Report: Goldman Sachs Seeks $2B to Buy Celsius Assets

Goldman Sachs is trying to raise $2 billion toward buying the assets of Celsius Network, a distressed crypto lender struggling amid the turmoil in the crypto industry, a Coindesk report said Friday (June 24).

This deal would let Goldman buy the company’s assets at a “huge discount,” if the company files for bankruptcy, the report said, citing two people familiar with the issue.

The bank has been looking into interest from Web3 crypto funds, funds looking into distressed assets, as well as regular banks.

See also: Celsius Hires Restructuring Experts Ahead of Possible Bankruptcy

Celsius hired restructuring consulting firm Alvarez & Marsal to advise it. Celsius had also reached out earlier this month to Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, a law firm, to look into restructuring.

Celsius promised higher-than-usual annual interest rates on crypto deposits for making crypto loans.

The company was one of several that suspended withdrawals, swaps and transfers earlier in June, due to the volatility in crypto for the past few months.

The company was reported to have $11.8 billion in assets in May, which was a huge downward shift from the $25 billion it had in October.

Since Celsius suspended withdrawals, another big shake-up has been crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital’s incurring liquidations of hundreds of millions of dollars, which could lead to it becoming insolvent.

Voyager Digital was recently another firm that ended up cutting its withdrawals, moving them from $25,000 down to $10,000.

See also: Another Firm Cuts Withdrawals, Highlighting Crypto Lending’s Dangers

PYMNTS reported that this happened even after the company got a $500 million backstop line of credit.

Voyager has been seeing some trouble since it revealed it had been loaning to Three Arrows, which had taken big losses when the TerraUSD stablecoin collapsed in May. The company had donated $720 million in bitcoins and stablecoins.

Because of that, investors took 60% of the company’s share value last week.

The report said there’s still support from FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried which has been keeping Voyager upright.