A 12-year sentence wasn’t enough. Yesterday, he got hit with a “lifetime ban”—Celsius’s Mashinsky really isn’t getting out of this one.
On October 9, the New York Attorney General announced a settlement: Mashinsky is permanently banned from the securities, commodities, and cryptocurrency industries, and faces up to $35 million in conditional restitution. If he doesn’t hand over $10 million in ill-gotten gains, he’ll have to pay New York $25 million; if he doesn’t serve his full sentence, he’ll owe another $10 million.
He’s already serving a 12-year federal sentence. Celsius froze withdrawals in June 2022 and filed for bankruptcy in July. Creditors had recovered $3.4 billion by this August.
My take: This is the final gravestone in the CeFi collapse. Back then, Mashinsky touted Celsius as “safer than a bank,” while secretly gambling with users’ deposits through high-risk strategies and hiding losses—the same playbook used by every yield platform that blows up. The more outrageous the interest rates and the louder the slogans, the deeper the buried risks. Even now, people deposit BTC and ETH on obscure platforms just to earn a few percentage points in annual yield. They’re no different from the people who deposited with Celsius back then. Remember this: if your coins aren’t in your own wallet, they aren’t really yours.
Data as of: 2026-10-10 00:15 UTC
Sources: CoinDesk; The Block
For informational purposes only; not investment advice.
#Celsius
$BTC $ETH
I’ll keep following major cases like this in the industry. Follow me to stay in the loop. Do you remember what happened when Celsius collapsed? Let’s talk in the comments.
On October 9, the New York Attorney General announced a settlement: Mashinsky is permanently banned from the securities, commodities, and cryptocurrency industries, and faces up to $35 million in conditional restitution. If he doesn’t hand over $10 million in ill-gotten gains, he’ll have to pay New York $25 million; if he doesn’t serve his full sentence, he’ll owe another $10 million.
He’s already serving a 12-year federal sentence. Celsius froze withdrawals in June 2022 and filed for bankruptcy in July. Creditors had recovered $3.4 billion by this August.
My take: This is the final gravestone in the CeFi collapse. Back then, Mashinsky touted Celsius as “safer than a bank,” while secretly gambling with users’ deposits through high-risk strategies and hiding losses—the same playbook used by every yield platform that blows up. The more outrageous the interest rates and the louder the slogans, the deeper the buried risks. Even now, people deposit BTC and ETH on obscure platforms just to earn a few percentage points in annual yield. They’re no different from the people who deposited with Celsius back then. Remember this: if your coins aren’t in your own wallet, they aren’t really yours.
Data as of: 2026-10-10 00:15 UTC
Sources: CoinDesk; The Block
For informational purposes only; not investment advice.
#Celsius
$BTC $ETH
I’ll keep following major cases like this in the industry. Follow me to stay in the loop. Do you remember what happened when Celsius collapsed? Let’s talk in the comments.