The first bills from the army of lawyers and advisers working on the bankruptcy of crypto lender Celsius Network LLC are in and already adding up to millions of dollars.
Alvarez & Marsal North America LLC, a financial adviser for debtors, has asked to be paid about 80% of a near-$3 million bill for work involving 20 staffers over July 14 to Aug. 31, according to a Tuesday.
In another , fees for a court-appointed examiner and her counsel were estimated at $3 million to $5 million, excluding additional expected costs from a financial adviser the examiner plans to retain.
Costs in the Celsius case are likely to rack up as the bankruptcy proceedings continue. Crypto restructurings have in effect become a new market for lawyers and advisers after a $2 trillion rout in digital assets toppled some high-profile firms.
Overall professional service fees for the companies working on the case could eventually amount to “tens of millions” of dollars, according to Daniel Besikof, a partner at law firm Loeb & Loeb LLP
Some of the staff at Alvarez have already worked on the Celsius case for hundreds of hours. One worker clocked about 423 hours at an hourly rate of $775, the filing shows.
Celsius, once one of crypto’s most prominent lenders, suspended customer withdrawals in June and sought bankruptcy protection the following month.
The market value of Celsius’s holdings has declined about $12.3 billion since the end of March to $1.75 billion, and the large majority will likely be deemed property of the bankruptcy estate, making customers the exchange’s only unsecured creditors, according to Negisa Balluku, a litigation analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence.
Separately, Celsius said in a that it’s filed a motion to set a deadline for customers to submit proofs of claim -- the so-called bar date -- and that the matter is due to be heard in court on Nov. 1.
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