Celsius Alleges Liquid Staking Platform StakeHound Owes It $150,000,000 in New Lawsuit

Bankrupt crypto lender Celsius is filing a lawsuit against a liquid staking platform, claiming that the firm owes it $150 million in crypto assets.

New court documents reveal that Celsius is suing StakeHound, alleging that it willfully failed to pay them $150 million worth of digital assets.

In the lawsuit, Celsius is asking StakeHound to immediately return the virtual assets belonging to the broker, pay compensatory damages that arose from its breach of contract, and pay for associated legal fees.

According to Celsius, StakeHound would issue customers “stTokens” in exchange for the ability to control the validator nodes of their staked native tokens.

The stTokens could be deployed in other investments, which is not typical for staked assets, and then redeemed to StakeHound for the return of the customers’ native tokens plus any rewards earned.

However, Celsius alleges that StakeHound never returned the proper amount of native tokens during redemption and instead attempted to start an arbitration process with them.

“StakeHound has failed and refused to return, or otherwise provide, to Celsius vast sums of native tokens in exchange for stTokens. When confronted with its breaches of contract and other duties, StakeHound willfully violated the automatic stay. Despite its knowledge of the pendency of these bankruptcy cases, StakeHound commenced a (legally void) arbitration proceeding against Celsius seeking declaratory relief in Switzerland. StakeHound has since ignored Celsius’ demand that the Swiss arbitration be withdrawn based on the automatic stay.”

Celsius says it’s owed a “substantial” amount of crypto assets as well as rewards associated with them, including 25,000 Ethereum (ETH) staked in November 2020, 35,000 ETH staked in February 2021, and 40 million Polygon (MATIC) and 66,600 Polkadot (DOT) staked in April 2021.