Celsius Network just won court approval for shift to bitcoin mining!
To briefly recap the story thus far:
- Celsius filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in July 2022 after freezing customer withdrawals when crypto prices fell.
- The DOJ later charged former CEO Alex Mashinsky (who resigned shortly afterward) with fraud and manipulation
- The company was cleared to exit bankruptcy in Nov 2023, expected to return ~$2B to customers.
- Today, the court approved Celsius plan to form “a public company focused solely on bitcoin mining” with $225M in fiat.
Here’s a look back at how Celsius raised some of that $200M+ in funding, and their journey to this point:
Celsius Network was founded as a crypto lender in 2017 and pitched users to “unbank yourself on the blockchain.” The company used the deck below to raise $20.5M in Series A funding from Disrupt Ventures, Alpha Sigma Capital.
The SoftBank-esque slides made liberal use of cartoons & animations, and envisioned Celsius as the bridge to “cross the chasm” of crypto adoption:
At the time, Celsius reported 65,000 downloads of its wallet app in the prior 9 months and over $1.2B in coin loan origination.
Celsius’ lending model was simple: 9% interest for borrowers, and 7% yield for lenders. However, the 2022 “crypto winter” broke this model when crypto prices fell dramatically and instigated a “bank run” on Celsius.
Check out the full 40-slide Celsius Network pitch deck at bestpitchdeck.com/celsius-network