Celsius goes to 11

Plus Open Sea chopping heads and new projects on the horizon.

July 15, 2022

MUSHROOM ALPHA

GM. It’s Fri-YAY! Congrats on surviving another week because there are some in the crypto world who didn’t. More on that in a bit. For now, kick back, relax, and enjoy another edition of your favorite crypto newsletter. No, not that one. Mushroom Alpha. Geez.

The big news on the crypto front today is that crypto lender Celsius Network has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. What does that mean? For starters, we’re not holding our breath on getting our money back.

Today’s Topics:

  • Celsius files for bankruptcy protection

  • OpenSea makes cuts

  • Early-stage projects for your consideration

  • Quick Links

Another One Bites the Dust

First, it was Voyager, then it was Three Arrows Capital, and now it’s Celsius. The crypto lender becomes the most recent victim of the extended crypto winter as it announced it was filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protections.

With $167 million in its coffers, Celsius says that it has enough to “support certain operations during the restructuring process.” Seems kind of cryptic to us, but what do we know?

The somewhat silver lining is that the company can continue to pay its employees and provide benefits, even if it's not allowing its clients to withdraw funds. Evidently, they fall under the “deeply insolvent” umbrella.

It doesn’t help that the company is being sued for “manipulating crypto assets markets and failure to institute basic accounting controls.” And now, there are reports that the company has a $1.2 billion gap between its assets and what it owes its creditors.

The lending platform has been accused of “poor asset deployment decisions.”

Indeed.

So Long, and Thanks for All the NFTs

In an effort to protect itself against an extended crypto winter, NFT marketplace OpenSea has laid off 20% of its workforce. According to CEO Devin Finzer, this decision will give OpenSea “multiple years of runway under various crypto winter scenarios.”

Those being let go will receive roughly three months of severance pay, health care coverage for six months, mental healthcare coverage, and outplacement services. We don’t know exactly how many employees were let go or which departments within the company were impacted.

In fairness to OpenSea, they’re not the first platform impacted by current market conditions. Gemini, Crypto.com, Coinbase, and Robinhood are among many companies struggling because of investor hesitancy. They have in turn also laid off staff.

New Projects on the Horizon

Okay, enough doom and gloom. Let’s take a look at some fun, early-stage crypto projects brought to us by Bursting Bagel. Follow this guy on Twitter.

  • Abacus - Launching an appraisal tool for NFTs. With appraisals, the NFT market will have better efficiency and composability for financial products.

  • Gradient Finance - Allows users to take out a loan against any NFT. These are made capable through integration with decentralized appraisal tool, Abacus.

  • Bebop DEX - This zero slippage platform can perform trades from a single asset to multiple assets or from multiple assets to a single asset. Pretty cool, right? It also has a sleek user experience.

  • Split Finance - Developing a DEX that will automatically aggregate arbitrage while providing innovative trading tools for traders. By democratizing access to arbitrage, better rates are available on DEX trades.

Quick Headlines

Show me the proof - Web3 startup PROOF, acquires Divergence NFT engineering team.

Who’s Your Daddy? - GameStop’s new beta NFT marketplace outperforms CoinbaseNFT.

Resume play…sort of - CoinFLEX has announced that users are now able to withdraw up to 10% of their available funds.

Dropping in - Want to learn more about how crypto airdrops work? Christiaan Vos at Coin Telegraph breaks it down for you.

Pipi Water? - South Park pulls no punches as it takes aim at Damon, Paltrow, and other celebrities.

STEPN out - We talked about STEPN a few weeks ago. Here’s an in-depth look at the move-to-earn protocol.

Damn Yankees - Or is it pride of the Yankees? Either way, a collaboration between Mastercard and the New York Yankess may show promise.

Hit Reply to let us know how we are doing! We would love to hear from you.

Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up here.

Disclosure: We are a newsletter for information only. We are not financial advisors nor do we claim to be. Consult your legal, investment or tax advisor. Crypto is risky. Do you own research.