SBF dropped the Celsius agreement with a loss of over 2 billion dollars, the report states

• FTX allegedly withdrew from an agreement to buy troubled cryptocurrency lender Celsius over the balance sheet status.
• The stock exchange’s founder Sam Bankman-Fried has positioned himself as the crypto ‘lender of last resort’ as the industry suffers from a liquidity squeeze.
• Celsius filed for bankruptcy this week after freezing all customers’ accounts in June.

Sam Bankman-Fried has emerged as a “lender of last resort” in the crypto world, as companies in the sector can withstand a large

liquidity

crisis.

The FTX chief gave the struggling lending company BlockFi a loan of $ 250 million last month, and also tried to save the Voyager Digital stock exchange before it declared bankruptcy this week.

BlockFi, Voyager and other large crypto companies have struggled to repay bitcoin-backed loans as digital asset prices have plummeted and Bankman-Fried has largely supported the industry.

It has led some to compare the crypto-billionaire to Warren Buffett, who saved Goldman Sachs during the 2008 financial crisis, or the banker JP Morgan, who built his influence by rescuing several major New York banks in 1907.

“Sam Bankman-Fried is the new John Pierpont Morgan,” SkyBridge Capital founder Anthony Scaramucci said last month. “He is rescuing cryptocurrency markets like the original JP Morgan did after the crisis of 1907.”

But even Bankman-Fried could not justify saving the Celsius Network, according to the Financial Times.

The failed loan company, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy this week, had a $ 2 billion gap in its balance sheet, which sources said FT had led to FTX leaving a potential rescue deal.

In June, Celsius froze all customers’ accounts as they struggled to cope with an ongoing crypto-market crash. That was around the time FTX decided not to offer them a loan, FT said.

Celsius’ founder Alex Mashinsky said in a statement that the company’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy would lead to a restructuring process.

“I am convinced that when we look back at Celsius’ history, we will see this as a crucial moment, where acting with determination and confidence served society and strengthened the future of the company,” he said.

But it seems that even Bankman-Fried does not have such a rosy view of the crypto loan company’s future.

Read more: FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried manages 4 hours of sleep and multitasking on 6 screens. Insiders break down what the 29-year-old crypto billionaire really is – and the difficult questions his company faces.