Celsius Network pays off debts amidst severe liquidity crisis

After halting its activities in June due to “extreme market conditions”, the embattled crypto lending platform Celsius Network paid off $143 million of its outstanding debt to MakerDAO, a DeFi protocol behind the DAI stablecoin, according to DeFi explorer.

After repaying a substantial amount of the debt, Celsius’ liquidation price on its WBTC loan has dropped to $4,967. However, Celsius Network still has an outstanding debt of $82 million to MakerDAO, in addition to its $100 million and $175 million debts to Compound and Aave respectively. With Celsius’ $1.8 billion total lifetime investments in MakerDAO, the protocol current losses stand at $667.2 million.

However, despite lowering its liquidation threshold, users are still unable to withdraw their funds from the platform. Celcius’ last week's blog post didn’t include any specific details in terms of the recovery plan giving little hope to its investors.

“We continue to take important steps to preserve and protect assets and explore options available to us. These options include pursuing strategic transactions as well as a restructuring of our liabilities, among other avenues”, the blog post says.

On top of that, Celsius has reportedly laid off 150 employees fueling the anxiety among investors.