XPost: alt.disney, alt.politics.democrats.d, alt.fan.rush-limbaugh
XPost: talk.politics.guns

In article <t2s48k$3r3mn$38@news.freedyn.de>
<governor.swill@gmail.com> wrote:

Very happy to see Swallwell fail after his immature ignorant behavior with a Chink whore spy.

Monkey Pox, right on time to give Democrats an excuse to cheat in the next election.

Recent court documents filed in the bankruptcy cases of Voyager
Digital and Celsius Network reveal the financial ruin
potentially facing customers of both companies.

“The money that my wife and I were hoping to use for our young
daughter’s education in the future is now locked up,” Niraj, a
Voyager customer, wrote in a statement to Judge Michael Wiles.

“I have been in shock since Voyager halted withdrawals. It is as
if your bank is no longer allowing you to withdraw from your
savings accounts. How would you feel? Would you not feel
betrayed?,” he added.

Niraj’s letter is one of more than a hundred filed to the court
and made available to the public by judges in these cases, which
includes revelations from users who have lost money or believe
they were misled by each company.

On June 12, Celsius told its customers it would freeze all
withdrawals on its platform. Three weeks later fellow crypto
lender Voyager did the same thing. In the first two weeks of
July both crypto firms filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy
protection.

The fate of each of the platforms’ customers is in the hands of
the courts.

“The thousands of us Voyager customers hope that you will
carefully take our lives and livelihoods into consideration
while presiding over this case,” wrote Jacoub Hammodeh, a
customer who trusted Voyager with his holdings.

Hammadoeh highlights the company “was publicly listed, implying
responsible stewardship of my assets.” Hammadoeh points out the
platform’s CEO, Stephen Ehrlich, was positioned as a veteran in
the industry, and “Voyager claimed to have full FDIC protection
on USD balances.”

Last week, the Federal Reserve and FDIC issued a joint letter
demanding Voyager cease and desist from making false statements
regarding its FDIC insurance status.

The customer admits he strongly considered withdrawing his
crypto in early June, but was “reassured not to” by a Voyager
press release which read: “The company is well capitalized and
in a good position to weather this cycle and protect customer
assets.”

Using half her proceeds from the sale of a family business, Lisa
Dagnoli, a mother of four, put over a million dollars in
bitcoin, ether, and USDC on Voyager’s platform. Now, she’s
outraged by the firm’s proposal to reimburse creditors in part
with equity and tokens for a new company.

“I take responsibility for investment and risk, but the Voyager
leaders and Voyager Digital, LLC needs to take responsibility
for giving us back what we are due, in full,” Dagnoli, wrote in
a letter filed with the court.

'The business is doing very well'
Like other customers turned creditors of Celsius Network who
have been interviewed by Yahoo Finance, a portion are calling
for the removal of Celsius’ management given its statements
leading up to June 12, when the company halted customer
withdrawals.

Celsius owes $4.7 billion to its customers and is facing a hole
of $1.2 billion between reported assets and outstanding
liabilities, its latest bankruptcy presentation showed. Earlier
this month, the company floated repaying customers through its
bitcoin mining subsidiary.

Robert Cominos, a Celsius customer of about one year who
“transferred about $250,000” onto its platform, claims in his
letter that interviews give by the company’s co-founder and CEO,
Alex Mashinsky, convinced him to make the move.

“The business is doing very well,” Mashinsky told a reporter on
April 13.

“Celsius is a magnet for yield, a magnet for people who want to
save and earn income,” Mashinsky told Yahoo Finance in June
2021. “We just crossed 800,000 users and many, many of them live
off that income.”

In another Celsius letter, an investor who deposited 6 figures
of their life savings with the platform cites a Celsius Medium
post published on June 7 that attempted to rebuke its rumored
financial problems. In its post, Celsius claimed “a handful of
haters” were spreading misinformation about the company.

“Celsius has the reserves (and more than enough ETH) to meet
obligations, as dictated by our comprehensive liquidity risk
management framework,” the company stated.

Five days later Celsius, said it would halt all customer
withdrawals on the platform. A month later, the company
announced it had filed for bankruptcy.

Not everything, but not nothing
These personal stories are also “going to give the judges a
sense that for many of these customers the impact of these
bankruptcies are wide reaching and deeply affect their lives,”
bankruptcy litigator Daniel Saval told Yahoo Finance.

Whether and how these customers are made whole, however, is a
difficult path to chart for customers right now, in Saval’s view.

“I think it’s going to be a challenge,” said Saval. “The way
these exchanges work, is that they typically pool the contents
of customer accounts together. Meaning that they are not holding
segregated accounts. As a result, in those circumstances, the
likely result is that the property will be deemed to be owned by
the bankruptcy estates, as opposed to being owned by the
customers themselves.”

In bankruptcy proceedings, secured creditors typically get first
dibs at any money. Unsecured creditors are usually next on the
list. But before any claimants receive their due, bankrupt firms
must pay operational costs and legal fees through the bankruptcy
process.

“There is no blueprint under the bankruptcy code to decide what
happens in these circumstances for the customers. This is all
new,” said Saval.

“If [the customers] are considered unsecured creditors, then in
theory, they could get pooled with all other types of creditors.
In theory they could all be grouped together,” explained Saval.

Though both crypto lenders have proposed some form of a
repayment plan, a distribution plan is far from decided in
either case, according to Adam Levitin, a Professor at
Georgetown School of Law and principal with financial advisory,
Gordian Group.

Whether distributions are paid out in crypto assets or fiat
currencies depends first on if the companies liquidate their
remaining crypto assets and second, on the distribution plan
either case’s organized creditors committee agrees to by a
majority vote.

“I can say with almost absolute certainty that customers are not
going to get nothing and they’re not going to be paid out in
full,” Levitin told Yahoo Finance. He added that because either
proceeding could “go on for years,” customers anticipating a
payout will need to account for other factors, such as the
crypto market’s volatility and inflation.

Earlier this month, Voyager responded to a joint proposal by FTX
and Alameda Research that pitched an offer to buy customer
accounts. The offer argued it reduced the risk for customers
holding unsecured claims with Voyager in return for FTX
potentially acquiring those creditors as new customers.

In its response, Voyager claimed the offer made “several false
and misleading assertions” about its business. “It’s a low-ball
bid dressed up as a white knight rescue,” the legal document
stated.

Such a transaction could reduce the risk for customers holding
unsecured claims over the length of a complex bankruptcy
proceeding. But, as Levitin pointed out, it won’t change whether
customers see a full reimbursement on their claims.

'Curated B.S.'
Letters from Celsius and Voyager customers show users pleading
for their assets back, though they reflect a clear uncertainty
about whether they’ll ever see that money again.

“I now feel regretful for believing into (sic) their marketing
strategy and potentially losing my family’s life savings,”
Voyager customer Digant Goyal wrote in his letter to Judge Wiles.

Goyal’s sentiment is echoed by Daniel James Howley who told the
court, “a majority of my lifelong assets, accumulated through
some ups and more downs as an entrepreneur, are locked on
Voyager with no telling if, when and how much of them I will
gain access to again.”

“My savings to buy a home, build and support a family, and
invest in my future, are all locked away in that account,” he
added.

Chapman Shallcross, a retired firefighter, held $244,000 in ETH
and ADA on another crypto lender, BlockFi before moving assets
to Celsius Network “based completely off of the overwhelming
positive feedback,” he wrote in his letter. “And, now I find all
that information I had gathered was curated B.S."

For Amanda Gan, a Celsius customer, the company’s bankruptcy and
the uncertainty surrounding her $167,000 in crypto assets has
led to “significant distress,” according to her letter.

“Losing this amount of our savings will have irreparable
consequences for our family,” she relented.

https://news.yahoo.com/celsius-voyager-bankruptcy-stories-
123654851.html

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)