Alex Mashinky wants to rebrand his failed crypto lending company Celsius Network as a custody service under new name Kelvin.
In recordings heard by the New York Times, the discredited Celsius chief executive officer told staff of his plan to rebuild the company by offering crypto storage services, a vast departure from a business model built on unsustainable yield generation.
“Does it make the Pepsi taste less good?” Mashinsky asked, alluding to the fact that the second-rate caffeinated soft drink filed for bankruptcy. But that was over 90 years ago.
“Delta filed for bankruptcy. Do you not fly Delta because they filed for bankruptcy?” he queried. OK fair enough, that was only in 2009.
But the question is, who would trust Celsius, sorry Kelvin, as custodian of your digital assets?
We’ve seen what happens when users hold their digital assets on someone else’s platform when Celsius went bust the first time earlier this year.
Users are unlikely to get their money back for at least seven years, if the Mt. Gox bankruptcy is anything to go by.
“Not your keys, not crypto,” as the saying goes.
Besides, hardware wallets like Ledger Nano (this isn’t an advertisement for them) allow you to cold store as much crypto as you want without anyone having access to your accounts.
There are few details of what Mashinsky has planned for Kelvin, so he could be about to revolutionise the crypto custody market, but this reporter is doubtful.
CEL token pumps then dumps
In the past day, CEL token doubled in value, soaring over 100% to US$3 with a market cap of some US$720mln.
From around 8am this morning (British Standard Time), CEL started to dump hard, retreating to US$1.7 in less than three hours.
CEL token’s one-hour chart shows quick post-pump reversal – Source: FTX
Such dramatic short-term fluctuations are usually indicative of a ‘pump and dump’, whereby traders artificially inflate the value of a token before exiting their positions all at once, thus crashing the market.
This is most likely partially what happened.
The #CelShortSqueeze Twitter (NYSE:TWTR) campaign has been working hard to encourage CEL token upwards following the May crash.
But a short squeeze only works if traders hold onto their bags and evidently, not all CEL whales have the community spirit.
Though frankly anything above zilch is half a miracle for token affiliated with the disgraced Celsius Network
Did you know
According to Wikipedia, the Kelvin scale is an absolute thermodynamic temperature scale, meaning it uses absolute zero as its null (zero) point.
In other words, there you cannot go below zero on the Kelvin scale.
Maybe Celsius Network’s mistake all along was using the wrong temperature unit.
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