Celsius exits bankruptcy, starts returning more than $3 billion to creditors: CNBC Crypto World

CNBC Crypto World features the latest news and daily trading updates from the digital currency markets and provides viewers with a look at what’s ahead with high-profile interviews, explainers, and unique stories from the ever-changing crypto industry. On today’s show, Cory Klippsten, founder and CEO of Swan Bitcoin, discusses the company’s decision to launch its own mining business.

Chapters:
00:00 – CNBC Crypto World, Feb 1, 2024
0:29 – Bitcoin & ether drop
0:50- The headlines
3:45- Cory Klippsten of Swan

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Celsius exits bankruptcy, starts returning more than $3 billion to creditors: CNBC Crypto World

Today Bitcoin and ether fall after the FED pushes back on the idea that interest rate cuts are coming quickly Celsius exits bankruptcy and begins paying more than $3 billion dollar to creditors and Cory clipston of Bitcoin focused exchange Swan discusses the company’s decision to launch its own mining Business welcome to cnbc’s crypto world I’m McKenzie seallow cryptocurrencies in the red again this morning morning after the FED announced yesterday that it plans to keep rates steady and pushed back against wall Street’s expectations that it would start cutting rates as soon as march by noon Eastern Bitcoin

Fell less than 2% to the $42,000 level either dip below $2,300 and cardano fell nearly 4% okay let’s talk about the top stories crypto lender Celsius has successfully emerged from bankruptcy in a press release on Wednesday the company said it had started Distributing more than three billion dollars in liquid crypto and

Fiat currencies to creditors it’s also created a new Bitcoin mining company called ionic digital which will be owned by Celsius creditors the company also said it expects ionic to become a publicly traded company now Celsius was one of the crypto businesses to go under following the collapse of three arrows

Capital in May of 2022 its founder and former CEO Alex mashinsky still faces several federal charges including Securities fraud and wire fraud next nearly 4 months after the October 7th Hamas attack on Israel binance and its founder Shang Pang Xiao have been sued by hostages and victims families the

Lawsuit is over the crypto exchange’s alleged role in processing transactions tied to the group which has been designated a terrorist organization by the US government some of the plaintiffs include two US hostages released by Hamas in late October as well as the family members of a 20-year-old New

Jersey native who serving in the Israeli Army and was killed on base when it was attacked in early October the complaint which was filed yesterday in the southern district of New York accuses binance of facilitating the financing of Hamas and providing a clandestine financing tool that the exchange

Deliberately hid from us Regulators a few days after the October 7th attack the Wall Street Journal citing a review of Israeli government seizure orders and blockchain data reported that Hamas militants behind that Ambush raised millions in crypto we reached out to binance but didn’t hear back right away

Finally crypto miners in the US are about to start reporting their electricity usage to the Department of energy the US Energy Information Administration put out a press release on Wednesday announcing a provisional survey on electricity consumption by crypto mining companies the survey is expected to start next week and the

Agency’s administrator says the eia intends to focus on how the energy demand for cryptocurrency mining is evolving identify Geographic areas of high growth and quantify the sources of electricity used to meet cryptocurrency mining demand crypto miners have faced growing scrutiny in recent years over their energy use tax breaks and

Electricity BuyBacks during times of high demand we reached out to the blockchain association about the survey but they declined to comment all right let’s stick with Bitcoin mining for our main story last week Bitcoin focused exchange Swan unveiled its new mining unit the company announced that it had quietly begun

Operations back in September member of last year and had mined over 750 Bitcoin at the time of the announcement for our main story crypto world’s TAA mckel caught up with Chlor clipston the CEO of swan Bitcoin so he could walk her through the company’s decision to break into

Mining I want to get right into it talking about mining which is kind of a Hot Topic over here ahead of the having um so your mining business recently came out of stealth mode tell me a little bit about that and I and particularly about the timing why are you doing this right

Now yeah yeah great to see you tonight thanks for having me on again and yeah it is at the tip of everyone’s tongues and you just gave me a great visual of of you guys over at CNBC at the water cooler just kind of like hanging out

Talking about hash rate I hope that’s true and it actually happens that that makes me smile um yeah so this was interestingly organic that we got into the mining space it sprung out of the the launch and the growth of swan institutional uh which was over a year

Ago that we started that unit we actually didn’t announce it until December and there was kind of a lot going on and new products that we wanted to to sell to the market but having people with the Wall Street background the hedge fund background that know how to structure deals uh starting to

Develop great relationships with lawyers with all the bankers on Wall Street that cover the space talking to all the analysts and then this started to kind of spiral into more and more activity and more connections as we added a mining industry day to Pacific Bitcoin and started to talk to all the miners

About sponsoring and coming and attending and we had all the CEOs out in Los Angeles uh this fall and essentially we spotted an opportunity to get into the market when a lot of the the public and large private miners were sort of encumbered whether by large debt or by

Having purchased lots of as6 at larger at higher prices and so there was just a lot of inventory available that could be snapped up relatively cheaply and there was a lot of opportunity to work with really good operators uh that had excess capacity and really low pric PPA and this was

True both in the USA and internationally and so we just started banging phones and seeing who was out there that could could fund some of the opportunities that we saw and we saw that we were pretty much the only people calling on anyone as well being able to come in and

And have our brand trust and then being able being willing to do the work I think was a big part of this and then you know so it was kind of the it was the financing effort and opportunity and cap raise that opened up opportunities to

Partner with folks and to be able to put rigs that we were purchasing in next to theirs so that’s kind of the the phase one for Swan Mining and then of course uh we are in the process of building our own infrastructure at a few different sites and partnering with folks on on

New build outs but those are much more elated so this uh we’re at about 4.8 4.9 today of EX aash that’s actually live and hashing and that will go to about 8.4 with rigs that we’ve already purchased uh and those should all be plugged in by March uh but pretty much

After that we’ll be looking at uh plugging into sites that uh we actually control the infrastructure how are you thinking about competition in the months ahead when this having event takes place the minor revenue does get cut in half for some miners it’s not their only Revenue

But um you know that would cause some miners out there to have to come offline and for some miners to go a little bit further than that it might be a complete failure there could be m&a on the horizon so it is a really interesting time for you to get into this business

And you know post the ETF approvals and launch I think a lot of people well while some were anticipating that sell the news event others were really hoping for a rally to see the price go to 55k um because that could have helped a lot

Of the minor so it did not get to 55k obviously but um you know what does this mean for Swan and for competition and uh how how are you avoiding that bait yeah I mean so two things one uh we’re feeling very acquisitive of potentially companies certainly sites uh

Talent so if anybody is uh under the gun and it looks like they’re not going to make it um and this would probably be maybe the smaller players than we would be looking to to help in that way and then for the larger players that probably are going to make it but maybe

Getting buffeted around by the bad news or fear of the having or having some debt overhang or something like that then we want to be partnering with them on the swan institutional side and helping to unlock value by finding financing and creative structures and uh so that’s pretty much the way that we’re

Approaching it um yeah kind of help the larger guys and you know help the smaller guys maybe by by acquiring some part or entire businesses in some cases where are your sites located and how many do you have yeah so are we public with this I think we’re public that we have seven

Sites today so hopefully we are already public look with that anyway uh we are now um and that’ll be going to 10 by March um our long-term goal is to be about evenly distributed 5050 on hash rate uh US versus International uh we’re a little bit more

Weighted in the US today and a lot of the stuff that we have coming on later this year is uh outside the USA what are some of the biggest challenges that you’re thinking about for 2024 o i i feels like a lot of Tailwinds to be honest I think the ETFs have

Completely changed the conversation you know I’ve been talking a lot about this publicly and tweeting about it and posting about it but you know the the last six years 2017 to 23 the uh the top of funnel for Bitcoin was altcoins that tell tell misleading statements if not outright FR outright fraudulent lies

About Bitcoin to try to sell their shiny altcoin and that top of funnel got completely replaced a couple of weeks ago and the new top of funnel is the Bitcoin ETFs and you know that is that is a packaged up Bitcoin and it’s a paper Bitcoin and it charges fees every

Year instead of once etc etc but they’re talking about Bitcoin and they’re selling Bitcoin generally using a pretty accurate narrative about Bitcoin as a store of value and you know maybe they’re not capturing the other 80% of what Bitcoin is but that’s that’s where you would start if you were just trying

To sell the real thing so you know I welcome our friendenemies and their ad budgets and we’re obviously collaborating with these folks on some media and events and things like that and uh you know I I I think it was always inevitable that institutions would get involved in Bitcoin in a

Massive way uh and it was just a matter of when and I’m glad it’s here and it’s uh it’s been great for all Bitcoin businesses uh to benefit from The increased promotion of Bitcoin every single day on every single Channel and there is this big what I’ve been calling

The ETF multiplier effect where I actually think that because of the ETFs existing and that that stamp of approval from the big Financial firms there’s actually if you think about the amount of money that will actually flow just into the ETFs another five to 10x of that will flow into Bitcoin through

Other channels because of the existence of the ETFs because it’s no longer scary to anyone to be involved in this space okay that’s all for crypto world today but we will be back again tomorrow and we’ll see you then