A former Celsius Network employee is taking the embattled crypto lender to court. 👀
The lawsuit accuses the company of leveraging deposits from customers to "manipulate cryptoasset markets" — and further putting funds at risk by failing to introduce "basic accounting controls."
It's alleged that Celsius had no "unified, organized or overarching investment strategy for these deposits" — and "they were desperately seeking a potential investment that could earn them more than they owed to depositors.""Otherwise, they would have to use additional deposits to pay the interest owed on prior deposits, a classic 'Ponzi scheme.'"
"The parties' relationship began to break down when Stone discovered that not only did Defendants lack basic security controls to protect the billions of dollars in customers' funds they held, but that they were actively using customer funds to manipulate cryptoasset markets to their benefit. The most egregious example of this was Plaintiff's discovery that Celsius used customer Bitcoin deposits to inflate its own cryptoasset called the Celsius token.
Although Stone attempted to terminate the business relationship in March 2021, he claims that Celsius "repeatedly refused" to acknowledge the resignation — and refused to pay him a share of the profits he was entitled to.