What happened
The crypto market went on a wild trajectory over the past 24 hours, shooting higher late in the day on Sunday only to crash again on Monday morning. At the end of the day, values are down almost across the board.
Celsius Network (CEL -28.63%) was the wildest mover today, trading as high as $4.46 and as low as $2.70. That’s a gain of 65% from the low or a loss of 39% from the high, depending on what your reference point is. Ethereum (ETH -1.93%) didn’t swing quite as much but is down 5.7% from its high, and Solana (SOL -2.87%) is down 7.1% from today’s peak.
So what
The biggest news item of the day was a Celsius Network filing with a bankruptcy court that showed $6.6 billion in net liabilities compared with $3.8 billion of assets. There’s a $2.85 billion gap in funding, and on top of it there were 100,669 Bitcoin deposited by investors and only 37,926 Bitcoin remains.
There’s been a short squeeze in Celsius Network tokens since the company filed for bankruptcy protection, but this was more concrete news today. A massive hole in the balance sheet won’t be filled without new capital, and that seems like a stretch.
Reports over the past few days have indicated that Celsius Network is for sale, but in bankruptcy the courts and creditors hold all of the cards. It’s not clear who would want to buy the company or what value they would get after paying back some of customers’ frozen funds.
Ethereum and Solana are riding the Celsius wave today, it seems, with very little news out of either ecosystem. Ethereum continues to move slowly toward The Merge and investors have bid that cryptocurrency up sharply in anticipation. Solana’s network continues to be upgraded slowly, but activity has slowed like with most blockchains over the past few months.
Now what
The black cloud over crypto the past two months has been the insolvency of some of the biggest asset owners, like Three Arrows Capital and Celsius Network. They had immense leverage in the system, and that led to a collapse that still hasn’t fully played out yet.
What we’ve learned today is more about the scale of the problem. Rumors have been circulating that Celsius Network indeed had a $2 billion to $3 billion hole in the balance sheet, and that appears to be the case after all.
I’m not sure why markets surged after the Celsius report came out, but they’re trading lower today, and I think that’s natural. It’ll likely be months before creditors and investors find out what’s left to be divvied up, but it seems the entire market is taking a cautious approach until we learn more.
Travis Hoium has positions in Ethereum and Solana. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.