BlockFi CEO Asks Not To Be Compared To Celsius And Voyager

BlockFI CEO asks not to be compared to Voyager and Celsius a few days after the warrants were downgraded to “worthless” so let’s have a closer look at our latest cryptocurrency news.

Zac Prince, the BLockFI CEO asks to not be compared to Celsius or Voyager and wants to make clear that his lending company which finalized the terms for a loan from Sam Bankman Fried, isn’t like Voyager which also received a loan from SBF’s companies. If those two companies sound like they are in a similar situation, that’s because they are. Prince however doesn’t see it that way. He called on journalists and market commentators to stop comparing his company to other crypto lenders:

“Two months ago we looked the ‘same. They shut down and have impending losses for their clients.”

Voyagers,

We understand how critical it is to get access to the value in your account and we are working through this process as quickly as possible to do just that. Today’s post provides an update on customer cash and crypto, and next steps: https://t.co/yBlVB0qgVp (1/6)

— Voyager (@investvoyager) July 11, 2022

An hour after his tweet, Voyager wrote its own thread and unlike BlockFi, the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and it is starting a company restructuring. The company said:

“Customer cash belongs to you and will go back to you, subject to a reconciliation and fraud prevention process. All customer cash is held in a customer account at Metropolitan Commercial Bank and is equal to the amount of cash in Voyager accounts.”

Wait, this GBTC hasn’t been sold yet? When will it sell? Any visibility here?

— Mbamsy (@Mbamsy1) July 11, 2022

However, not everyone sees that big of a difference between BlockFi and its peers. A report from Bloomberg noted that the Private shares Fund marked BlockFi’s warrants as worthless and these are derivatives that give the investors the right to equity in the company. In the meantime, Meltem Demirors as the chief strategy officer at Coinshares pointed out that both Three Arrows Capital and BlockFi have Grayscale BTC trust on their balance sheet. It’s not really a great asset to be sitting on at the moment considering that it is trading for as much as 35% less than BTC in the past two weeks and 3AC also goes into court-ordered liquidation meaning GBTC could fare even worse.

Prince responded to Demirors and clarified that she wasn’t looking at the data and that BlokcFi now holds zero GBTC. In the blog post earlier, Dan Held the head of growth marketing at Kraken noted that he underestimated the stupidity of retail lenders like Blockfi and Celsius:

“While I thought they would have worked with the slightest tinge of maturity with their loan book, many decided to basically act as glorified hedge funds. We should actively push for more transparency (Like Ledn with “proof of reserves”), accountability, and integrity.”

Hey Meltem 🙂

Just fyi – BlockFi directly holds zero GBTC. The Bloomberg data on this is outdated. We have a couple small loans (like sub $10M) w/ GBTC as collateral that are in the process of winding down

— Zac Prince (@BlockFiZac) July 11, 2022

BlockFi announced the final terms of the deal that was seen as a bailout with SBF’s FTX exchange which included a $400 million revolving line of credit as well as an option for FTX to acquire the company for $240 million.