Private Equity Giant Apollo Global Shows Interest in Acquiring Bankrupt Crypto Firm Celsius

It’s nearly a year since crypto lender Celsius Network filed for bankruptcy after slipping into a liquidity crisis following the fall of the Terra ecosystem. In the latest development, private-equity giant Apollo Global Investments, with $500 billion in assets under management, announced its participation in the bid of acquiring bankrupt crypto lender Celsius Network.

The person familiar with the matter said that Apollo is an investor in the bid submitted by NovaWulf. On the other hand, Celsius has also publicly identified several entities willing to purchase the company.

During the crypto winter of 2022, several crypto firms became victims of the downturn leading to bankruptcies. Also, high-profile collapses such as that of the Terra ecosystem and the FTX fall later that year led to a spiral-down effect on the broader industry.

Several players in the crypto industry have shown interest in acquiring key assets of bankrupt lenders like Celsius and Voyager. However, big players from traditional financial markets have preferred to stay away. Thus, Apollo’s participation in Celsius comes as a major surprise.

The revamped version of the Celsius Network will include the mining of Bitcoin (BTC) as well as the participation in Ether (ETH) staking. Besides, it will also allow the issuance of blockchain-based security tokens representing ownership interests in itself.

How NovaWulf Investors Wil Benefit

If NovaWulf wins the bid for Celsius, investors will receive a tiered management fee along with an incentive fee tied to the restructured Celsius’ net asset value (NAV). However, the document accessed by CoinDesk doesn’t mention Apollo’s terms of deals with NovaWulf.

In order to facilitate the trading and issuance of equity tokens in the new NovaWulf has joined hands with the Provenance Blockchain. The figure, the sister fintech firm of Provenance, will provide the infrastructure for the tokenized securities.

Provenance uses the Cosmos blockchain as its underlying ledger and has more than $7 billion in total locked value (TVL). As per Provenance Blockchain CEO Morgan McKenney, they have the largest trove of on-chain assets outside of Ethereum. On the other hand, Figure qualifies as a broker-dealer and also has an alternative trading system exemption to trade natively issued blockchain securities. Speaking about Apollo’s interest in Celsius, McKenney said that the private equity firm is a “flagship”, that is “leading the industry into the future. Apollo is huge in credit, they know everything about credit”.