Alex Mashinsky, Celsius CEO on stage in Lisbon for Web Summit 2021
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Former Celsius CEO Alex Mashinsky was arrested Thursday on federal securities fraud charges, a source told CNBC as the bankrupt crypto exchange agreed to pay a $4.7 billion settlement with government regulators.
The exchange was also charged by the SEC and CFTC with scheming to defraud investors out of billions. The $4.7 billion settlement is one of the largest in the FTC’s history, close to the record $5 billion fine levied against Meta in 2019, and highlights what the FTC described as repeated deceptions by Celsius and Mashinsky.
Federal prosecutors also charged Mashinsky with securities, commodities, and wire fraud, as well as various securities manipulation and fraud charges. If convicted, Mashinsky and a co-defendant, Roni Cohen-Pavon, face decades in prison.
Mashinsky pleaded not guilty to the fraud charges in New York federal court.
“Mashinsky misrepresented, among other things, the safety of Celsius’s yield-generating activites, Celsius’s profitability, the long-term sustainability of Celsius’ high rewards rates, and the risks associated with depositing crypto assets with Celsius,” federal prosecutors said in a charging document.
The settlement, announced by the FTC, will not be paid until the company is able to return what remains of customer assets in bankruptcy proceedings.
The concurrent SEC proceedings are against Mashinsky and Celsius, and like the federal charges allege that Mashinsky misled investors and fraudulently manipulated the price of Celsius’ exchange token, CEL.
The SEC has alleged that Mashinsky and his company “misrepresented” the company’s “central business model and the risks to investors” by allegedly claiming Celsius did not engage in risky trading and paid most, but not all, of the company’s revenue over to investors.
“None of these claims,” the SEC alleged, were true. Celsius had allegedly experienced, for example, “hundreds of millions of dollars” worth of defaults on its institutional loans.
Both the charging documents from New York federal prosecutors and the SEC complaint also describe Celsius’ exchange token as a security. The definition of a security and the SEC’s oversight over crypto markets has been hotly contested by other crypto exchanges in recent months.
“Alex vehemently denies the allegations brought today,” Mashinsky’s counsel Jonathan Ohring told CNBC. “He looks forward to vigorously defending himself in court against these baseless charges.”
Earlier this year, New York prosecutors accused Mashinsky of orchestrating a $20 billion fraud against investors. CNBC previously reported on pervasive, yearslong issues that plagued the crypto exchange well before it filed for bankruptcy in 2022.
Chris Martin of Coldplay performs at the O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire on October 12, 2021 in London, England.
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Astronomer, the technology company that faced backlash after its CEO was allegedly caught in an affair at a Coldplay concert, said the CEO has resigned, the company announced Saturday.
“Andy Byron has tendered his resignation, and the Board of Directors has accepted,” the company said in a statement. “The Board will begin a search for our next Chief Executive as Cofounder and Chief Product Officer Pete DeJoy continues to serve as interim CEO.”
Byron was shown on a big screen at a Coldplay concert on Wednesday with his arms around the company’s chief people officer, Kristin Cabot. Byron, who is married with children, immediately hid when the couple was shown on screen. Lead singer Chris Martin said, “Either they’re having an affair or they’re just very shy.” A concert attendee’s video of the affair went viral.
In May, Astronomer announced a $93 million investment round led by Bain Ventures and other investors, including Salesforce Ventures.
Byron’s resignation comes after Astronomer said Friday that it had launched a “formal investigation” into the matter, and the CEO was placed on administrative leave.
“Before this week, we were known as a pioneer in the DataOps space, helping data teams power everything from modern analytics to production AI,” the company said in its Saturday statement. “Our leaders are expected to set the standard in both conduct and accountability, and recently, that standard was not met.”
Jensen Huang, co-founder and CEO of Nvidia Corp., speaks during a news conference in Taipei on May 21, 2025.
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Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang sold 75,000 shares on Friday, valued at about $12.94 million, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Friday’s sale is part of a plan adopted in March for Huang to sell up to 6 million shares of the leading artificial intelligence company. Earlier this week, Huang sold 225,000 shares of the chipmaker, totaling about $37 million, according to a separate SEC filing. The CEO began trading stock per the plan last month.
Surging demand for AI and the graphics processing units that power large language models has significantly boosted Huang’s net worth and pushed Nvidia’s market capitalization beyond $4 trillion, making it the world’s most valuable company.
Nvidia announced this week that it expects to resume sales of its H20 chips to China soon, following signals from the Trump administration that it would approve export licenses. Earlier this year, U.S. officials had stated that Nvidia would require special permission to ship the chips, which are specifically designed for the Chinese market.
“The U.S. government has assured NVIDIA that licenses will be granted, and NVIDIA hopes to start deliveries soon,” the company said in a statement on Tuesday. Huang said during a news conference on Wednesday in Beijing that he wants to sell chips more advanced than the H20 to China at some point.
Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal, Palantir Technologies, and Founders Fund, holds hundred dollar bills as he speaks during the Bitcoin 2022 Conference at Miami Beach Convention Center on April 7, 2022 in Miami, Florida.
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The Peter Thiel-backed cryptocurrency exchange Bullish filed for an IPO on Friday, the latest digital asset firm to head for the public market.
The company, led by CEO Tom Farley, a veteran of the finance industry and former president of the New York Stock Exchange, said it plans to trade on the NYSE under the ticker symbol “BLSH.”
A spinout of Block.one, Bullish started with an initial investment from backers including Thiel’s Founders Fund and Thiel Capital, along with Nomura, Mike Novogratz and others. Bullish acquired crypto news site CoinDesk in 2023.
“In the first quarter of 2025, Bullish exchange executed over $2.5 billion in average daily volume, ranking in the top five exchanges by spot volume for Bitcoin and Ether,” the company said on its website. The prospectus listed top competitors as Binance, Coinbase and Kraken.
The IPO filing says that as of March 31, the total trading volume since launch has exceeded $1.25 trillion.
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The filing is another significant step for the cryptocurrency industry, which has fought for years to convince institutions to embrace digital assets as legitimate investments.
It’s already been a big year on the market for crypto offerings, highlighted by stablecoin issuer Circle, which has jumped more than sevenfold since its IPO in June. Etoro, an online trading platform that includes services for crypto investors, debuted in May.
Novogratz‘s crypto firm Galaxy Digital started trading on the Nasdaq in May, moving its listing from the Toronto Stock Exchange. And in June, Gemini, the cryptocurrency exchange and custodian founded by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, confidentially filed for an IPO in the U.S.
Meanwhile, investors continue to flock to bitcoin. The digital currency is trading at over $117,000, up from about $94,000 at the start of the year.
President Donald Trump, on Friday, signed the GENIUS Act into law — a set of regulations that establish some initial consumer protections around stablecoins, which are tied to assets like the U.S. dollar with the intent of reducing price volatility associated with many cryptocurrencies.
In its filing with the SEC, Bullish says its mission is partly to “drive the adoption of stablecoins, digital assets, and blockchain technology.”
Crypto industry players, including Thiel, Elon Musk, and President Trump’s AI and Crypto czar David Sacks spent heavily to re-elect Trump and have pushed for legislation that legitimizes digital assets and exchanges.