams, known as “pig butchering.” The Australian Securities and Investments Commission’s application to wind up the companies was approved by the Federal Court of Australia on just and equitable grounds after ASIC found that most of the companies had been incorporated with false information. Many of these companies were set up purporting to provide “genuine services” but were instead believed to be scamming their victims, ASIC Deputy Chair Sarah Court said in an April 8 statement. “There appears to be a common pattern of scam activity in the nature of ‘pig butchering,’” Justice Angus Stewart said in an April 4 court ruling after looking at 48 “Reviews of Misconduct” from 17 companies accused of facilitating romance scams. The judgment was made on March 21. Source: Rocky Perrotta Pig butchering scams involve scammers building fake relationships with victims to win their trust before convincing them to invest in a fraudulent crypto or financial scheme. The securities regulator also suspects that much of the scam activity is coming from Southeast Asia. Insolvency and restructuring advisers Catherine Conneely and Thomas Birch of Cor Cordis have been appointed as joint liquidators of the 95 companies. Related: Australian regulator’s ‘blitz’ hits crypto exchanges, money remitters Nearly 1,500 claims by “investors” had been received by the provisional liquidators, amounting to total claims of over $35.8 million, according to the court order. The claimants are based in 14 countries, including Australia, the US, Cameroon, Ghana, India, Nepal, the Philippines and France. The provisional liquidators found that only three of the 95 firms had assets to their name and recommended that the other 92 companies be wound up and immediately deregistered. ASIC said it has been removing around 130 scam websites each week of late, bringing its total to over 10,000 sites, which have included over 7,200 fake investment platform scams and 1,564 phishing scams. “However, these scams are like hydras: you shut down one and two more take its place. That’s why we’re warning consumers that the threat of scams and identity fraud remains high. We remind consumers to be vigilant,” Court said. Australia’s National Anti-Scam Centre recently reported a 26% fall in scam losses to $2 billion in 2024, while the number of scam reports also fell by 17.8% to 494,732. Magazine: Financial nihilism in crypto is over — It’s time to dream big again
The US Securities and Exchange Commission has released the list of executives from US crypto and finance giants that will take part in a roundtable discussion on crypto trading regulation. On April 7, the regulator said its upcoming April 11 roundtable will discuss how it should handle crypto trading rules, calling it “Between a Block and a Hard Place: Tailoring Regulation for Crypto Trading.” It will be the second in a series of discussions on crypto, headed by its recently-formed Crypto Task Force. Taking part are Uniswap Labs chief legal officer Katherine Minarik, Cumberland DRW associate general counsel Chelsea Pizzola and Coinbase institutional product vice president Gregory Tusar — all firms that had once been in the regulator’s scope. Under the Biden administration, the regulator sued Cumberland DRW in October and Coinbase in June 2023 for alleged securities law violations, but both lawsuits were dropped this year under the Trump administration. The SEC also started an investigation for possible enforcement action into Uniswap Labs in April 2024, which was dropped in February with no further action. Also taking part in the roundtable are New York Stock Exchange product chief Jon Herrick, crypto brokerage FalconX business lead Austin Reid, securities tokenizing firm Texture Capital CEO Richard Johnson and the University of California, Berkeley finance chair Christine Parlour. Source: SEC Dave Lauer, co-founder of the advocacy group We the Investors and Tyler Gellasch, CEO of the not-for-profit Healthy Markets Association, will also take part, while law firm Goodwin Procter partner Nicholas Losurdo will moderate the discussion. Representing the SEC will be acting chair Mark Uyeda, Crypto Task Force chief of staff Richard Gabbert and Commissioners Caroline Crenshaw and Hester Peirce. The roundtable is the second crypto-focused discussion in a series of five that the SEC dubbed the “Spring Sprint Toward Crypto Clarity.” The first was on March 21, regarding the legal status of crypto, while three future discussions will cover custody, tokenization, and decentralized finance (DeFi). The roundtables come as the SEC, under President Donald Trump, works to revamp its oversight of the crypto industry, with its latest action being to review staff statements on crypto so they can possibly be changed or withdrawn. Uyeda said in an April 5 statement shared by the SEC on X that due to Trump’s executive order on deregulation and recommendations from the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, he was reviewing seven staff statements, five of which concerned crypto. Source: SEC “The purpose of this review is to identify staff statements that should be modified or rescinded consistent with current agency priorities,” Uyeda said. Related: SEC paints ‘a distorted picture’ of USD stablecoin market — Crenshaw The first on the list was an April 2019 analysis from the Strategic Hub for Innovation and Financial Technology on how crypto sales could be investment contracts under the securities defining Howey test — an argument the agency had made to sue multiple crypto firms for legal violations. Also up for review are two Division of Investment Management statements, one from May 2021 asking investors to consider the risks of funds with exposure to Bitcoin futures and a November 2020 statement asking for feedback on whether state-chartered banks meet standards to be qualified custodians. The SEC will also look into a December 2022 Division of Corporation Finance statement that urged SEC-regulated companies to evaluate their disclosures to mention if a slew of crypto firm bankruptcies and collapses at the time impacted their business. Finally, the agency will review a Division of Examinations alert from February 2021 that said, “a number of activities related to the offer, sale and trading of digital assets that are securities present unique risks to investors.” Legal Panel: XRP win leaves Ripple a ‘bad actor’ with no crypto legal precedent set
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Likelihood of an approved spot XRP ETF still high: Analyst
ASIC shutting down scam websites
SEC’s Uyeda orders review of staff crypto comments
