Weeks after officially emerging from bankruptcy, cryptocurrency lender Celsius Network has finally repaid investors. For its part, the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (CDPQ), which injected 150 million US dollars into the company, will ultimately have recovered less than 25 million dollars.
Investors were finally able to recover part of their stake, noted The duty. In recent weeks, the cryptocurrency lender explained to its customers by email that a payment would be made to them in a Coinbase account.
For the New Jersey company, this was the final step in long procedures that spanned more than 18 months. Recall that Celsius placed itself under Chapter 11 protection in July 2022 – which sheltered it from its creditors – a month after freezing its clients’ accounts due to lack of funds.
Former CEO of Celsius, Alex Mashinsky, was finally arrested for fraud this summer. This highly publicized bankruptcy is regularly presented as one of the most important in the world of cryptoassets.
In January, in a press release, the company announced that it had officially emerged from bankruptcy. She believed she would be able to repay investors: “The plan includes the distribution of more than $3 billion in cryptocurrency and fiat currency to Celsius’ creditors. »
Completely restructuring its activities, Celsius confirmed that it was abandoning the cryptoasset transaction platform and wanted to cease certain operations in an “orderly manner”. She cites the abandonment of Celsius’ mobile and web applications.
The company is not closing its doors, however. It now focuses its activities on bitcoin mining under a new name: Ionic Digital.
Owned by “creditors of Celsius”, Ionic eventually plans to list on the Stock Exchange. Communications were sent to cheated investors inviting them to acquire shares in the new company.
Millions lost for the CDPQ
The Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec will have lost a lot of money in Celsius Network after having invested there, in the fall of 2021, the equivalent of 200 million Canadian dollars.
In July, the CDPQ reached a settlement agreement which allowed it to recover 24 million US (around 30 million Canadian) as “reimbursement of fees [engagés] “. This sum must, however, be shared with its partner WestCap. The CDPQ specified that it could not disclose its share of the amount recovered.
As part of the Caisse’s agreement, an additional million dollars will be distributed to “all category B preferred shareholders”, i.e. essentially institutional investors.