A U.S. federal judge has dismissed most of the claims brought by the Celsius bankruptcy estate against blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis, but has allowed a single claim to move forward alleging that the company aided a breach of fiduciary duty tied to Celsius’ disputed $3.3 billion asset calculation.

U.S. District Judge Margaret Garnett issued the ruling on September 29, 2026. 12 claims were dismissed with prejudice, meaning they cannot be refiled, while three consumer-protection claims were dismissed without prejudice, leaving them free to be amended by October 20, 2026. The judge denied Chainalysis’ motion to dismiss the first claim, allowing it to continue. A motion to dismiss is a procedural request asking a court to end a case before it proceeds further.

The surviving claim centers on Celsius’ December 2020 announcement that it had completed an “audit” confirming $3.318 billion in assets using Chainalysis’ Reactor software. According to the complaint described in the ruling, a Celsius executive initially calculated approximately $1.18 billion in assets using Reactor before the methodology was changed and the figure rose to about $3.3 billion — an increase of more than $2 billion. The complaint alleges that Chainalysis helped draft, edit, and approve the subsequent press release, and that the company knew that describing the work as an audit and independent verification was false or misleading. A breach of fiduciary duty refers to a failure to act in another party’s best interests, and an aiding-and-abetting theory seeks to hold a third party liable for substantially assisting that breach.

The court’s ruling does not establish those allegations as facts. For purposes of deciding the motion to dismiss, the judge treated the complaint’s well-pleaded allegations as true, a standard practice at this stage of litigation.

Renewed Focus on Blockchain Analytics Firms

The case puts renewed attention on the role and responsibilities of blockchain analytics companies, whose software is increasingly used by exchanges, financial institutions, and government agencies to trace transactions and investigate illicit activity. That market has expanded sharply in recent years. The litigation also highlights an application of such tools beyond illicit-finance tracing: the disputed work involved Reactor’s use in tallying Celsius’ asset holdings for a public announcement.

Blockchain forensics firm TRM Labs said recently that more than 600 government agencies and institutions now use its platform, and that its annual recurring revenue has quadrupled over the past three years. The company has positioned its tools around transaction investigation, criminal-network identification, and tracing illicit funds.

Chainalysis and TRM Labs are also competing for increasingly significant government and institutional business. In August 2026, Chainalysis challenged a roughly $94.7 million U.S. government contract awarded to TRM Labs for cryptocurrency investigative technology and services. The Celsius litigation therefore comes as blockchain forensics firms have moved from being largely back-office analytics providers to important infrastructure for exchanges, regulators, law enforcement, and financial institutions.

Celsius Bankruptcy Background

Celsius filed for bankruptcy in July 2022 after freezing customer withdrawals. The disputed December 2020 announcement came roughly a year and a half before the withdrawal freeze and the bankruptcy filing. The lawsuit was brought by the Blockchain Recovery Investment Consortium, which serves as the litigation administrator and recovery manager for the Celsius estate as part of the estate’s broader efforts to recover assets for creditors.

The surviving claim alleges that Chainalysis’ involvement gave credibility to Celsius’ asset figures and helped the company’s insiders breach their fiduciary duties. Chainalysis has sought dismissal of the lawsuit. The company has refused to comment on the ruling.

What Comes Next

The next deadline in the case is October 20, 2026, when Celsius’ litigation administrator must either amend the three surviving consumer-protection claims or inform the court that it will not do so. That step will determine whether those three claims remain part of the case. Absent an amendment, the case would proceed on the fiduciary claim alone. A claim that survives a motion to dismiss typically advances toward discovery, the pretrial phase in which the parties exchange documents and other evidence.

The case leaves one central question for later stages of the litigation: whether a blockchain analytics provider’s role in producing and communicating financial metrics can create legal exposure when those metrics are subsequently used by a crypto company to support claims about its financial position.

The ruling is available as a PDF via BitcoinKE here.

Source: BitcoinKE