Celsius has a Hail Mary bankruptcy plan: Turn its debt into a new cryptocurrency

cnbc.com:

Since bankrupt crypto lender Celsius froze withdrawals in June, customers' funds have been in limbo. Now, leaked audio shared with CNBC reveals a preliminary plan to compensate them.

The company wants to issue an «IOU» cryptocurrency  to customers that signed up for some of its accounts. 

The recording was provided by Tiffany Fong, who says she is one of the 500,000 Celsius customers with funds locked in the platform. Fong says she received the audio from a self-identified employee, who stayed anonymous during their communications.

CNBC was not able to verify that the leaked audio is the entire exchange from an internal meeting on Sept. 1. However, CNBC spoke with former employees who verified that the recording is authentic. In the audio, Chief Technology Officer Guillermo Bodnar says the plan is in «early stages.» What's laid out may have changed in the weeks since the call.

In the recording, Celsius co-founder Nuke Goldstein outlines a compensation plan for customers who deposited assets in Celsius' «Earn» account, for which Celsius had promised yields as high as 17%. 

Goldstein said Celsius will release «wrapped tokens,» which will serve as an IOU for customers. The tokens represent the ratio between what Celsius owes customers and what assets they have available. He said if customers wait to redeem their tokens, there's a better chance that the gap between what Celsius has and what it owes will be smaller.

That's a risky wager on an increase in value for a nascent token from a company that's just been through bankruptcy. Goldstein said the value is likely to go up because Celsius has revenue coming from its mining business, staked ETH and other coins that may become liquid. 

Celsius also intends to allow customers