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Celsius (CEL) Token Price Soars Massively Despite Bankruptcy Filing, Here’s Why

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Celsius’ CEL token price is soaring despite the crypto lending firm filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. In the last 24 hours, the CEL token price has skyrocketed nearly 80% as a result of the community-led “CEL Short Squeeze.” Will we see a VGX-like pump and dump?

Celsius (CEL) Price Skyrockets Amid “CEL Short Squeeze”

Celsius bankruptcy filing has revealed $1.2 billion of bad deals including $750 million worth of mining rigs, liquidation of $840 million in debt from Tether, and 38,000 ETH loss from staking. Moreover, it has $411 million in outstanding loans to retail borrowers, backed by collateral of digital assets worth $765.5 million.

With customers and depositors unlikely to withdraw or recover their funds, many have started looking at “CEL Short Squeeze” as a possible solution. In just a day, the CEL token price has skyrocketed from a low of $0.42 to a high of $0.83, making a rally of nearly 80%. At the time of writing, Celsius (CEL) is trading at $0.78, up nearly 30%.

Users are planning a VGX-like pump and dump, which saw a massive 500% rally in its price in just 3 days. The price rose from $0.14 to $1 in a day, before losing some gains as a result of profit taking. After crypto lender Voyager Digital filed for bankruptcy, customers were in limbo over the recovery of their funds. Thereafter, many influencers and groups including MetaForm Labs revealed a “PumpVGXJuly18” plan to pump the VGX price through a short squeeze.

Moreover, according to the on-chain platform Santiment, the Celsius (CEL) Whale Distribution data indicates whales holding 1-10 million CEL tokens dumped only 0.87% of the supply between withdrawal cease and bankruptcy filing. It shows whales hold a large number of the CEL tokens and continuously dumping the tokens.

Celsius (CEL) Whale Supply Distribution. Source: Santiment

“After the Celsius Network halted withdrawals, it wasn’t a major surprise to see their bankruptcy this week. Top holders were dumping, but not significantly. And the network was only showing losses recorded for the past month.”

CEL Liquidations in Amid Short Squeeze

Celsius’ CEL price is jumping as a result of short sellers shorting the CEL tokens on exchanges.

According to Coinglass, the exchanges including FTX, Okex, and Huobi are witnessing more than 80% shorts. Moreover, Celsius can’t sell the CEL token at the market. The spot market shorters on FTX are destined to buy CEL coins to close their positions.

Celsius (CEL) Token Liquidation. Source: Coinglass

The data shows massive shorts in the last 24 hours, pushing the price upwards. In fact, the CEL short squeeze seems to be continuing as the chart depicts massive shorts today.

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Varinder Singh

Varinder has over 10 years of experience and is known as a seasoned leader for his involvement in the fintech sector. With over 5 years dedicated to blockchain, crypto, and Web3 developments, he has experienced two Bitcoin halving events making him key opinion leader in the space. At CoinGape Media, Varinder leads the editorial decisions, spearheading the news team to cover latest updates, markets trends and developments within the crypto industry. The company was recognized as Best Crypto Media Company 2024 for high impact and quality reporting. Being a Master of Technology degree holder, analytics thinker, technology enthusiast, Varinder has shared his knowledge of disruptive technologies in over 5000+ news, articles, and papers.

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