Celsius exodus: $320M in crypto sent to FTX, user withdrawals paused

cointelegraph.com:

Crypto staking and lending platform Celsius may be dealing with its rumored liquidity crisis by unstaking $247 million worth of Wrapped Bitcoin from Aave and sending it to FTX exchange.

Speculations among the crypto community are now flaring as the project has been moving massive amounts of WBTC, ETH, and other crypto assets in addition to pausing withdrawals for users.

Celsius users have criticized the platform for how they believe the project has mismanaged its funds following the collapse of the Anchor Protocol on the now-named Terra Classic blockchain. The project could be addressing those concerns with the recent moves to stabilize liquidity.

Some think that if Celsius fails, it would sell its significant stack of staked ETH (stETH), which would cause it to depeg further from ETH. stETH is a token provided by the Lido DeFi lending platform that is given as proof that a user has staked ETH. It is currently trading about 4.4% lower than ETH.

Unusual token movements began at about 18:00 ET on June 12 from Celsius’s main DeFi wallet when it started removing WBTC from the Aave staking and lending platform, which Celsius used to earn interest on its deposits.

Celsius withdrew 50,000 Ether and 7,000 WBTC collateral from its Aave position in core DeFi wallet 0x8ace. 6,000 WBTC and 20,000 Ether (so far) have been sent to #FTX...After receiving $169 mil $USDC from FTX... pic.twitter.com/xquMoIcyuZ

So far, 9,500 WBTC tokens worth about $247 million have been redeemed from Aave. Following a series of transactions, all of those tokens have been sent to the FTX exchange for an unknown reason.

In addition to WBTC, it appears that 54,749 ETH worth about $74.5 million have been sent to FTX.

While such activity bodes very poorly for the