Lawyers for Celsius Network are seeking to fold a UK affiliate into the company, a move that could strengthen the hand of the firm’s retail customers in their battle with institutional shareholders over the bitcoin mining business and other assets housed in the affiliate.

The cryptocurrency lender argued that its advisers have been struggling to reconcile the records of the UK affiliate, called Celsius Network, and Hoboken, NJ-based Celsius Network, and believes it makes more sense to collapse the two affiliates into one unit for the purpose of assessing creditors’ claims against both, according to papers filed on 1 May with the US Bankruptcy Court in New York. Celsius also said it believes that a review of transactions between the two sides would show that the UK unit owes the US side billions of dollars.