Due to rising legal costs, Celsius wants to extend the deadline for claims

Celsius Network, a bankrupt bitcoin lender, plans to file a petition to let users have one month to file claims.

The bitcoin community has grown impatient as Celsius’ legal fees continue to rise and deplete the lender’s inheritance.

On December 29, Celsius tweeted that it would attempt to stretch the current claim deadline from January 3 to early February.

The January 3 deadline will be extend until at least the January 10 bankruptcy court motion hearing (Calculus).

Creditors who believe they are due money may file claims during bankruptcy using the claims process. As of December 29, there were about 17,200 claims submitte by Celsius’s creditors.

Although Celsius’ administrative expenditures have increased since the company filed for bankruptcy in July, its creditors don’t seem to be waiting around. According to a Financial Times article from December 27, the fees charged by bankers, attorneys, and other advisers in the bankruptcy proceedings had already topped $53 million.

Using Celsius, Kirkland & Ellis as an example, a fee statement dated December 15 from one of the law firms representing them requested more than $9 million in payment for services provided in September and October.

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In contrast, Celsius has only allocated $44 million for client refunds. These funds, which make up a minor percentage of Celsius’s $4.72 billion in customer deposits, belong to customers who have only used the Custody Program to store their money.

Some in the crypto community believe the most recent postponement in the proceedings is just another “delay technique,” and they have not been please with it. One customer pleaded with the website to “start immediately, quit waiting around, and refund my money!” while another just wrote, “Stop wasting time and my money.”

By the time consumers may get their money back from Celsius, they should only plan on obtaining around half of what they deposited, observed Simon Dixon, the creator of the international investing portal BnkToTheFuture and a prominent bankruptcy process participant.

Judge Martin Glenn selected Christopher Sontchi, a fellow judge, to serve as a “fee examiner” on October 20 at the request of Celsius, the U.S. trustee, and the committee of unsecured creditors. The fees chosen by the attorneys and other specialists participating in the case must be negotiate and approve by him.

Furthermore, the estate of Celsius continues paying the fee examiner; the most recent fee statement, published on December 21, requested a little less than $20,000 for work accomplished in November.