Celsius lost $6 billion in investments due to its refusal to disclose financial records

Shareholder Simon Dixon advised the platform to file for bankruptcy and restructure, but his recommendations were ignored

13.07.2022 - 15:00

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2 min

What’s new? BnkToTheFuture CEO Simon Dixon said that the Celsius platform lost $6 billion in potential investment because it refused to provide financial records. In an interview with Anders Larsson, he noted that he advised Celsius to act like cryptocurrency broker Voyager Digital, which filed for bankruptcy to restructure the company and minimize its customers' losses, but his recommendations were ignored.

Interview with Simon Dixon

What else did Dixon say? After Celsius froze customer assets on June 12 to stabilize liquidity, Dixon, as a shareholder of the platform, repeatedly made proposals that could get it back on track. In early July, he presented three different options, two of which involved restructuring and relaunching, and another was to raise funding from the community and major BTC holders. In doing so, Celsius brought in restructuring consultants: on July 10, Kirkland & Ellis lawyers replaced the Akin Gump experts hired earlier.

In a new interview, Dixon noted that he advised Celsius head Alex Mashinsky to publicly disclose the company's financial situation and recovery plan, but he declined to do so. Dixon added:

“The only reason you wouldn’t pursue [a lucrative round of investment] is there’s something else going on.”

The company itself hired experts from investment bank Citigroup back on June 15 to find sources of funding. Later, investment bank Goldman Sachs began looking for investors to buy out Celsius for $2 billion, and cryptocurrency exchange FTX refused to purchase the platform. As reported by a source, the company's balance sheet was found to have a “hole in its budget” of a similar amount.

To learn more about how Celsius lost its hundreds of millions of dollars of its customers in high-risk schemes, see GetBlock Magazine's editorial.

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