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Celsius’s 18% Yields on Crypto Are Tempting—and Drawing Scrutiny

Alex Mashinsky’s company promises big rewards if you let it hold your crypto. Regulators are trying to make sure it’s playing by the rules.

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Illustration: Joel Plosz for Bloomberg Businessweek
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Every Friday, Alex Mashinsky sits in front of a video camera and livestreams for more than an hour with a sales pitch for his crypto company, Celsius Network LLC. Send money to Celsius, he says, and he’ll make you rich by paying you interest of as much as 18% a year.

“The beauty of what Celsius managed to do is that we deliver yield, we pay it to the people who would never be able to do it themselves, we take it from the rich, and we beat the index,” Mashinsky said during one stream in December. “That’s like going to the Olympics and getting 15 medals in 15 different fields.”