Celsius founder Alex Mashinsky Arrested, Charged with Fraud

 

- Alex Mashinsky, the founder of bankrupt cryptocurrency lender Celsius Network, was arrested by US authorities and charged with fraud and market manipulation.

Imagine this - you put your money into a "bank" that pays out really high interest rates and promises to be totally safe. But behind the scenes, it's making risky investments, lying about its funds and profitability, and ultimately collapsing into bankruptcy. That describes the sad saga of cryptocurrency platform Celsius and its bombastic founder, Alex Mashinsky.

Mashinsky, once known as "Uncle Cel" for promoting Celsius, was arrested by the feds this week and charged with running a massive fraud. Prosecutors allege that Mashinsky duped over a million investors into pouring billions into Celsius with misleading sales pitches and false claims.

Authorities say Celsius portrayed itself as a "modern day bank" when in reality it operated more like a "risky investment fund" that lacked anywhere near the promised profits. The company also used customer deposits to manipulate the price of its own CEL token, allowing it to sell at inflated prices.

As the indictment shows, Mashinsky and Celsius ran an elaborate deception centered around phony spreadsheets, made-up users numbers, and hiding the fact that Celsius had to use over 80% of revenue just to pay interest to early investors. When crypto markets crashed last year, this whole pyramid scheme came crashing down.

Celsius filed for bankruptcy in July 2022 after the company "froze" users' assets, locking them out of access to billions of dollars. Thousands of angry investors were left with nothing.

Now Mashinsky, known as"Uncle Cel" for promoting the project on YouTube,faces criminal fraud charges. The SEC also filed a lawsuit seeking to ban him from the crypto industry for life while getting fines and penalties.

After the lies and deception are peeled away, all that's left of Celsius is a cautionary tale of crypto hype and mania that ended in total collapse and ruin for investors who thought they'd found a miracle high-yield savings account. But in the end, it was just another wild Ponzi scheme.

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XRP's Landmark Victory Over the SEC Sets a Positive Precedent for All Cryptocurrencies

 

Ripple's momentous win against the SEC this week is cause for celebration throughout the crypto community. This is big, since not only did it immediately boost XRP's price and reputation, but it also sets an important legal precedent that should give hope to other projects facing similar regulatory challenges, like Coinbase.

In simple terms, Judge Analisa Nadine Torres's ruling that XRP is "not a security on its face" means that the simple act of creating and selling a cryptocurrency token doesn't automatically make it a regulated security. The SEC will have to provide more detailed analysis on a case-by-case basis to prove that a token actually functions as an investment contract.

Prior to this ruling, there was a lot of uncertainty in the crypto space about where the regulatory lines would be drawn. Many projects feared the SEC might just label any popular cryptocurrency a "security" and severely restrict its usage.

But now we know that's not the case. If a cryptocurrency truly functions as a blockchain-based payment network or application - like Ripple has long argued for XRP - it has a strong case for not being classified as a security.

This positive development is great news for many of the major cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin and others that have always seen themselves as decentralized networks, not "securities".

The ruling also gives projects like Polygon, Solana, Cardano and Tron more confidence to continue operating and innovating without fear that the SEC might come knocking at their door and suddenly label their tokens "securities".

Clearly, there's still a lot of work to be done in terms of actual crypto regulation. But Ripple's landmark victory helps move the industry in the right direction by providing much-needed legal clarity and shining a light on the path forward.

Crypto investors breathed a collective sigh of relief today as Ripple's win significantly reduces regulatory uncertainty, giving hope and optimism that the crypto revolution can march on unimpeded. It was truly an incredible event for the entire industry.

 

Veteran crypto investor Adam Cochran Twitted:

1/5

Ripple case, here is the good and the bad.

But it is mostly *VERY* good for all alts, and a surprisingly big win for XRP.

First Judge did decide institutional sales/fundraising was securities. pic.twitter.com/esmjcIrzN0

— Adam Cochran (adamscochran.eth) (@adamscochran) July 13, 2023

 

Jake Chervinsky, Chief Policy Officer at Blockchain Association, said the ruling a win for crypto exchanges: 

Not legal advice, but my sense is US crypto exchanges should feel good about relisting XRP today.

— Jake Chervinsky (@jchervinsky) July 13, 2023

Happy New Year! 2021

 

New adventures are around the corner. Happy New Year!

Merry Christmas! 2020

Happy Holidays! I hope all of your Christmas wishes come true.

Happy Halloween 2019

Wishing you an eerie October and a boo-tiful Halloween!

 

“Black Monday” 1987 Stock Market Crash Will it Happen Again?

October 19, 2017 is the 30th year anniversary of "Black Monday" stock market crash (October 19, 1987), on this day stock markets around the world plunged. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 508 points marking a 22.6 percent drop, its largest ever one-day drop. The FTSE100 shed 11 per cent; and European markets followed the same downward pattern.

Following the big fall, regulators put new rules into effect, allowing for a halt in trading when there are exceptionally large price drops in certain indexes.

The fall in US markets was twice the size of those during the 1929 market crash (marked by a Black Tuesday and Black Thursday), and greater than any single-day move during the 2008 financial crisis. The recovery was almost as steep as the precipitous declines.

So will it happen again? It's possible since stock market involves risk however that kind of crash is highly unlikely.

Dow Jones industrial average is trading above 23,000 for the first time. It’s been nearly 16 months since S&P 500 index funds had a pullback of even 5 percent over the course of days or weeks, its longest such streak in two decades.

Many analysts expect the market to keep climbing, at least for the next year. The global economy is improving, corporate profits are rising and inflation remains low but not so low that it makes economists nervous.

Asian Shares and US Dollar Rise As Korea Tensions Ease

The US dollar is up while the Treasuries retreated and stocks rise as an appetite for risk returned to global markets after an anticipated North Korean missile test failed to materialize and Hurricane Irma struck the U.S. with less force than feared. Gold, the yen and Swiss franc all fell.

Bloomberg’s dollar index was headed for the first increase in eight days, while U.S. stock futures rose and Treasuries slipped after Irma weakened and shifted direction to spare Miami a direct hit. The Stoxx Europe 600 Index jumped the most in more than a week as all the region’s major stock gauges advanced and almost every sector gained. Earlier, equities across Asia traded in the green. Oil advanced as Gulf Coast refining capacity continued to recover after getting hit by Harvey.

Pyongyang warned of retaliation if the UN Security Council approves harsher sanctions over its recent nuclear test in a vote on Monday. The regime “is closely following the moves of the U.S. with vigilance,” the North’s state-run Korean Central News Agency said Monday.

“The better risk environment has seen Treasury yields move higher while the yen retreated,” wrote Chris Scicluna, head of economic research at Daiwa Capital Markets in London in a client note. Hurricane Irma appears “not to be quite as catastrophic as had been feared last week” and “thankfully there was no bad weekend news out of North Korea either,” he said.

Chinese stocks closed on a steady note after August inflation data released over the weekend came in better than expected, mainly on account of higher material costs.

The benchmark Shanghai Composite index rose 11.18 points or 0.33 percent to 3,376.42 while Hong Kong's Hang Seng index was up over 1 percent at 27,954 in late trade.

Japanese shares closed at their highest level in more than a week as the dollar recovered from a 10-month trough against the yen and data showed Japanese core machinery orders rose in July at the fastest pace since January 2016.

The Nikkei average jumped 270.95 points or 1.41 percent to 19,545.77, led by gains in recently battered automakers and financial stocks. The broader Topix index closed 1.17 percent higher at 1,612.26.

Australian shares rose sharply as banks and energy stocks rallied, helping more than offset weakness in the mining sector.

The benchmark S&P/ASX 200 index jumped 40.50 points or 0.71 percent to 5,713.10 while the broader All Ordinaries index finished 35.70 points or 0.62 percent higher at 5,775.10.


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