Research Shows that Celsius Liquidated $350M in Leverage Trading

Arkham Intelligence, a blockchain analytics firm, has carried out research to give much deeper insight into Celsius Network’s business practices, insider activity, and deployment strategies “than previously reported online or in the media”

They made their findings public on July 7 via a 24-page PDF file entitled “Report on the Celsius Network.”

According to the report, Celsius entrusted corporate funds worth roughly $530 million at the time of transfer to an asset manager who engaged in high-risk leveraged crypto trading strategies that resulted in $61 million of forced liquidations. The total apparent loss was $350 million when the asset manager returned capital compared to the value of the crypto assets Celsius originally sent at the time of return.

Arkham also identified the asset manager as the team behind investment firm Battlestar Capital / KeyFi, led by co-founder and CEO Jason Stone, who pseudonymously operated as the well-known 0xB1. In October 2020, CEO Stone assumed the title of “Head of DeFi Staking at Celsius” following the network’s acquisition of KeFi.

Moreover, Arkham discovered that despite its public emphasis on institutional lending as its source of yield, Celsius deployed over $1 billion in assets to DeFi protocols, where it lost over $100 million to hacks. Interestingly, Celsius spent over $350 million purchasing their crypto token, CEL, on exchanges, even though they already had billions of dollars worth of CEL in its Treasury.

The report also alleged that according to blockchain addresses associated with Celsius CEO Alex Mashinsky, he sold $45 million of CEL, sometimes on the same exchanges where the company bought their token with corporate funds.