Mashinsky targets FTX and rewrites Celsius narrative

Beyond attacking the process that put him behind bars, Alex Mashinsky is now trying to recast Celsius’ collapse as an FTX‑driven hit job, even though he already confessed to manipulating CEL himself.

Beyond attacking the process that led to his conviction, Mashinsky is trying to recast the story of Celsius’ collapse by pinning much of the blame on FTX and its former chief executive Sam Bankman Fried.

In materials submitted to the court, he accuses Bankman Fried of attempting to “destroy Celsius” and claims that market manipulation of the CEL token was orchestrated out of FTX, not by Celsius insiders.

Those claims stand in direct tension with his own plea and the criminal record.

In December 2024, Mashinsky pleaded guilty in the Southern District of New York to one count of commodities fraud and one count of securities fraud, admitting that he “illicitly manipulated the price of CEL, Celsius’s proprietary crypto token, while he was secretly selling his own CEL token at artificially inflated prices.”

By May 2025, Judge John G. Koeltl sentenced him to 12 years in prison, three years of supervised release and forfeiture of more than $48 million in criminal proceeds, one of the stiffest penalties to emerge from the 2022 crypto lending implosions.

According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Mashinsky misled customers between 2018 and 2022 by portraying Celsius as a safe “bank of the crypto industry” while putting user funds into risky, largely undisclosed strategies and simultaneously pumping CEL.

That conduct ultimately left users unable to access around $4.7 billion in deposits when Celsius froze withdrawals and collapsed, a shortfall later reflected in a $4.72 billion judgment the Federal Trade Commission obtained against Mashinsky personally.

In April 2026, a federal court approved an FTC order permanently banning him from crypto and broader financial services and imposing a $4.72 billion monetary judgment, with only $10 million actually payable so long as it is satisfied through his existing Department of Justice forfeiture obligations.

Cohen Pavon walks with time served as cooperation pays

Mashinsky’s motion also leans on his fractured relationship with former Celsius Chief Revenue Officer Roni Cohen Pavon, whom he now accuses of attempting a “hostile takeover” of the company.

He has gone as far as to publicly release text messages with Cohen Pavon to bolster that narrative, even though the former executive turned government cooperator and was a key witness against him.

Cohen Pavon, who in 2023 was indicted alongside Mashinsky on conspiracy, securities fraud, market manipulation and wire fraud charges tied to CEL price manipulation, ultimately pleaded guilty and cooperated with prosecutors.

Nearly three years after his arrest, a federal judge in the Southern District of New York sentenced him to time served plus one year of supervised release, ordering him to pay over $1 million and a $40,000 fine – a strikingly lighter outcome than his former boss’s 12 year term and $48 million forfeiture.

The split screen is stark: the man who fronted Celsius on YouTube and in interviews promising safety and “unbanking yourself” is now attacking his own lawyers, his former lieutenants and a rival exchange as he tries to unwind a sentence grounded in his admitted manipulation of CEL and misrepresentations to hundreds of thousands of depositors.

What remains unclear is whether any judge will give credence to his new FTX centric theory of the case, or whether Mashinsky’s latest move will simply be remembered as a last ditch bid by a once celebrated crypto lender to claw back a narrative already cemented in guilty pleas, regulatory bans and billions in documented user losses.