Celsius Scams Continue Years Later

If some of my readers remember, Celsius was a very popular centralized staking platform for major crypto coins that offered some very attractive staking bonuses, both as rewards as well as sign on bumps.

Celsius, a crypto asset platform, offered customers “rewards” on deposited assets, secured loans, and custody services. Marketing itself as the “safest place for your crypto,” Celsius encouraged customers to “unbank” themselves by transferring crypto assets to its platform. Celsius’s primary offering, “Earn” program, promised to deploy customer assets to generate investment returns. Celsius also provided “Custody” and “Borrow” programs, the latter allowing customers to obtain loans by posting crypto assets as collateral. (DOJ source)

Some of these were as much as $50 to $100 for investing $200 to $300 in a given coin, like BTC or USDC, etc. Of course, the entire model was propped up on a house of cards, and when Bitcoin did its tragic drop from the $120,000s down to $16,000 or so, it took a whole bunch of glass houses with it. Celsius’ management and owner, Alex Mashinsky, suddenly has private financing calls on its capital funding being demanded, and the platform was holding an empty bag in terms of liquidity. Whether in panic or an already-planned exit rug, Machinsky took off with a bundle of Celsius’ staked holdings in real coins and thought he got away to…