Crypto lender Celsius — whose decision to halt withdrawals has made the headlines and has allegedly been cutting jobs to survive the liquidity crisis — has been focused on repaying its massive collateralised debt to leading decentralized lending platform Maker.
The transactions on the blockchain data tracker Etherscan, which is confirmed to have originated from a wallet linked to Celsius, show that the crypto lender has paid back Maker a total of $183 million of DAI — the Maker protocol’s native stablecoin — since July 1.
By doing so, Celsius not only regains solvency but also the 2,000 Wrapped Bitcoins (WBTCs) that was posted on the platform as collateral. The crypto lender could be in a better position to allow withdrawals again.
Moreover, the collateral that Celsius has gotten back can be sold via over-the-counter (OTC) or on centralised exchanges in order to deal with the demands of creditors and customer withdrawals.
That being said, Celsius’ debt to Maker is still not fully settled as the former currently owes the latter around $41 million worth of DAI. However, considering that Celsius has around 22,000 WBTC posted against the loans, a bigger financial incentive could follow after the debt is fully paid for.
By May 2022, Celsius had lent out over $8 billion worth of assets to clients and managed $12 billion worth of assets.