During my initial period of crypto investment I discovered Celsius and if you were to look back on my posts from that time you will see how wonderful I thought it was. In fact, among other things, I was directing all of my Noise:Cash BTC there and acquired as much as 3 BCH.

Celsius, steadily staking at above inflationary levels, represented about 60% of my total investment while the other 40% was (and is) held on Coinbase. I was adding to my Celsius fund regularly and not just through Noise:Cash, but I was sending my Cointiply BTC there as well as my P0x Etherium. In terms of direct investment - that is money directly invested (that 60% I mentioned) it was all held in stablecoin, being split between DAI and USDC - this was primarily to keep some separation as some funds represented my wider family while the rest was more specific.

StableCoin staking at above inflationary levels what could go wrong?

In November 2021 my investment hit its peak - more than double my total investment - but then the times of trouble came, starting if memory serves me well in April 2022. I moved on the dip too early with my Coinbase reserves of StableCoin and trusted in a couple of unwise Alts such as BAND and ALGORAND, which I still hold to this day and BAND in particular is in a very bad state. At least with ALGORAND I only need it to go up to £0.45 to "break even" which is far below its ATH. On the other hand BAND needs to increase by 1000% to achieve the same "break even" point.

What made things worse was that I moved my USDC and DAI interest from Celsius in May 2022 to leverage what I thought was the end of the dip (I suppose that at least I took something out).

Then in June 2022 Celsius announced that they were temporarily halting withdrawals and in a whirlwind few days they suddenly filed for bankruptcy.

60% of my investment had just gone down the toilet.

Coupled with the collapse in Crypto prices my Coinbase portfolio also dipped below my preset "cut my losses and run" threshold. At worst I was holding , in terms of value, only about 20% of my investment.

However, my first principle had been never to invest more than I was prepared to lose and facing such losses I decided to stick in there and hodl things out and that was what happened for the best part of two years.

In the meantime  a company called Stretto (presumably some kind of liquidator - adminstrator in the UK) had taken over Celsius in a bid to restructure, save what could be saved and re-emburse investors such as myself. Most might be familiar with the Celsius implosion and the ensuing criminal case that followed, but that is another story for another day.

I must say I have been impressed with Stretto from the get-go in terms of information sharing and shouldering most of the work. As an investor I had to do very little - just re-verify my profile - and they did what they could to sort everything out. The only other thing that they insisted on was that the email address that they had was the same one I use for Coinbase; as they informed me that any recovered funds will be sent there.

I had very little hope and had a long time written off everything i had on Celsius. My spreadsheet was a mass of red and a disaster.

I was still checking my portfolio almost daily but doing very little with it as it was in the doldrums and then suddenly at the end of February (2024) my Coinbase Portfolio had massively increased and I was like - what the hell just happened. I even thought it was a mistake. Then I saw that from seemingly nowhere I had a whole load of ETH and BTC

BOOM!

I didn't get everything back from Celsius that they were holding, but I would estimate that it was about the same as I had directly invested in the first place (so effectively I lost the free stuff), but suddenly my portfolio was green again, even if only marginally.

And then the phoenix truly rose from the ashes.

Within a couple of weeks of getting the funds back the bulls started running again and especially on BTC - although ETH is doing very nicely at the moment too. The timing was perfect. When reimbursed the prices had been relatively low and then suddenly I had more face value to my held currencies.

I must confess that I moved most of my BTC a little too soon into staked USDC expecting it to correct sooner than it did and you might ask if I am making the same mistake as I did before.

Well no...

Coinbase has its assets insured (do not mistake this for losses due to price drops - DYOR) and I am keeping all of the "profits" as staked USDC and with it underwritten it should be safe. I may not be making the profits that I could have, had I held on just a bit longer to my BTC but I am not making any losses on it.

I also have a fixed buy back price in my head for when the dip comes. My intention is to acquire more BTC while leaving some USDC in my held fund. Of course BTC might never dip low enough again (I think it will, because while I moved early I didn't move that early).

My intention is to do the same with ETH but at the moment I am sitting in on that one.

So while my portfolio has not reached the heights of November 2021 it is now running at about +20% of it's investment value which is above inflation AND far better than the banks offer.

It really did seem that Celsius would lead to my Crypto demise, but in the end as the phoenix underwent a resurrection, so has my portfolio and in a large part it was down to Celsius and in particular the timing of the reimbursement.

Yes Celsius you messed me up but you also saved me - so thank you

As always stay safe and stay well my friends.