Bankrupt Crypto Lender Moves to Recover Nearly $800 Million in Staked Ethereum ($ETH)

Bankrupt cryptocurrency lending platform Celsius has moved to reclaim its Lido staked Ether (stETH) tokens from liquid staking platform Lido after the latter recently enabled withdrawals. These withdrawals came in after Ethereum’s Shapella upgrade allowed investors to unstake their $ETH.

Celsius has commenced the process of retrieving its Lido Staked Ether tokens according to blockchain data. The firm has requested the withdrawal of 428,084 stETH, organized in 1,000-unit batches.

At current market prices, the stETH held by Celsius is estimated to be worth approximately $784.7 million. This move appears to be a follow-up to a transaction that took place on May 15, involving a comparable amount of stETH earmarked for withdrawal.

Upon the completion of the withdrawal procedure, Celsius will receive an equivalent amount of Ether, while the stETH tokens will be subsequently burned by Lido. On the microblogging platform Twitter, Lido Finance clarified it had around 440,000 ETH available in protocol buffers, which could help absorb the large withdrawal being made.

A surge in Ether withdrawal requests from Lido could impact the network withdrawal queue, which operates dynamically. Given that Lido is the dominant staking provider, controlling nearly 30% of the market, Celsius may face a considerable delay in reclaiming its ETH if withdrawal requests mount.

The capital Celsius is set to recover could be deployed in its restructuring efforts or to settle a portion of its $4.7 billion debts owed to creditors. Earlier in the year, in February, the crypto lender had converted 22,962 wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC) into Bitcoin in a transaction estimated to be worth roughly $540 million at the time, as Cointelegraph reported.

As CryptoGlobe recently reported, the Ethereum network has been seeing a mysterious entity catch the attention of the community after it started making millions of dollars and consuming a large percentage of the network’s gas fees, while operating a Maximal Extractable Value (MEV) bot.

According to a recently published report by blockchain data analysis firm EigenPhi, the operator of the MEV bot jaredfromsubway has been taking advantage of traders on the Ethereum blockchain since February 27, and has since made a staggering $40.6 million in revenue, and $34.5 million in profit.

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