Customers of Celsius Network, the defunct trading and lending company, who had cryptocurrencies in custody accounts have united to hire attorneys in an effort to recover their funds.

Kyle J. Ortiz, a partner at the corporate restructuring company Togut, Segal & Segal LLP, is representing the custody claimants, who are seeking custody of assets worth around $180 million, or about 4% of the total assets held in Celsius. In the weeks following the initial bankruptcy hearing, this ad hoc group has increased to over 300 members and raised close to $100,000 as the retainer for its legal counsel.

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“Everyone is signing engagement letters as we speak and have $93/$100k committed. I have no doubt we will get there,” David Little, one of the organizers of the custody account ad hoc group, said via direct message. “We grew our group from just a few individuals to almost 400 in a matter of days and have raised $100,000 with basically a group of competent strangers.”

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A group of individuals who share a similar interest in a matter and are prepared to pay for their own legal counsel is referred to in this context as a “ad hoc group.” Clients that invested in the high-yield Earn product from Celsius received interest, whereas custodial clients did not. They didn’t utilize Celsius to make money; they only used it for storing. The Earn users appear to have signed away ownership of their cryptocurrency assets, per the terms of service of the company, whereas custodial clients retain ownership of the assets in their wallets. This is another difference between the two groups.

A competition between particular claimant groups, such as ordinary consumers, significant institutional creditors, and equity holders, is expected during the bankruptcy hearings now taking place at Celsius, which suspended client accounts in June due to a $1.2 billion shortfall in its balance sheet.

The first ad hoc group in the lawsuit was formed by the owners of custodial wallets. According to Thomas Braziel, the founder of bankruptcy claims expert 507 Capital, these creditors are concerned that Kirkland & Ellis, the law firm retained on Celsius’ behalf, may be giving them what they want to hear without doing anything to help them. With instance, Kirkland may have filed a request to have their money returned in fiat money, as was done for Voyager Digital, another defunct crypto lender whose assets were held by a bank.

Instead of filing a request to restore the assets, rkland stated that they will file a “declaratory judgment” for the court to determine what to do, according to Braziel. The rumor is that claimants are only receiving lip service. It’s not exactly obvious that the assets are being kept under custody. Although Celsius claims to hold it for you, the terms and conditions include somewhat ambiguous language. The argument put up by [Kirkland] is, “Why give it to them if we don’t have to?

Requests for comment from Celsius, Ortiz, or Kirkland did not immediately elicit a response.