Alex Mashinsky, the CEO of Celsius, a crypto loan and staking platform, says “the Sharks of Wall Street” can smell blood in the water and are generating instability at multiple crypto ventures. According to Mashinsky, short sellers on Wall Street are to blame for recent Celsius (CEL) price drops, the brief depegging of Tether (USDT), and the collapse of Terra (LUNA).
Some Celsius users claimed the platform liquidated their shares when CEL plummeted during a Twitter Spaces event on May 17. They claimed that when the price declined, trade was illiquid, exacerbating their losses, and that Celsius should have maintained the currency pricing.
According to Mashinsky, CEL has been impacted by the larger crypto meltdown as a result of Terra’s demise, and the firm believes it was targeted. He remarked during the Twitter Space event:
“This is not a coincidence. This is somebody who decided, “You know what? ‘I’m going to take down all of Celsius.”
Mashinsky also took issue with a Barron’s story headlined “Celsius Faces a Revolt as a High-Yield Crypto Plummets” about the Spaces event. He added:
“We have 1.8 million clients, and Barron’s published this piece after two men on Twitter complained about being liquidated after getting a margin loan.”
Users can stake bitcoin that can be used as collateral for loans on Celsius. Stakers are entitled to up to 80% of the platform’s revenue. It has also been targeted by regulators in numerous locations, causing the platform to ban non-accredited investors from receiving interest on deposits in the United States.
In a May 19 AMA, some CEL investors and stakeholders expressed their dissatisfaction with the stock’s price performance. One investor accused the Celsius team of sitting on its hands while the Terra crisis caused the token price to plummet.
According to the investor:
“You know this stuff going on with Luna, the token obviously started tanking. Alex and the team did not step in whatsoever to support the price on the way down. They essentially just let it drop.”
Mashinsky stated in the AMA that Celsius “always works in the best interests of the community,” but that he “does not control price action” on the CEL coin. He went on to say that the liquidations on the Celsius platform in the last two weeks damaged many, but that he personally lost more than anybody else. “I lost more value than all the other liquidated people combined,” he added.
Read more:
- Celsius (CEL) customers complain about withdrawal issues
- Celsius Network to launch IPO of its bitcoin mining subsidiary
