Cryptocurrency lender Celsius CEO believes that CEL will not fulfill the fate of XRP.
In an interview on December 31, Alex Mashinsky attributed a recent increase in the CEL price to the token’s registration with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Mashinsky said this would protect CEL – the Celsius lending platform’s native token – from getting embroiled in an SEC lawsuit like the one the securities regulator filed against Ripple for its XRP token.
“We have not found that CEL token is a security,” Mashinsky said in an interview with CoinDesk TV last Friday. “What we said is that because we are not sure what it is and it is not clear because the rules are not clear, we will submit it as if it were a security.”
“The mass adoption of over 300,000 users worldwide is the driver,” said Mashinsky of CEL’s price campaign. “Half of our community … would like to receive interest on CEL tokens.”
When users get rewards in CEL, they can get better interest rates for earning and borrowing in the app.
In May 2018, Celsius raised $ 50 million in crypto as part of CEL’s first coin offering (ICO). (The financial statements filed with the UK registrar Companies House in May 2020 show only $ 25 million in proceeds from the sale. Celsius told CoinDesk that the crypto had not switched to fiat in the same month it was collected. )
“On the institutional side, we have 350 customers,” said Mashinsky. “Due to the credit rating, we will require some of them to give us a 200% security. … There are one or two institutes or two with billions of dollars in balance sheets that we need less than 100%, so they may give us 75%. If you take our $ 6 billion book, less than 1% of that is unsecured loans. ”
Mashinsky also announced that Celsius is considering participating in crypto lender Cred’s bankruptcy auction, but said Celsius has not yet made a decision on the company.
“Just like the mountain. Gox, any event like this is a withdrawal of confidence from the crypto community, ”Mashinsky said.
