Celsius is one of the largest centralized gateways to crypto.
It raised $864m of venture capital and at one point custodied over $3 billion of funds for 1m+ customers.
As of today, it appears insolvent, and it's taking the whole crypto market with it.
The Celsius Thread:
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For starters, Celsius is a do-it-all fintech app meant to give consumers easy, trusted access to crypto services:
- Trading
- High-yield deposits on stablecoins and cryptocurrency
- Crypto-backed lending
In essence, it's a custodial asset manager.
Take the traditional world of ETFs.
Vanguard and Fidelity wrap a basket of stocks into a retail-facing ETF and take a fee for rendering the service to investors.
Celsius is kind of like Vanguard but for decentralized finance opportunities.
It provides regulated access to loans and yield, and takes a fee for doing so.
All without exposing users to the purported inconveniences and risks of self-custodied crypto.
Like an ETF provider, Celsius doesn't offer direct exposure to the underlying positions.
They promise withdrawals and redemptions in case users want to exit their positions, but Celsius ultimately manages the positions on investors' behalf.
But for all of its traditional finance bona fides, Celsius positions itself as a crypto-native product.
For starters it has:
- a "whitepaper" (essentially its website in PDF form); and
- the $CEL token (which offers loyalty rewards and discounts on using Celsius services)
$CEL for its part hasn't performed, uhm, exceptionally well under these conditions.
But even worse than the pseudo-crypto vibe is Celsius' dangerous use of meaningless platitudes and strident anti-bank rhetoric:
- Banking is Broken
- Unbank Yourself
- Replacing Wall Street with Blockchain
- 99% vs. 1%
All taken from their website and whitepaper.
Worst of all is the in-your-face focus on safety, security, transparency, and most of all, trust:
- "military grade security"
- "withdraw your crypto at any time"
- "keep your crypto safe"
- "next-level transparency"
- "why trust Celsius"
All from their own marketing copy.
And therein lies the problem:
1) the promise of sky-high yields
combined with
2) a veneer of legitimacy (regulated onramp, premium access for accredited investors, regulator logos)
Cleared the way for Celsius to pursue truly degenerate trading strategies with investor funds.
There are two Extremely Bad behaviors Celsius undertook that have combined to put it--and its millions of retail investors--in a bind.
1) Use of on-chain leverage 2) stETH
Let's take each in turn.
On-chain leverage.
In order to provide low-rate borrowing for users, Celsius itself accesses leverage through permissionless on-chain money markets like @MakerDAO.
That means taking user deposits in assets like $WBTC and depositing them to borrow $DAI.
$ETH staking on Ethereum's proof-of-stake beacon chain offers ~4.2%, and $ETH yields on @iearnfinance are a paltry 0.20%.
So what gives? How did they offer ~8%?
@MakerDAO@iearnfinance It turns out the absolute mad lads at Celsius were using an $ETH derivative called $stETH to pump up their headline $ETH yield and attract more investors.
1) Celsius opened a bunch of loans 2) They took user deposits and traded them for $stETH 3) They now owe a lot of money and don't have the reserves to pay them back
Rumors are hedge fund Alameda Research is buying distressed assets, and even Celsius's competitors--in a public show of disrespect--are making the offer:
@MakerDAO@iearnfinance@LidoFinance@CurveFinance CEO Alex Mashinsky for his part has been on a road show propping up confidence in Celsius and its liquidity reserves, claiming safety til the very end.
Despite being used by Balaji, Vitalik, and Jesse, @anoncast_ is probably the most under-appreciated project in all of crypto right now.
Anon is lighting the path for @base szn, @farcaster_xyz supremacy, and on-chain privacy with @NoirLang--launched with @clankeronbase.
A guide to Anon, its lore, and how on-chain privacy is now reality:
There's @anoncast_ and there's $ANON:
$ANON is a coin itself launched anonymously with Clanker, serving as the canonical coin of @anoncast_, a private messaging project similar to @coinfessions.
Coinfessions is run (presumably manually) by a trusted editor, through a trusted interface (Google surveys).
Anoncast, on the other hand, is totally trustless.
Built by @Slokh in a weekend with @aztecnetwork's open-source ZK language @NoirLang--Anoncast is arguably the first mainstream on-chain private social application.
Making an announcement soon? Don't hire a PR agency.
Definitely not through Series A, and maybe not ever.
You can execute PR internally with a junior resource without having to pay a $50K / month retainer.
Here are the basics in <5 minutes (bookmark this):
First, I take it when we're talking about public relations, we mean just the part that means "relationships with journalists" and not marketing or social media or "comms."
So to understand PR, you have to understand journalism and what makes something newsworthy.
Journalists are typically underpaid and overworked.
They enter the business for noble reasons (truth seeking, justice, accountability) but are constantly pushed to act against those ideals in order to drive ratings and views.
Hearing from a few teams who are scrambling to get a marketing strategy in place before we go parabolic.
You're fine. If you're struggling with narrative and positioning here's what to do in the next 30 days.
Plus 1 thing you absolutely should NOT do:
1) Founders: start tweeting every single weekday.
Four single posts, one long post.
No excuses. Drop whatever it is you're doing, stare at the screen, get it done. Marketing leaders: literally sit next to your CEO and encourage them.
Pat them on the head. Give them treats.
An A++ personal feed should look varied, with some mix of:
- explainers
- insights / "takes"
- shilling your project
- media (video, pictures)
- retweets of your partners & ecosystem
If you are just doing 1 content vertical, challenge yourself to vary it up. Do one type a day.