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The Breakdown

Independent Examiner Excoriates Celsius as a Ponzi

The Breakdown

Blockworks

Investing, Business

4.8786 Ratings

🗓️ 1 February 2023

⏱️ 15 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

On today’s episode, NLW breaks down the newly filed report from the Celsius Network bankruptcy court’s independent examiner. The extremely thorough document argues that not only was Celsius engaged in extremely problematic practices, but that numerous employees raised concerns around them. The show also covers the debate around an independent examiner in the FTX case.   - Join the most important conversation in crypto and Web3 at Consensus 2023, happening April 26–28 in Austin, Texas. Come and immerse yourself in all that Web3, crypto, blockchain and the metaverse have to offer. Use code BREAKDOWN to get 15% off your pass. Visit consensus.coindesk.com. - “The Breakdown” is written, produced by and features Nathaniel Whittemore aka NLW, with editing by Rob Mitchell and research by Scott Hill. Jared Schwartz is our executive producer and our theme music is “Countdown” by Neon Beach. Music behind our sponsor today is “Swoon” by Falls. Image credit: Malte Mueller/Getty Images, modified by CoinDesk. Join the discussion at discord.gg/VrKRrfKCz8.

Transcript

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0:00.0

Welcome back to The Breakdown with me, NLW.

0:09.4

It's a daily podcast on macro, Bitcoin, and the big picture power shifts remaking our world.

0:15.3

The breakdown is produced and distributed by CoinDesk.

0:20.5

What's going on, guys? It is Tuesday, January 31st, and today we are talking about the new

0:25.5

Independent Examiner Report coming out around the Celsius bankruptcy. Before we dive into that,

0:31.1

however, if you are enjoying the breakdown, please go subscribe to it, give it a rating,

0:34.6

give it a review, or if you want to dive deeper into the conversation, come join us on the Breakers Discord. You can find a link in the show notes or go to

0:40.9

bit.ly.L.Y slash breakdown pod. All righty, and a quick note before we dive into today's topic,

0:48.8

I'm sure at this point you have heard about ordinals, which is the quote-unquote controversy of

0:53.5

NFTs coming to Bitcoin, or

0:55.3

perhaps re-entering Bitcoin is a better way to put it. I think that the Ordinals conversation

1:00.3

is absolutely fascinating. There is a technical dimension of it in terms of what changes to

1:05.9

Bitcoin over the last few years have enabled it. There is a huge Bitcoin cultural dimension to it in terms of how

1:12.2

different parts of the community are reacting. There is a censorship debate issue. There's a long-term

1:17.3

security debate issue. So all of this is to say that this show is definitely coming, but there's

1:22.7

so much that I wanted to parse through that I decided I wanted to hold off for at least one more day.

1:28.4

Now, in the meantime, the independent examiner in the Celsius bankruptcy just dropped some

1:32.9

absolute bombs in a filing first thing this morning, so that's where we're going to start.

1:37.6

The report is 476 pages long and comes from Chobo Palae, the examiner who was appointed to be a completely

1:45.6

independent voice. To read the reporting around it, the banner headline is that it effectively

1:50.3

accuses Celsius of having been a Ponzi, using new customer deposits to pay for old customer

1:55.1

withdrawals. People are just starting to dissect it, and I'm drawing from a number of those

...

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