Alex Mashinsky allegedly trying to flee US, though Celsius denies the allegations
Troubled crypto lending firm Celsius is putting their best to recover operations alongside CEO Alex Mashinsky, who currently stays in the United States, the company has claimed. They deny the rumor of Celsius CEO Alex Mashinsky wasn’t trying to leave the U.S. last week. Rather he has continued to work on recovering liquidity and operations, the company has claimed.
A representative told Cointelegraph on Monday that the firm continues working on restoring liquidity, stating:
“All Celsius employees — including our CEO — are focused and hard at work in an effort to stabilize liquidity and operations. To that end, any reports that the Celsius CEO has attempted to leave the U.S. are false.”
Mike Alfred, co-founder of the crypto analytics firm Digital Assets Data, took to Twitter on June 26 to claim that Mashinsky tried to leave the country last week via Morristown Airport in New Jersey, the United States. Celsius’ statement came shortly after this tweet.
Alfred alleged that Celsius CEO was trying to go to Israel. “Unclear at this moment whether he was arrested or simply barred from leaving,” he added citing an anonymous source.
Alfred’s claims followed a huge GameStop-like “short squeeze” of Celsius, with Celsius’ native token CEL jumping 300% in one week by June 21. CEL price also rudely rallied more than 600% on June 14, with analysts attributing the event to an exchange malfunction or bankruptcy of short traders.
Now CEL is trading at $0.741, down around 5% over the past 24 hours, according to CoinGecko. Celsius’ native token is still up more than 160% over the last 14 days.
Some industry observers in the crypto community have stated skepticism about Alfred’s tweets about Mashinsky, with many considering his allegations as FUD.
As previously reported by Cointelegraph, Celsius officially declared that it would be “pausing all withdrawals, swaps and transfers between accounts” on June 13. U.S. regulators afterward started an investigation into Celsius as multiple accounts on Celsius were frozen.
According to some analysts, Celsius’ liquidity issues should be credited to shortcomings of the existing crypto lending model in general as other lenders in the market have faced similar problems recently.
Celsius has been working hard to fix the consequences of the platform’s liquidity crisis. Celsius’ lead investor BnkToTheFuture and its co-founder Simon Dixon offered to assist the network by deploying a recovery plan on June 18.
