Two executives at crypto trading platform Celsius cashed out at least $17 million and as much as $23 million in cryptocurrency shortly before the company halted withdrawals for all users earlier this year, according to a financial disclosure form filed in New York bankruptcy court late Wednesday.
The withdrawals by Celsius executives, first reported by CoinDesk, don’t look good from an optics perspective, given how many users were stopped from being able to pull their money out during the liquidity crisis just a few months ago. Celsius halted all withdrawals indefinitely in June and filed for bankruptcy the following month, leaving users with nothing. Celsius owes roughly $4.7 billion to users but doesn’t have the money to pay them.
The two execs who pulled out the combined $17 million in crypto were former CEO Alex Mashinsky and former Chief Strategy Officer Daniel Leon. Mashinsky resigned as CEO in September, but is still at the center of the investigation over whether Celsius was little more than a Ponzi Scheme—something that over 40 states are currently looking into. Leon resigned just yesterday.
The Financial Times previously reported that Mashinsky withdrew roughly $10 million from Celsius before the collapse of the company, citing unnamed sources, but we now know Leon…
