Arrington Led Consortium Featuring Coinbase Acquires Celsius’ Assets

• A consortium of investors called Fahrenheit, led by Arrington Capital, has won the bid to acquire Celsius’ assets. 
• The consortium, which includes Coinbase, beat NovaWulf LLC and another group of investors, that included Gemini. 
• Celsius’ restructuring will begin right away with over $400 million allocated for its development. 
• Fahrenheit’s winning bid means that NovaWulf is owed up to $20 million in break-up fees.

Celsius Network’s months-long bankruptcy auction has finally come to an end, with Arrington Capital-led Fahrenheit emerging as the top bidder for the bankrupt crypto lender’s assets. The new owners of Celsius’ assets include Coinbase, US Bitcoin Corp, Algorand’s former CEO Steven Kokinos, and investment banker Ravi Kaza. This consortium of investors also had the support of senior executives at Wall Street giant Fortress Investment Group. 

Celsius’ New Owners Plan To Scale Up Mining Operations

According to a press release from the Celsius Network, the bankrupt crypto lender’s new owners will provide the required capital and technical resources to successfully establish the new company, in line with the firm’s Chapter 11 plan. The plan also provides for Celsius’ liquid crypto assets to its account holders, along with settlements with the custody and withhold groups. A new company will be created to manage the crypto lender’s illiquid assets, including its institutional loan portfolio, mining business, and alternative investments. 

The bankrupt crypto lender’s account holders will have 100% of the new equity in the new company. This firm will be overseen by a board of directors that will be appointed by the creditors. The new owners will allocate up to $500 million in liquid cryptocurrency for the new company. Fahrenheit LLC’s US Bitcoin Corp will build and energize crypto mining facilities with a 100-megawatt capacity in order to scale up Celsius’ bitcoin mining operations immediately. 

“We are very pleased that our competitive auction process produced a positive result for customers, including, most prominently, hundreds of millions of dollars in lower management fee savings and increased liquid cryptocurrency distributions to Celsius’ customers.”

David Barse and Alan Carr, members of the Special Committee of the Board.

Fahrenheit LLC beat other investor groups, including NovaWulf Digital Management, which was backed by Apollo Global Management, and the Blockchain Recovery Investment Committee, which was backed by the Winklevoss-owned Gemini Trust. NovaWulf’s defeat entitles it to up to $20 million in break-up fees.