Celsius cost basis: records, claims, and the docket

What happened, on the record?

On June 12, 2022 Celsius announced it was halting all customer withdrawals, with approximately $4.7 billion of customer crypto still on the platform, according to the indictment [1]. On July 13, 2022 Celsius Network LLC and its affiliates filed Chapter 11 petitions in the Southern District of New York [5]. One year later, on July 13, 2023, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York announced the indictment of the founder, and the SEC filed its own complaint the same day [1] [2].

The criminal case ended in a guilty plea. On December 3, 2024 the founder pleaded guilty to one count of commodities fraud and one count of securities fraud [3]. On May 8, 2025 he was sentenced to 12 years [4]. Those are the charged and adjudicated facts, and this guide names no one else.

The bankruptcy ran on its own track. The plan went effective on January 31, 2024, and distributions began [5]. The second distribution was made in bitcoin or cash only, as the claims agent’s notices say [5].

The platform’s own token has a page in the dead-token registry: Celsius (CEL), with the court record behind its status.

What records existed, and where did they go?

A customer’s transaction history lived on the platform: every deposit, every reward, every loan, every withdrawal. The platform’s own export was the record of what was earned and when. When the platform closed, the export closed with it.

What survived is the claim. The claims agent’s case site carries the schedules, the docket, the plan, and the distribution notices [5]. A scheduled claim states what the account held on July 13, 2022, per asset. It does not state what was paid for any of it, and Celsius never sold most of it to the customer in the first place.

How does a customer get the records now?

The route is the claims agent. Stretto is the debtors’ claims and noticing agent, and its case site is where the claims portal, the distribution updates, and the docket live [5]. The site also carries a standing warning about phishing emails that imitate the portal, and it says distributions are not sent to creditors’ wallets on request [5].

Two things a customer gets that way are worth keeping. The scheduled balance fixes the quantity held on the petition date. The distribution records fix what came back, on what date, in bitcoin or in cash. Neither is a purchase record.

How is a basis rebuilt without the export?

Celsius was a place tokens were deposited, so the buy side usually lives somewhere else. The exchange or wallet the tokens came from carries the purchase price, and that export is the first record to pull. The chain shows the transfer into Celsius with a date and an amount, and the scheduled balance shows what the account held at the freeze.

Rewards are the part Celsius alone knew. A reward paid in crypto takes as its basis the fair market value on the date received, per the IRS FAQ, and that date and amount were in the platform’s history [6]. A saved reward statement settles it; without one, the chain shows nothing, because rewards were credited inside the platform. The records rule still applies: a holder needs records sufficient to establish the positions taken on the return [6].

Since January 1, 2025 a rebuilt basis is tracked wallet by wallet, and Rev. Proc. 2024-28 gave a safe harbor for sorting old basis into the wallets that held the tokens [8]. Tokens withdrawn from Celsius and later sold at a US broker reach that broker’s Form 1099-DA as a transfer in, in boxes 12a and 12b, and for a noncovered asset box 1g, the basis, may be left blank [9]. The basis the return carries is the rebuilt one.

What about the distributions?

This site has found no IRS document on the tax treatment of a bankruptcy distribution to a crypto platform’s customer, so this guide prints no rule for it. What the loss rules need is a closed transaction. In the Chief Counsel’s reading, a holder who still controls the asset has not abandoned it, and a holder with a claim still open has not closed anything [7].

The distribution itself is a record. The date, the asset, and the amount fix what came back against the scheduled claim, and the bitcoin received has a basis of its own from that date.

Where does a sale go on the return?

Form 1099-DA covers broker sales of digital assets on or after January 1, 2025 [8], so no Celsius trade from before the freeze is on one. A short-term digital asset sale with no Form 1099-DA goes on Form 8949 under box I, and a long-term one under box L [10]. A sale reported on a 1099-DA that shows no basis goes under box H or box K instead, and in every case the basis goes in column (e) [10].

A token held on Celsius that later died is a loss only once a transaction closes it [7]. The worthless-token calculator works through what a closed loss offsets.