On a corporate Slack channel, one Celsius executive had joked that his job title should have been “Ponzi Consultant.” Another executive explained the company’s problematic business model. “Pay unsustainable yields so you can grow [assets under management], forcing you to take on more risk, experience losses bc of those risks + bad controls / judgment and you are where you are,” he wrote on June 9. (Mashinsky and his lawyers have called allegations of fraud “baseless.” They said Celsius was undone by “a series of calamitous, external events.”)
