decrypt.co
“Holy moly,” wrote one user.
A new tool now lets anyone see just how much money some users have lost after the troubled crypto lender filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in July.
It’s easy to check whether someone has made it onto the questionable “leaderboard” of biggest losers from the Celsius debacle, by simply typing their name into the convenient search bar.
Oof. I expect plenty of revelations to come as folks sift through the Celsius court documents.https://t.co/JarFzXuKOl
— Jameson Lopp (@lopp) October 9, 2022
Only those who’ve lost more than $12 million have made it into the top ten.
The tool presumably relies on the customer data revealed by Celsius in a court filing last week. The document showed customer names, crypto wallet IDs, transaction types and amounts, and the types and quantities of tokens held, among other information.
Wow. Someone made a searchable website showing real identities and crypto holdings lost in the Celsius collapse.
What a perfectly horrendous illustration of the risks of KYC.https://t.co/2t5abosTyW
— Stephen Cole (@sthenc) October 9, 2022
Celsius has faced significant backlash following the move. Nick Hansen, CEO of Bitcoin miner Luxor, tweeted: “This Celsius leak may go down as one of the greatest breaches of customer information ever.”
Henry de Valence, the founder of Web3 startup Penumbra Labs, added that “anyone can now dox all the on-chain activity and addresses of any named celsius user” by matching dates and amounts to transaction data.
Celsius has yet to explain why it revealed this level of information or whether it was required by the court.
Crypto lender Celsius collapses
Celsius fell into Chapter 11 bankruptcy in July, following a $1.2 billion hole in its balance sheet. FTX founder and CEO Sam Bankman-Fried has been touted as the likely buyer of the crypto lender’s assets.
It also appears that Celsius’ executives made out just fine from the company’s crash. Before freezing user accounts and filing for bankruptcy, CEO Alex Mashinsky reportedly withdrew $10 million from the company. He later said $8 million of it was needed to pay for his state and federal taxes.
Chief strategy officer and co-founder Daniel Leon, meanwhile, withdrew $7 million from the platform before its shutdown, according to the latest court filing.