In many of the recent insolvencies of digital asset companies, liquidators have been appointed over companies in which digital assets have been fraudulently transferred from wallets controlled by an insolvent company into other unidentified wallets in foreign jurisdictions.

The anonymity of cryptoassets causes serious difficulties for insolvency practitioners in identifying the third parties who received funds and the location of the digital wallets.

Manoj Pillay Sandrasegara, Smitha Menon, Lionel Leo and Stephanie Yeo, WongPartnership LLP

This is an extract from the 2025 edition of GRR's The Asia-Pacific Restructuring Review. The whole publication is available here.

Celsius creditors feeling the heat over preference claims

Celsius’ retail borrowers finally have an answer on who owns the cryptocurrency they deposited into Celsius in exchange for a loan from Celsius – spoiler alert: on November 13, 2023 the bankruptcy court held that Celsius’ terms of service “clearly and unambiguously” gave Celsius ownership of retail borrowers’ cryptocurrency. The bankruptcy court’s decision follows its January 2023 decision which similarly held that the cryptocurrency of Celsius’ “Earn” customers also belonged to Celsius because the terms of service similarly unambiguously granted Celsius title ownership.

In this second part of our blog exploring the various issues courts need to address in applying the Bankruptcy Code to cryptocurrency, we expand upon our roadmap.

Many authorities and commentators have considered cryptocurrencies, and the blockchains that undergird them, as a potentially disruptive force in the financial industry. Now, that disruption has made its way to a different side of finance—bankruptcy, and during the past year, the United States bankruptcy courts have had to confront many unexpected challenges involved in dealing with cryptocurrency.

The US appears likely to enter a default cycle in the near future, according to senior fund managers and economists. A recent bout of M&A transactions involving chapter 11 cases point in the same direction. Taking deals involving bankruptcy cases as a proxy for distressed M&A, 16 such transactions were announced in the US in Q1, up 14.3 percent year on year, according to Dealogic. The aggregate value of those deals reached US$1.8 billion, a gain of 76 percent from the same period in 2023.

KENYA

Economic overview

Insolvency is a proliferating issue within the cryptocurrency ecosystem, specifically in the realm of crypto lending services. Many of the largest services have recently filed for bankruptcy, with Genesis, Voyager Digital, Celsius, and BlockFi falling in spectacular and contentious fashion [source: AP.news.com].

In the case of Bester N.O & Others v Mirror Trading International Proprietary Limited (in liquidation) t/a MTI, the Western Cape Division of the High Court considered whether cryptocurrencies fell within the definition of property under the context of the Insolvency Act and whether courts in South Africa had jurisdiction in respect of cryptocurrency.