Recent movements in the cryptocurrency market have been marked by significant asset transfers. Spotonchain, a cryptocurrency analytics firm, reported that institutions FTX and Celsius, now-defunct crypto trading firms, moved a combined total of $35.1 million. They moved Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC) and Ethereum (ETH) to centralized exchanges (CEX), coinciding with a sharp rise in BTC and ETH prices over 24 hours.
The breakdown of these movements is as follows: FTX and Alameda Research transferred $11.72 million, including 200 WBTC ($9.39 million) to Binance and 1,000 ETH ($2.33 million) to Coinbase. Meanwhile, Celsius Network unstacked and transferred 10,000 ETH ($23.39 million) to Coinbase and FalconX. Despite these movements, Celsius still holds a significant amount of ETH, amounting to $1.28 billion, and plans to unstake existing holdings to pay creditors.
These actions align with a recent announcement by Celsius Network on recalling and rebalancing assets for liquidity purposes. The firm plans to unstake ETH holdings to cover restructuring costs and ensure timely distributions to creditors as part of its approved restructuring plan.
Further illustrating the active landscape, last month, FTX and Alameda Research moved $23.59 million in digital assets to top exchanges. These transfers were part of a larger batch of transfers totaling $591 million in various cryptocurrencies since October 24. The transfers included diverse assets, such as Ether, Aleph.im, Curve DAO tokens, Avalanche, Chainlink, and others moved to major exchanges like Binance, Coinbase, OKX, and Galaxy Digital OTC.
These transactions reflect FTX and Alameda Research’s active asset management and redistribution strategy. Beginning in March, they have been strategically moving assets, including a significant amount of stablecoins totaling $145 million to various platforms like Coinbase, Binance, and Kraken.
Despite recovering over $5 billion in assets, FTX faces an $8 billion fraud lawsuit and is actively pursuing legal claims to recover funds. This ongoing saga could result in substantial recoveries for FTX, contributing to its restructuring efforts and improving investor sentiment.
