Celsius Shareholder BnkToTheFuture Proposes Bitcoin Investments, Restructuring in Rescue Bid

Crypto investment platform BnkToTheFuture proposed three recovery plans on Thursday aimed at helping users affected by the insolvency of crypto lender Celsius.

BnkToTheFuture is registered as an excluded securities business with the Cayman Islands Monetary Authority and holds 5% of Celsius. “We believe that this allows us to call a shareholder meeting as part of our statutory shareholder rights that legally cannot be ignored by the Celsius board,” it said in the Thursday post.

The first proposal calls for restructuring and relaunching Celsius, which would allow depositors to benefit from “any recovery through financial engineering.” This could refer to the issuance of additional tokens or additional fundraising.

The second proposal is to form a pool of the most influential holders of bitcoin (BTC) and have them “co-invest with the community” in a bid to raise significant amounts of capital for Celsius. BnkToTheFuture said it had handled the previous fundraising of over $20 million for Celsius in which some 1,039 investors participated.

“We completed a similar disaster recovery offering for Bitfinex in 2016,” BnkToTheFuture explained. The raise saw over $76 million raised from investors to help the then beleaguered crypto exchange which saw a hack of 120,000 bitcoin at the time.

The third proposal is to “form an operational plan that allows a new entity and team to rebuild and make depositors whole.” The move would however involve “risks and full recovery of funds is not guaranteed,” BnkToTheFuture said.

A community vote for the three proposals is underway as of Friday, following which BnkToTheFuture is expected to hold a formal meeting with Celsius board members.

BnkToTheFuture did not immediately respond to requests for comment at press time.

Celsius cut off withdrawals from its platform earlier this month citing “extreme market conditions,” which lead to fears of its possible insolvency at the time. Customer withdrawals remain paused and regulators have opened investigations against the company.

Meanwhile, Celsius said Thursday it is exploring options to “preserve and protect assets,” as reported.