Part 1 – Celsius Bankruptcy
Over the span of two weeks in July 2022, two of the largest retail-facing cryptocurrency platforms, Celsius and Voyager, filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
As discussed in previous installments of this White Paper series, the Lummis-Gillibrand Responsible Financial Innovation Act (the “Bill”)1 proposes a comprehensive statutory and regulatory framework in an effort to bring stability to the digital asset market. One area of proposed change relates to how digital assets and digital asset exchanges would be treated in bankruptcy. If enacted, the Bill would significantly alter the status quo from a bankruptcy perspective
OVERVIEW OF DIGITAL ASSETS IN BANKRUPTCY
On September 22, 2022, Compute North Holdings, Inc. and certain affiliates filed bankruptcy in the Southern District of Texas in Houston. The company describes itself as “a leader in data centers, focused on delivering sustainable, cost-effective infrastructure for customers in the blockchain, cryptocurrency mining and distributed computing space.” SeeDeclaration of Harold Coulby, Chief Financial Officerand Treasurer of the Debtors (Doc. 22).
We previously considered the potential implications for insolvency professionals of the rise of cryptocurrencies (available here). One of the principal issues identified was the uncertainty surrounding the legal status of cryptocurrencies; what class of asset were they and, subsequently, how would they be treated under English law?
In a recent report by INSOL International, only 5% of insolvency practitioners (“IPs”) said that they had a “comprehensive or practical/working or understanding” of crypto-currency.
So with over 4,000 types of cryptocurrency now available and as payment technology continues to develop, we look at some issues facing IPs, including
- How to identify cryptocurrency
- How to categorise it
- How to take control of it and sell it; and
- What value does it have
What are cryptocurrencies?
This is the fifth post in our Bitcoin Bankruptcy series on the Weil Bankruptcy Blog. We have concluded that a hypothetical U.S.-based bitcoin exchange likely would not constitute a stockbroker or a
This is the fourth post in our Bitcoin Bankruptcy series on the Weil Bankruptcy Blog.
This is the third post in our Bitcoin Bankruptcy series on the Weil Bankruptcy Blog. In the spring of this year, the shutdown of Japanese bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox made us think about what might have happened if Mt.
Arthur C. Clarke famously observed: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Our regulatory, legislative, and judicial systems illustrate this principle whenever new technology exceeds the limits of our existing legal framework and collective legal imagination. Cryptocurrency, such as bitcoin, has proven particularly “magical” in the existing framework of bankruptcy law, which has not yet determined quite what bitcoin is—a currency, an intangible asset, a commodity contract, or something else entirely.