Voyager outflows hit $134M but Celsius hasn’t sold anything — yet
Crypto lenders Voyager and Celsius are slowly working their ways towards making customers whole, one year into bankruptcy
mundissima/Shutterstock modified by Blockworks
Celsius and Voyager — rival crypto lending startups that went bust last year — have been cleared to start shifting their crypto holdings. But only Voyager has been busy.
Crypto markets shuddered at Celsius gaining court approval to convert its remaining cryptocurrency into bitcoin (BTC) and ether (ETH), starting July 1.
Celsius had around $600 million in crypto at the time, per Arkham Intelligence. About 70% of those funds were already BTC and ETH, with other tokens (sans stablecoins) making up $162 million or so.
As of Tuesday morning, Celsius has not moved any crypto at all. The firm, formerly headquartered in Hoboken, last shuffled crypto three weeks ago. It sent 17.3 million matic (MATIC), worth $11.3 million at the time, to the Polygon staking contract where it would help secure the PoS chain and earn staking rewards.
About a week earlier, Celsius deposited $7.1 million USDC with institutional crypto exchange FalconX.
Voyager shrinks crypto portfolio 25%
Voyager opened customer withdrawals for one month starting June 23, almost one year after it suspended operations before filing for bankruptcy a week later.
The firm had been crippled by the implosion of Three Arrows Capital (3AC); the failed crypto hedge fund firm had earlier defaulted on a $665 million Voyager loan, from which neither Voyager nor 3AC ever recovered.
On-chain data relayed by Arkham shows Voyager’s estate controlling almost $413 million in crypto on the day before it opened withdrawals last month.
A steady stream of outflows has since reduced that figure to $307.5 million. That’s a 25% drop, even though prices for cryptocurrencies featured in its portfolio have risen practically across the board. The total value of all outflows, at current prices, is $134 million.
The uptick in on-chain activity indeed coincided with Voyager activating withdrawals. Blockworks reached out to its estate to confirm its outflows map to customer withdrawal requests but has not received a response.
In any case, USDC, bitcoin, ether and memecoin shiba inu (SHIB) represent the bulk of Voyager outflows, with $52 million, $38.2 million, $1.7 million and $1.7 million sent out to date, respectively.
That’s anywhere from 40% of its unit count, in the case of USDC, to 14% for SHIB. So, there’s still loads more crypto to be distributed.
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