The parent company behind the Ripple network has expressed interest in buying assets belonging to the bankrupt Celsius network.
Ripple Seeks M&A Opportunities
A Ripple Labs spokesperson said the company is considering buying certain assets from the bankrupt crypto lender. However, when asked if Ripple was interested in acquiring Celsius, the spokesperson declined to comment.
The representative stated,
“We are interested in learning about Celsius and its assets and whether any of them could be relevant to our business.”
They also mentioned that the payment services company is actively seeking strategic M&A opportunities to expand the company.
Celsius legal problems
Celsius Network has been in a lot of hot water recently, with its CEO Alex Mashinsky receiving more criticism. Mashinsky continued to assure Celsius clients that all was well, even on the verge of bankruptcy. He is also being investigated by a committee of creditors created by the US Trusteeship. The lending platform was one of the victims of the Terra LUNA implosion and had to file for bankruptcy in July after a month of frozen withdrawals.
On the other hand, Ripple Labs has done very well despite the SEC lawsuit and the bear market, mainly due to its focus on working with international clients and developing global payment networks.
Ripple interested in the Celsius case
Ripple’s legal representatives applied to the bankruptcy court to be represented in the Celsius proceedings despite not being one of the major creditors of the lending platform. The requests were approved by the court earlier this week. The above comment was made in response to inquiries about the court documents. The representative declined to provide further details on the matter.
The bankruptcy filings reveal that Celsius’s assets include digital assets held in escrow accounts, loans, a bitcoin mining operation, the platform’s own CEL token, and cash and cryptocurrencies that the company currently owns. As Ripple Labs has not signed any major deals as of yet, it should be interesting to see if this interest in the Celsius case really amounts to anything tangible.
Ripple legal problems
Ripple has been going through its own legal troubles since 2020, when the Securities and Exchange Commission sued the cryptocurrency payment provider for allegedly operating unregistered securities. The Ripple team has denied these claims, claiming that XRP is only traded as a digital currency and not as a security. The public consensus is that the lawsuit will be resolved in favor of Ripple, as the case brought by the SEC is flimsy at best.