20 Years Imprisonment Requested for Altcoin Founder Causing 7 Billion Dollar Loss! Price is Reacting in Reverse!

The crypto winter was challenging for both the crypto sector and investors. At that time, many companies went bankrupt one after the other, including the crypto lending platform Celsius, which went bankrupt in 2022.

The founder and former CEO of Celsius, Alex Mashinsky, who was the subject of an investigation in Cyprus, confessed to being guilty in Celsius in December 2024.

Now he is potentially facing 20 years in prison.

According to a report by Coindesk, a 20-year prison sentence has been requested for Alex Mashinsky on the grounds that he organized a fraud that led to a loss of approximately 7 billion dollars for customers.

US prosecutors found Mashinsky guilty of deliberately misleading customers about the safety of their deposits by manipulating the CEL token for personal gain and requested the court to impose a 20-year prison sentence.

"Celsius took unsecured loans, engaged in risky transactions, and secretly manipulated the price of the CEL token by using customer assets; all while publicly assuring its customers that their funds were safe."

Therefore, the Court should sentence Alexander Mashinsky to twenty years in prison as a fair punishment for his years-long campaign of lies and self-interest that led to billions of dollars in losses and thousands of victimized customers.

They also added that despite Mashinsky saying to the customers that he was "HODLing" with them, he personally sold $48 million worth of CEL at inflated prices instead.

Despite a large penalty being sought against the founder, surprisingly, the price of CEL has risen by over 80% and is currently trading at $0.15. Still, the token is far from its former glorious days. CEL's all-time high was $8.02 on June 4, 2021, which means it has fallen by more than 98% from that level.