Washington state wants to investigate Celsius financial crisis

State auditors have questioned Celsius about alleged economic mismanagement. Inside a recent development, Washington’s Assistant Attorney General Stephen Manning submitted a motion with Judge Martin Glenn on the 22nd of September to portray the WSDFI.

The cryptocurrency lender initially froze clients’ withdrawals last June, citing severe economic conditions. Briefly after, it settled off approximately 150 staff members and hired restructuring advisors from a consulting company, Alvarez & Marsal, to conserve and safeguard investments.

Later that month, it registered for Chapter 11 insolvency, and the successive deliberations in the Southern District of New York disclosed the extent of its financial difficulties. Celsius is said to owe $5B to 500,000 lenders.

State equities regulatory authorities in Wisconsin, Vermont, Texas, and even Washington have tried to push for increased transparency ever since.

Hiding bigger problems.

For example, Vermont’s Department of Financial Regulation (DFR) has leveled credible accusations against the disturbed virtual currency lender. Following claims that Celsius seems to have been entirely bankrupt in the last three years, the DFR subsequently claimed that the system was never lucrative enough to reimburse the pledged yields.

The DFR also asserted that Celsius Network had worked in different jurisdictions, like Vermont, and had participated in unlicensed security offerings to individual shareholders. It also stated that Celsius lacks a money transmitting permit and may have operated primarily without regulatory control.

In response to these issues, the Department declared a multistate inquiry of Celsius. It also stated that Celsius’s and its executives’ assertions about the security of customer money and the borrower’s ability to fulfill withdrawal commitments are untrue.

Furthermore, several cryptocurrency lenders, like Voyager Digital, had also experienced financial difficulties in the Celsius system.

The California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation is investigating several businesses that provide interest-bearing crypto-asset financial records to clients. They may have struggled to sufficiently disclose the dangers customers face when depositing virtual currency investments onto their systems.

Celsius had also been alleged of price gouging and artificially inflating the value of its CEL coin. On multiple occasions, Celsius enhanced its net stance in CEL by acquiring billions of dollars in its coin. Moreover, Ferraro acknowledged that decreased CEL costs exacerbated the company’s insolvency.

As per Ethan McLaughlin, a lawyer for the province of Vermont involved in this case, the worth of Celsius’ shares slumped by thousands of dollars between the 13th of May and the 13th of June 2022.

The US Department of Justice requested a court-appointed assessor to guarantee that Celsius supplies truthful data to lenders.

Related

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• Celsius countersues KeyFi and accuses it of tens of millions in losses
• Federal Trade Commission (FTC) set to join the Celsius bankruptcy case