Celsius Founder Blames Short Sellers for CEL Price Slump

Alex Mashinsky, the founder and CEO of Celsius, believes that the ‘Sharks of Wall Street’ are in part to blame for the ongoing crypto winter.

According to him, short-sellers, who can “smell blood in the water” are capitalizing on the panic, enhancing the fluctuations and crashes, including the Celsius’s (CEL) price fall, Tether’s (USDT) short-lived depegging from the dollar, and the infamous collapse of Terra (LUNA) and TerraUSD (UST). “This is not a coincidence. This is somebody who decided, You know what? I’m going to take down all of Celsius,” he said during a Twitter event where he received criticism from some of the CEL users. “The point is that the Sharks of Wall Street are now swimming in crypto waters.” Later he added, “They [‘Sharks of Wall Street’] took down Luna. They tried Tether, Maker, and many other companies. It’s not just us. I don’t think they have a specific hate or focus on Celsius. They are all looking for any weakness to short and destroy.” Some of the users, however, insisted that the Celsius network, which allows users to stake cryptocurrency and use them as collateral for loans, said that the platform has done too little to protect them. While Mashinsky acknowledged that the liquidations on the Celsius platform that took place in the past two weeks have hurt many people, he noted that his losses are even more paramount and that the platform is doing its best in the current situation. “I lost more value than all the other liquidated people combined,” he said, adding on Twitter: “At CelsiusNetwork we have stated several times publicly that we had minimal exposure to $Luna and $UST I understand people who are trying to sell you competing services are spreading these rumors, but you have to trust our Twitter.” He also criticized Barron’s recent article titled Celsius Faces a Revolt as a High-Yield Crypto Plummets, saying “We have 1.8 million customers and Barron’s wrote this article because two guys on Twitter complained that they got liquidated after taking a margin loan.” CEL price has been steadily falling since the start of the year. Trading at $4.38 on Jan.1, it has slumped to $0.7399 press-time. The platform, however, is not giving up. On May 16, it announced that it is looking to take its wholly-owned Bitcoin mining subsidiary public. The company has already filed a Form S-1 with the Security and Exchange Commission today, with the Initial Public Offering expected to take up to 9 months. To date, Celsius has invested over $500 million into its mining business.