“He Will Rot in Prison”: Community Reacts to Mashinsky’s Arrest
Celsius’s ex-CEO has been arrested, and some within the crypto community are happy that it finally happened.
On July 13, founder and former CEO of bankrupt cryptocurrency lender Celsius Network Alex Mashinsky was arrested. He pleaded not guilty to seven criminal counts, including securities fraud, commodities fraud, and wire fraud.
"Whether it's old-school fraud or some new-school crypto scheme, it doesn't matter one bit. It's all fraud to us," U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said at a press conference.
The story got immediate commentary from many crypto figures. Among them is Saifedean Ammous, the author of The Bitcoin Standard: The Decentralized Alternative to Central Banking.
“I've said it before and I'll say it again, if anything offers you a fixed yield, you are the yield. The shitcoin might be called Celsius or staking or Treasuries, but if it pretends it can guarantee a return, it's a Ponzi that's paying old entrants from the money of new entrants,” he tweeted.
Saifedean Ammous’s tweet. Source: Twitter
Meanwhile, Ryan Selkis, the founder and CEO of Messari, which builds an open data library for the crypto asset class, highlighted the role of the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in the process, criticizing its actions.
“SEC attacked Ripple (lost), attacked Grayscale (losing), attacked Coinbase (gonna lose). SEC whiffed on Celsius (fraud), FTX (fraud, bribery), and Genesis (accused of fraud). Perhaps the agency is still relevant for stonks, but it’s *objectively* useless when it comes to crypto,” he wrote.
Ryan Selkis’s tweet. Source: Twitter
However, perhaps the most emotional answer came from the CEO of Swan, Cory Klippsten who wrote a lengthy tweet where he called Mashinsky’s arrest long ‘overdue’ and his looming imprisonment ‘well-deserved.’
“I was perhaps the most vociferous critic of Celsius and Mashinsky in Spring of 2022, and was singled out by Mashinsky and his collaborators as a primary enemy of their scheme,” reads part of his tweet.
In other parts of it, he claimed that “thousands of Celsius users made the life-altering decision to withdraw their assets from Celsius” as a result of his warnings. “Many hundreds got in touch with me directly, sending detailed messages thanking me for my efforts to shine a light on the scam. Though the wheels of justice turned perhaps too slowly, in the end, the result will be correct.”
He concluded that Alex Mashinsky would rot in prison.
Previously, GNCrypto shed light on Mashinsky’s story.
