Quick Take
- Nexo has offered to buy beleaguered rival Celsius’s assets.
- The offer is open until June 20.
Crypto lending firm Nexo wants to buy beleaguered rival Celsius’s assets, claiming it is in a healthy position to do so.
In a Twitter thread posted today, Nexo said it is “in а solid liquidity and equity position to readily acquire any remaining qualifying assets of Celsius, mainly their collateralized loan portfolio.”
Celsius is reeling under pressure given the crypto downturn, which has seen bitcoin drop below $25,000. Earlier today, Celsius suddenly paused withdrawals, swaps and transfers between accounts, citing “extreme market conditions.” It did not provide a timeline for resuming those services.
Nexo has put together an offer to Celsius in a formal letter of intent. “Nexo, its partners, and affiliates could readily acquire from Celsius part or all qualifying, outstanding collateralized loan receivables secured by their corresponding pledged cryptocurrency collateral, subject to Nexo’s risk management and collateral requirements,” the letter reads.
The offer is valid until 4:30 a.m. UTC on June 20, unless accepted or rejected by the seller, or withdrawn by the buyer prior to that time.
The Block has reached out to Nexo and Celsius for comment and will update this story should we hear back.
Explaining how Nexo is in a strong financial and liquidity position to buy Celsius’s qualifying assets, Kiril Nikolov, DeFi strategist at Nexo, told The Block that “over the past couple of months, the Nexo team has been in the process of fully de-risking it’s DeFi exposure.”
There are no customer funds with exposure to DeFi, although Nexo has some staked ether (stETH) that don’t affect capacity in any “meaningful way,” Nikolov explained.
“The Nexo team is in a strong financial and liquidity position, bootstrapped and having never raised external capital with a solid equity cushion, which is also visible in our real-time reserves audit available here,” he said.
