Today in Crypto: Former Celsius Execs Withdrew $17M Before Company Filed Chapter 11; Citi Ventures Invests in Digital Asset Management Startup xalts

Two Celsius officials withdrew $42 million in cryptocurrency before the company froze withdrawals and filed for bankruptcy, Coindesk wrote.

Former CEO Alex Mashinsky and CSO Daniel Leon took the funds from custody accounts in the form of bitcoin, ether and CEL tokens.

Mashinsky reportedly withdrew around $10 million while Leon took out around $7 million, with an additional $4 million worth of CEL which was deemed “collateral.”

There were over a dozen other executives who didn’t make any big withdrawals at that time, including the company’s Chief Compliance Officer Oren Blonstein, Chief Risk Officer Rodney Sunada-Wong and new CEO Chris Ferraro.

Meanwhile, Citigroup’s venture capital investing group made an initial digital asset seed investment in a Hong Kong-based digital asset management firm, xalts, a Bloomberg report said.

Xalts was co-founded by a former trader with HSBC Holdings and an ex-Meta executive. The company wants to take advantage of what it deems “increased institutional participation” in the digital asset ecosystem, even with the current volatility, and it wants to launch numerous fund products like mutual funds and ETFs listed on global exchanges.

“The world has changed a lot, you know with the macro environments and obviously markets have been suffering as a result of that,” Luis Valdich, a managing director at Citi Ventures, said in an interview. “Obviously we are very prudent in terms of where to and how to deploy capital, but we’re absolutely active with lots of opportunities not only outside of digital assets, but also within the digital asset space, which we believe is here to stay.”

Furthermore, a Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) commissioner has said decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) need more regulations from Congress, Coindesk wrote.

Summer K. Mersinger, the commissioner with the CFTC, was talking Wednesday (Oct. 6) about a CFTC case involving Ooki DAO, a lending platform governed by a community, and its predecessors.

The CFTC had sued Ooki DAO recently for allegedly offering leverage and margin trading without registering with the agency or keeping a KYC framework going.

Mersinger said it would be helpful if there was a framework to help DAOs register with the CFTC.

Finally, crypto asset manager Grayscale Investments is setting up an entity seeking to buy bitcoin mining equipment at distressed prices, Bloomberg wrote.

The move is a shift in strategy amid the continuing fall of the market.

The firm’s Grayscale Digital Infrastructure Opportunities will be available for a minimum investment of $25,000 for accredited investors. It will buy computer rigs used in mining, with hopes of profit through selling the bitcoin earned in the process.