The consortium managing the liquidation of Celsius Network assets has officially filed a lawsuit against the exchange BitMEX in the New York bankruptcy court. At the heart of the dispute is a claim for 6,360 BTC, an amount currently valued at nearly $495 million. The claim centers on massive liquidations that occurred during the "Black Thursday" market crash in March 2020, a period of extreme volatility that saw Bitcoin prices plummet sharply within twenty-four hours.
The lawsuit is based on allegations of fraud, market manipulation, and wrongful liquidation. At the time, BitMEX faced major technical outages, officially attributed to DDoS attacks, which caused its liquidation engine to stall as the price of Bitcoin fell below the $4,000 threshold. While the platform has always maintained that these measures were necessary to prevent a total order book collapse, the Celsius estate contends a drastically different version of events, pointing to unfair practices that directly harmed its assets.
A striking element of this case is the strategic inconsistency displayed by Celsius. While the company touted a purportedly "delta-neutral" management strategy to its clients—designed to protect them from directional market swings—the positions held on BitMEX demonstrated total exposure to the downside. This contrast highlights the contradictions of the Alex Mashinsky era, whose management led to the financial debacle we know today. By denominating the damages in Bitcoin units rather than 2020 fiat values, the plaintiffs are demanding compensation proportional to the cryptocurrency's current valuation, effectively compounding the claimed amount.
This legal battle comes at a particularly delicate time for BitMEX, which recently announced the shutdown of its trading operations, potentially complicating the actual recovery of funds for creditors. Since emerging from bankruptcy proceedings, the Celsius structure has transformed into a litigation machine, pursuing numerous former partners to replenish its coffers. Following complex settlements reached with other industry players, this new standoff against BitMEX marks a further step in a quest for funds that struggles to find a simple resolution against counterparties whose solvency and future structure remain uncertain.