Celsius Network
Crypto lendingUSA
New to Unitard
💀 Dead / Bankrupt
Peak $3 BillionToday
~-100%
from peak
- 🦄Became a unicorn~Nov 2021
- 📈Peak valuation$3 Billion ’21
- 💔Became a UnitardJul 2022
- 💸Last valuationWiped out
🔥 Raised & burned
$860M
Total raised
$467K/day
Burned · 5.0y alive
Funding: Crunchbase via Wikipedia
Current status
Chapter 11 (2022); wound down
The rise & fall
7 moments · 2017–2025The key moments, with employee sentiment along the way.
2017
2017
Founded
Alex Mashinsky's pitch to 'unbank yourself': deposit crypto, earn double-digit yield.
Wikipedia
2021
2021
The peak: ~$3B — joins the club at the top$3B
A late-2021 round caps roughly $860M raised, as billions in customer deposits chase yields too good to last.
Wikipedia
Jun 2022
Jun 2022
Withdrawals frozen
Citing 'extreme market conditions', Celsius halts all withdrawals — and customers can't get their money out.
CNBC
2021–22
From the inside · Glassdoor reviews, 2021–22
Glassdoor reviews described growth-at-all-costs with risk controls sidelined — reviewers, including from the risk team, flagged how opaque the risks were well before the freeze. Staff paid partly in the company's CEL token watched that slice of their pay collapse as it cratered.
Jul 2022
Jul 2022
Chapter 11 — joins the Unitard Club 💔
A month after the freeze, the yield machine files for bankruptcy on a risky, illiquid balance sheet, then winds down.
Court filing
2023
2023
Founder charged with fraud
Federal prosecutors in Manhattan charge Mashinsky over how the platform's safety and yields were sold.
DOJ
2025
2025
Twelve years for the founder
Mashinsky pleads guilty and is sentenced to 12 years for fraud.
DOJ
$3Bof peak value erased · 5 years
💬 entries paraphrase anonymous, unverified reviews posted publicly on Glassdoor ↗; dated facts carry their source.
How it happened
Celsius Network was a US crypto lending and yield platform valued at about $3B in 2021. It promised high returns on crypto deposits but ran a risky, illiquid balance sheet; amid the 2022 downturn it froze withdrawals and filed for Chapter 11 in July 2022, then wound down. Its founder was later sentenced to 12 years for fraud.
Source: DOJ SDNY; Mashinsky pleaded guilty, sentenced 12 yrs (2025)
Where they went
- Alex Mashinskyco-founder & CEONot on record
- Daniel Leonco-founder & chief strategy officerGroup CEO at K Verse (formerly K Logic Group)
- Nuke Goldsteinco-founder & CTOCo-Founder, investor at RAVER
Current roles as self-reported on LinkedIn, retrieved 2026-08-21. See our methodology.
