Financial Times: Celsius CEO took control of firm's deal strategy months before bankruptcy filing

According to the Financial Times, Alex Mashinsky, CEO of the encryption lending platform Celsius Network, took control of Celsius's trading strategy a few months before the company filed for bankruptcy. Controls corporate trading strategies ahead of Fed meetings. In the days leading up to the Fed meeting, Alex Mashinsky directed the deal himself, overruling the advice of executives with decades of financial experience, according to multiple people familiar with the matter. Celsius lost $50 million in trading losses in January, some of the people said, but it was unclear how much was attributable to Mashinsky. According to another person familiar with the matter, Celsius’ total losses on its GBTC transactions were approximately $100 million to $125 million. In one instance, Alex Mashinsky ordered the sale of bitcoin worth hundreds of millions of dollars without double-checking asset holdings (Celsius held $22 billion in client crypto assets at the time), buying them back at a loss a day later, the Financial Times reported. these bitcoins.