Alex Mashinsky has finally admitted that the defunct Celsius Network was a fraud, but he might still save his bacon by telling U.S. prosecutors what he knows about the inner workings of the Tether (USDT) stablecoin.
On December 3, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York (SDNY) announced that Mashinsky had pleaded guilty to one count of committing commodities fraud and one count of committing securities fraud. The fraud counts were among seven charges filed against Mashinsky in July 2023, one year after the ‘digital asset lending platform’ Celsius filed for bankruptcy protection.
Six months after that bankruptcy filing, a court-appointed examiner’s report revealed that Celsius was a Ponzi schememore or less since its launch in March 2018. While claiming that its Earn program would return significant profits for customers who bought and staked its in-house CEL token, insiders furiously dumped their own CEL tokens, earning millions for themselves while leaving the cupboards …