Celsius Network, a popular crypto lending platform, has made a significant move by burning its entire holdings of its native token CEL. This action resulted in the elimination of 94% of the total supply of CEL tokens. According to Etherscan, a blockchain explorer, the company sent 652.2 million CEL tokens to a null address, effectively removing them from circulation.
The value of the burned tokens was estimated to be around $83.2 million at the current market price. With the removal of such a large portion of the token supply, the remaining circulating supply now stands at 40.6 million CEL tokens, as per CoinGecko data.
The token burn, initiated by Celsius Network, is expected to have an impact on the market value of CEL. Token burns generally reduce the supply of a cryptocurrency, and if the asset continues to have demand, its price might increase. In the hours following the burn transaction, the price of CEL saw a slight increase from 13.0 to 13.7 cents, representing a 5% surge.
However, it is worth noting that the overall crypto market, including CEL, has been experiencing significant losses over the past day, with a decrease of 4.4% in the entire market and a 5.3% decrease in the price of CEL during the same period.
This token burn by Celsius Network is not entirely unexpected, as back in September 2023, the company had mentioned its intentions to burn all the CEL tokens it possessed on the effective date of its reorganization plan during its bankruptcy case filing. It clarified that it could only burn the tokens it possessed and could not cancel all CEL tokens or prevent trading on exchanges.
Furthermore, in January of this year, Celsius had also announced plans to distribute $3 billion in crypto to its creditors, without explicitly mentioning a token burn in its public announcement.
Despite these significant moves, Celsius Network has declined to provide any comment regarding this token burn when approached by CryptoSlate.