Disgraced former Celsius Network CEO Alex Mashinsky arrested; Tampa Bay-based CTO presumably still running free

It’s the top story on Techmeme right now: Celsius Network’s disgraced former CEO Alex Mashinsky has been arrested and charged with seven criminal counts including securities, commodities, and wire fraud. If convicted, Mashinsky could spend decades in prison. And as a former customer, I say: good.

Celsius, if you’re not familiar with it, was a cryptocurrency exchange that purported to operate like a bank, but better — starting with 1980s-style interest rates on crypto that you stored with them — until their business, which proved to be a Ponzi scheme, collapsed in 2022.

In June 2022, they filed for bankruptcy, but not before pausing withdrawals after its C-level people made big withdrawals themselves. It had been facing federal investigations, and during this process, they leaked half a million users’ holdings info via a data dump of its customers and their holdings.

The Tampa Bay connection

There’s a Tampa Bay connection in the Celsius scandal: co-founder and former CTO Nuke Goldstein, who moved here in 2021 amid a lot of fanfare from local press including these two funny/sad-in-retrospect pieces from Tampa Bay Business Journal:

• Exclusive: The co-founder of a crypto industry giant just moved to Tampa — and wants to open its next office here
• 25 People to Watch in 2022: Nuke Goldstein

And let’s not forget how much love Celsius got at the 2021 edition of the Florida Bitcoin and Blockchain Summit, which featured a sold-out party where you could hang out with Goldstein. For more, see my article, If you’re going to Florida Bitcoin and Blockchain Summit 2022, YOU’RE AN IDIOT.

Goldstein’s name hasn’t appeared in any news items about Mashinsky’s arrest, but the smart play for him would be to distance himself from Celsius as much as possible. And he’s taking an approach used by many other shady crypto/Web3 carpetbaggers…

If you look at Goldstein’s Twitter feed, it’s all AI now. In fact, his insterest in AI is such that he joined a meetup I organize:

That’s right — he signed up. As organizer, I see who joined, and when.

I thought about revoking his membership, but you know what would be more entertaining? If he actually showed up to a meetup, just so we could have a little impromptu Q&A session.