The recently announced plans of Celsius Network, the cryptocurrency lender, to recover a major portion of the stolen funds has been met with some challenges from the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC). According to a report in Bloomberg, the SEC wants to also have an audit of Celsius before any recovery efforts can take place.
Celsius lost over 7 million US dollars worth of customer funds in a phishing scam back in April. At the time, they promised to make up for the losses and recently announced a plan to do so. The plan involved Celsius taking a loan from its own blockchain platform to then use the loan proceeds to pay back its lost customers.
However, the SEC is not satisfied with this plan and wants to have an audit to ensure that Celsius’ books and records are in order before any loan is made. According to the report, the SEC is also looking to ascertain whether the loan would constitute an unregistered offering of securities or not.
It remains to be seen if Celsius will be able to satisfy the SEC and recover the lost funds. Until then, however, their plans are on hold. This is yet another example of how the cryptocurrency industry remains at the whim of the US regulator.
