A lot has changed at Celsius Network. It was only in May 2022 that Jason Tucker-Feltham left his job as Head of UK Compliance Advisory at Unicredit in London and moved to a front office position as Head of European Sales at Celsius. In that regard, Tucker-Feltham said he would work for a company that “enables its customers to find financial freedom.”
For a few weeks this seems to be true. Celsius facilitated yield farming and allowed its customers to lend its $CEL tokens as collateral for other crypto initiatives. They were able to achieve returns of up to 18%. It was like a bank with interest rates charged. Users could deposit their Bitcoin, Ethereum or Tether and receive huge weekly interest payments.
As of today, however, Celsius customers are not quite so lucky. “You are bastards! Pause all withdrawals in your own interest? I knew I should never have opened an account with you guys,” said one customer on Twitter, who may not have felt as empowered as expected. “You issued a margin call on one of my loans. I want to close the loan because I can’t pay the margin you’re asking for. You took custody of the money you lent me. Please let me know,” says another.
Celsius Network has a few issues. This morning, the London-based company issued a “memo to its community” saying it is “pausing all withdrawals, swaps and inter-account transfers” to “put Celsius in a better position to complete its withdrawal in 2020.” As a result, $CEL has fallen 50% and there is speculation of solvency issues.
It’s all a bit of a nightmare when you’ve just jumped from compliance at a bank to a sales job at crypto, or — shall we say — if you’ve just left your job as CEO at Citi to do something more exciting instead.
Aslihan Denizkurdu falls into the latter category. Until four months ago, Denizkurdu was Managing Director, COO and Head of Risk Governance at Citi in New York, where she worked for 10 years before joining Celsius as COO in January. In her new role, Denizhurdu said, her focus would be to “position Celsius as a trusted and reliable service provider to its customers, while continuously strengthening Celsius’s infrastructure and governance and management practices.” That suddenly sounds like a big request.
Denizhurdu and Tucker-Feltham aren’t the only ex-bankers to be found at Celsius. Chad Walls, a former precious metals trader at Credit Agricole, is in business development. Amir Ayalon, a past M&A VP at UBS, is Head of Corporate Development.
Some ex-bankers who came to Celsius Network didn’t stay long. In January 2022, Celsius proudly announced the arrival of Frank van Etten, a former UBS chief executive, as Chief Investment Officer. Van Etten appears to have left again a month later.
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