With near Trumpian incompetence, cryptocurrency lending company Celsius Network amassed more than $1.1 billion in debt between its loan obligations and its $700 million in “digital assets” that it owns to account holders, Reuters reports.
Cryptocurrency lenders essentially acted as a broker for traditional institutional investors, allowing them to buy into crypto with their assets from depositors, who received a high rate of return on their account holdings. Essentially, they were putting a dollar value on imaginary assets.
The information was made public in Celsius’s bankruptcy filing. Cryptocurrenies and related companies are collapsing after the bottom fell out of the market, with no fewer than a dozen established companies declaring bankruptcy in the last two months.