Celsius CEO Alex Mashinsky sat down live at Miami’s Bitcoin 2021 Conference with Yahoo! Finance for a brief discussion on Celsius, Elon, and more. With a quick question out of the gate around Elon’s latest Twitter chatter, Mashinsky didn’t hesitate to share his opinion.
‘The Crypto Tourist’
“Elon is a tourist in crypto”, Mashinsky stated, adding that “he’s here to collect followers. I don’t think he’s here to make the world a better place, and we can go to where we’re going with Elon or without Elon”.
Bitcoin fell over 5% following Musk’s “break-up” tweet earlier in the day. The tweet follows a ‘bearish behavior’ around bitcoin from the Tesla CEO. Nearly a month ago, Musk cited the use of coal as a major concern leading to his decision to pull the plug on allowing bitcoin as a method of payment for Tesla customers. A number of crypto advocates have grown weary of Musk’s sentiment, with some suggesting that Musk’s intent could be market manipulation.
Mashinsky wasn’t the only crypto advocate sharing this sentiment, either; notorious bitcoin bull Anthony ‘Pomp’ Pompliano said at the conference that “Elon continues to tweet, the price of bitcoin continues to stay lower than it probably should, which gives all of the plebs the opportunity to buy up cheap bitcoin”.
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Celsius’ Buzz
Celsius is fresh off of news of surpassing $17B in assets stored on the platform, as well as hitting a new company-high in BTC holdings. The company also recently passed 800,000 retail users. In the interview, Mashinsky cited that banks’ lack of interest rate aggressiveness have been a major factor in Celsius’ success. “You can 9% almost 100 times more than what J.P. Morgan pays you”, Mashinsky said, referencing many stablecoin APYs that are seen in yield-generating markets today. “Celsius is a HODLer’s community”, Mashinsky added.
Celsius has collected over $700M in loan-generated interest from institutions, with roughly 80% being distributed in yield to retail consumers – “that is the real Robinhood”, Mashinsky said.
Elon Musk's tweets have been a source of speculation around bitcoin's recent pullbacks. | Source: BTC-USD on TradingView.com
“The Future Of Finance”
DeFi continues to shake up the scene. When asked about Celsius’ competition, Mashinsky said that the competitive advantage relative to BlockFi and other yield-generating firms came down to being the lone company that has five sources of yield. Part of that yield-generating machine is a $200M investment in mining, powered by green energy, according to a recent news release.
While institutions continue to get involved, retail growth likely looks to continue on to the DeFi scene as well – showing a bright future ahead for Celsius and for the broader yield-generating platforms on the scene.
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