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Alex Mashinsky is famously known as the CEO and Founder of Celsius Network, a cryptocurrency lending platform that unfortunately went bankrupt in 2022.
He is a serial entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and inventor. Other than being the CEO and Founder of Celsius Network, Mashinsky has been involved in eight successful venture-backed exits including Arbinet, the first Internet Exchange, and Voiceglo, the first VOIP company. He holds over 50 patents, and has been named a top global FinTech influencer by Bank Innovation.
Background
Alex Mashinsky was born in 1965 in Ukraine but his family left Ukraine for Israel as soon as they got permission to leave in the 1970s. In the 1980s he also served in the Israeli Army after which he made a strategic move to the USA in the 1980s.
He holds a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from Technion, the Israel Institute of Technology, and a Masters of Science in Computer Science from Columbia University. He also has an MBA from New York University’s Stern School of Business.
In the early 1990s, Alex Mashinsky founded a company named Voice Smart, the first company to provide computer-based VOIP phone services. After realizing its potential, he founded a marketplace of VOIP telephone services named Airbinet which went huge and made him good money.
In 2005 he sold Airbinet for a profit and used that money to start another company called GroundLink which allows users to book car services directly from their phones.
Seeing the potential in the telecommunication sector he founded another company named Q-Wireless which installs wireless cell phones and free Wifi service in New York Subway System. This company expanded and grew so much that by 2010 they installed WiFi service to 277 different subway stations only in New York City.
Alex Mashinsky & Celsius Network
As per his interest in trying out different tech fields he got involved in blockchain technology. In 2017, he founded a cryptocurrency lending company called Celsius Network which encouraged its users to withdraw their money from banks and deposit in Celsius Network in the form of cryptocurrency. In return, users were offered high interest of 18.6 percent. Celsius Network also allowed users to borrow money with their crypto assets as collateral. The platform attracted over $2 billion in deposits and had issued over $1 billion in loans.
He founded Celsius Network with the goal of providing users with access to financial services currently unavailable in the traditional banking system. The platform saw adoption from users all over the world, including those in developing countries who may not be able to access traditional banking services.
The platform was powered by blockchain technology, which allowed for secure, transparent, and reliable transactions. It also made it easier for people to access financial services without having to rely on traditional banks. All in all, Celsius Network was dedicated to making financial services accessible to everyone. The platform was designed to be user-friendly and secure, and to provide users with a safe and reliable way to access the financial services they need.
Alex Mashinksy, himself, was so against banks and their monopoly that he used to wear a shirt with ‘banks are not your friends’ printed on it at big events and occasions.
But at the start of 2022, things weren’t looking good for Celsius Network. Regulators started pressuring the company to stop giving interest-bearing accounts to investors that are not recognized. In May 2022, investors started withdrawing their investments from Celsius Network while the company went almost to bankruptcy. The company then announced that it is freezing all the withdrawals due to extreme conditions.
Due to unmanageable conditions, Celsius Network filed for bankruptcy as it wiped billions of dollars from the market.
Alex Mashinsky currently lives in New York City and was recently involved in controversy because of selling a shirt titled ‘Unbank Yourself’ after Celsius went bankrupt.