- The Celsius Network paused all withdrawals, swaps, and even transfers between accounts.
- Etherscan shows how the Celsius team withdrew large amounts of ETH over the last few days leading up to the announcement.
- The CEL quickly reacted to the announcement as its price dropped by 70%.
Celsius Network, one of the biggest crypto lenders, informed customers on Sunday evening that withdrawals, swaps, and even transfers between accounts will be paused. Celsius was also previously rumored to be a seller of stETH to restore liquidity to user withdrawals, which may trigger liquidations.
The Celsius team wrote, “We are taking this action today to put Celsius in a better position to honor, over time, its withdrawal obligations.”
Looking at the Ethereum block explorer, etherscan, it appears that Celsius has transferred around 104,000 ETH to the crypto exchange FTX in the past three days. The firm then also transferred 50,000 ETH today, 12,000 ETH yesterday, and 42,000 ETH the day before yesterday. In addition, Celsius also transferred 9,500 WBTC to FTX today.
As a result of the announcement, the price of the company’s CEL token quickly plummeted as it dropped by 70% in one hour from a prior high of $0.49 early Sunday ($0.15). This is according to the crypto market tracker, CoinMarketCap.
CEL adds to bear rally (Source: CoinMarketCap)
The daily chart for CEL/USDT shows how CEL’s bear rally has continued over the last 24 hours. The troubles for the token started earlier this month around 4 June when the first red candle in this rally was posted on the daily chart.
Since then, the coin’s price has fallen from $0.6464 to $0.2, its current level, with a decent portion of the price drop taking place over the last two days.