Celsius appears to be moving at breakneck speed to transfer its stETH.
Celsius, a bankrupt crypto lender, has recently begun transferring its Ethereum staking tokens from the liquid staking platform Lido.
It is worth noting that on May 15th, Lido activated withdrawals via an upgrade to the V2 protocol. The new version brings significant changes to Lido, with the most prominent one being Ethereum withdrawals.
Did you know?
Subscribe - We publish new crypto explainer videos every week!
What is Fantom? | Animated FTM Explainer
On May 15th, one of Celsius's wallets relocated 428,015 stETH (Lido's staked Ether) to the Lido staked Ethereum wallet. This massive supply, valued at $781 million at the moment of transfer, is believed by some to be a preparatory move for withdrawal.
It is believed that, after moving funds, Celsius conducted a test withdrawal of 0.1 stETH.
Simon Dixon, a Bitcoin pioneer and a creditor of Celsius, suggested that Celsius might be preparing to stake directly, bypassing Lido. Alternatively, Dixon noted that funds could be used as collateral for Celsius's restructuring plans.
Arkham Intelligence, a blockchain analysis company, shed light on the fact that last week, Celsius moved 40,928 Ether (ETH) to a smart contract named "Figment ETH2 Beacon Depositor 1."
As per Etherscan data, on May 12th, the funds were relocated to the Ethereum Beacon Chain deposit contract.
Currently, Lido holds a considerable share of 29% of all staked Ether (ETH), which amounts to 6.27 million ETH, estimated to be worth around $11.3 billion.
As reported by on-chain analytics firm Nansen, there is currently 52,144 ETH in the withdrawal queue, with the Celsius pile not included in this figure.
At the beginning of May, the news broke that liquid staking solutions, including Lido and Rocket Pool, have outpaced decentralized exchanges (DEXs) in terms of total value locked (TVL).
