The collapsed cryptocurrency lender has been transferring a sizable amount of staked Ethereum.
It appears like troubled cryptocurrency lender Celsius is moving its Ethereum staking tokens as quickly as possible away from liquid stacking platform Lido, which just made withdrawals possible.
A transaction for 428,015 stETH (Lido staked Ether) to the Lido staked Ethereum wallet was discovered on Celsius wallets on May 15. Some people think the massive cache was transferred in anticipation of withdrawal because it was worth $781 million at the time.
On-chain evidence suggests that Celsius made a 0.1 stETH test withdrawal a few hours afterwards.
Simon Dixon, a pioneer of Bitcoin and a creditor of Celsius, claims that Celsius may be “lining up for staking directly without Lido in the middle.” He noted that it might also serve as loan collateral for Celsius’s reorganization efforts.
A smart contract called “Figment ETH2 Beacon Depositor 1” received a 40,928 ETH payment from Celsius last week, according to blockchain intelligence company Arkham Intelligence. On May 12, according to Etherscan, this was transferred to the Ethereum Beacon Chain deposit contract.
With a protocol upgrade to V2, Lido, which charges a 10% staking commission, authorized withdrawals on May 15.
The most user-facing feature of Lido V2’s two main components is Ethereum withdrawals. As a result, Lido users who stake Ethereum can easily unstake it via the protocol.
Currently, 6.27 million ETH worth around $11.3 billion, or 29% of all staked ETH, are held by Lido.
According to on-chain analytics company Nansen, there are currently 54,046 ETH in the withdrawal queue, which does not include the Celsius stash.
The post Just as Lido withdrawals begin, Celsius moves $781 million in stETH. first appeared on BTC Wires.
