Key Takeaways
- Alex Mashinsky, former boss of bankrupt crypto platform Celsius, has pleaded guilty to two counts of fraud.
- Financial author and journalist Zeke Faux took to X to share a damning comment the crypto boss once said to him.
- The comment has become a snapshot in crypto history, highlighting the lack of trust between execs and their customers.
Celsius Network’s former CEO Alex Mashinsky has had his iconically delusional quote, “Somebody is lying,” thrown back in his face by financial author Zeke Faux as the crypto boss pleaded guilty to fraud.
Mashinsky pleaded guilty to two counts of fraud on Tuesday, admitting that he had previously misled customers on the value of the company’s proprietary token and the health of his company.
Mashinsky Pleads Guilty
Mashinsky, 59, was arrested and charged last year over allegations of manipulating the price of his platform’s CEL token, which resulted in him netting $42 million in personal profits, Bloomberg reported.
“I knew what I did was wrong, and I want to do whatever I can to make it right,” Mashinsky told U.S. District Judge John Koeltl.
“I accept full responsibility for my actions,” he added.
The former crypto boss has pleaded guilty to just two of the five counts against him, with the most serious charge carrying up to 20 years in prison.
Prosecutors alleged that Mashinsky made several untrue remarks about his company’s overall health in online videos despite knowing the market was crashing.
Mashinsky admitted to making statements that gave consumers “false comfort” about the earn program that urged customers to exchange Bitcoin for Celsisus’s CEL tokens.
“I gave an interview in which I suggested that Celsius had received approval from regulators even though that was not true,” he said.
“Somebody Is Lying”
Faux took to X on Tuesday, Dec. 3, to share a now-damning comment the crypto boss once said to him.
The journalist and author, who spent time with Mashinsky for his globe-spanning investigative book “Number Go Up,” said Mashinsky told him in 2022: “Somebody is lying. Either the bank is lying, or Celsius is lying.”
Since Faux published the incredibly ironic comment, it has become a poignant illustration of the fragility of trust within the crypto industry.
Although the book focused mainly on the wrongdoings of FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried, Faux has also been a major critic of Mashinsky and the crypto industry as a whole.
Talking to Current Affairs magazine in 2023, Faux said: “When [Mashinsky] explained his business plan to me, I thought it was the dumbest plan I ever heard.”
The author and journalist told the magazine that Celsius sounded like a “backward bank that’s made to lose money or a Ponzi scheme.”
“[Faux’s] explanations never really made sense,” he said.
Kurt Robson is a London-based reporter at CCN, specialising in the fast-moving worlds of crypto and emerging technology. He began his career covering local news in Cornwall after graduating from Falmouth University with First Class Honours in Journalism. There, he cut his teeth on everything from council meetings to missing swans.
He quickly rose through the ranks to become a frontline journalist at several of the UK’s leading national newspapers. Over the years, he has interviewed musicians and celebrities, reported from courtrooms and crime scenes, and secured multiple front-page exclusives.
Following the upheaval of the COVID-19 pandemic, Kurt shifted his focus to technology journalism—just ahead of the AI boom. With a natural curiosity and a trained eye for emerging trends, he has found a new rhythm in reporting on innovation.
At CCN, Kurt's work focuses on the cutting edge of crypto, blockchain, AI, and the evolving digital world. Drawing on his background in people-first reporting and his deep interest in disruptive tech, Kurt delivers stories that are insightful, entertaining, and human-centric.
