Celsius filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection late Wednesday, leaving users wondering if they’ll ever again see the money they put into the crypto platform. Unfortunately for the average user, they’ll have to wait in line with the company’s other creditors, something that was made explicit in the platform’s incredibly shady terms of service.

Celsius, which allowed people to buy and sell cryptocurrencies like its native token, also called Celsius, gained attention for offering as much as 18% interest on crypto—an absurdly large return for any asset. The company first paused withdrawals for its 1.7 million users on June 12 but assured people they could still “accrue rewards” during the pause.

The Celsius token has lost 79% of its value in the past six months, though desperate users have spent the past month trying a “short squeeze” by buying up as much Celsius crypto as they can in the hopes of inflating the price. That effort has been little more than doubling down on failure, essentially handing more money to the people who started the problem in the first place.

Celsius bought a large amount of its own token since July 2019—roughly $350 million, according to the Financial Times—but the founders of the company were selling like crazy in the past few years. Celsius co-founder and CEO Alex Mashinsky allegedly made some particularly large sales, despite swearing publicly that Celsius execs didn’t sell the token.

Messages on social media from users of the platform are heartbreaking, with people explaining they really need the money that’s tied up in Celsius’s bank accounts. But at this point it’s not clear how much money there is left.

“I’m a single father, I need my BTC,” one user wrote, using the symbol for bitcoin.

“To fellow depositors: Do i understand correctly that there is literally NOTHING/NO ACTION we as depositors can take now? Just have to wait and see if they give us money back? If so, anywhere we should be keeping eyes on?” another user wrote.

“I’m a single mother. This will change the path of my life. I feel sick,” yet another user wrote.

https://gizmodo.com/celsius-files-ba...aud-1849177021

The writing was on the walls. Oomph or whatever his name was shilling for them and saying they would be fine.