Potential Buyers Are Showing Interest in Embattled Crypto Company Hodlnaut

Potential buyers have shown interest in the embattled cryptocurrency lending company Hodlnaut and its claims against now-bankrupt digital asset exchange FTX.

According to a Monday report by Bloomberg, “various parties who are interested in acquiring” the Singapore-based crypto platform have reached out to the interim judicial managers overseeing the company after it sought protection from creditors.

The report, which cited an affidavit, said that the judicial managers are in the process of signing non-disclosure agreements with the interested parties who have inquired about purchasing Hodlnaut. 

As of December 9, Hodlnaut Group owed a combined $160.3 million, which accounts for more than 60% of the company’s outstanding debt, to some major crypto and Fintech companies like Algorand Foundation, Samtrade Custodian, S.A.M. Fintech and Jean-Marc Tremeaux.

In early August, Hodlnaut froze customer withdrawals. In an update, the company said it is exploring “the option of allowing users to withdraw their initial deposit, with interest accrued in full, at a discounted amount and close their account with Hodlnaut.” 

However, the crypto lender applied for judicial management by the end of that month to be placed under a form of creditor protection. At the time, the company said the move comes after its financial health was hit during the implosion of the Terra ecosystem and the overall crypto meltdown.

In a series of tweets, blockchain researcher FatManTerra revealed that Hodlnaut lost as much as $190 million during the implosion of the Terra ecosystem. The pseudonymous crypto researcher noted that the company “continued to tell customers they had zero Anchor exposure” up until recently.

In November last year, it was also revealed that Hodlnaut is under police investigation in Singapore for alleged fraud and cheating offenses. Hodlnaut and its directors are suspected of making “false representations relating to the company’s exposure to a certain digital token,” a police statement said at the time.

Founded in 2019 by Juntao Zhu and Simon Lee, Hodlnaut was once one of the largest crypto lenders with more than $100 million in customer funds across over 1,000 users in February 2022. The figure was up from $1 million a year earlier. 

A number of other major crypto lenders, including Celsius, BlockFi, and most recently the crypto lending unit of Genesis, have filed for bankruptcy amid the recent market downturn. Nexo, which is one of the crypto lending companies that hasn’t gone out of business, has recently agreed to pay a total of $45 million to settle charges that it violated investor-protection laws.