Consumer complaint received 2022-08-16
Company: Celsius US Holding LLC
State: CA
Product: Money transfer, virtual currency, or money service
Sub-product: Virtual currency
Issue: Fraud or scam

Complaint:
Celsius Network, a XXXX company, has taken my money and now refuses to give it back. In total they took a bit more than {$200000.00} from me, as valued at the points when I deposited my assets with them. 

On XX/XX/XXXX, Celsius Network stated on their official blog that " Celsius has the reserves... to meet obligations, as dictated by our comprehensive liquidity risk management framework. '' But only XXXX days later on XX/XX/XXXX, Celsius froze all user funds and declared bankruptcy thereafter, with a giant hole in their balance sheet. 

https : XXXX Over the years, Celsius and their XXXX XXXX XXXX have made many fraudulent claims relating to the nature of their business. Here are some of his fraudulent claims : * XXXX XXXX, XX/XX/XXXX : " Celsius does not do non-collateralized loans. Celsius will not do that because that would be taking too much risk on your behalf. '' * XXXX XXXX, XXXX XXXX, XXXX : " A run on the bank can not happen at Celsius because Celsius never lends more than what it has. Right. We can not do - legally, we're not allowed to create money or do fractional reserve. So at any moment, we always have enough coins and enough collateral and so on to return all the assets to all of our users. And every day we have a process, the daily reconciliaton process, where our team, like XXXX or XXXX people, get on a call and grind through all the tokens and all the coins and make sure that we have more coins than what we owe the community. That's our process... '' * XXXX XXXX, XX/XX/XXXX : " Celsius takes full responsibility. If anything goes bad, we take full responsibility... what's important for you to know is okay, at least if something goes wrong, are these people going to stand behind, or are they going to say sorry, I don't cover it, it's your loss, sorry, goodbye, you know, take it or leave it, and so on... Celsius was tested, every year we were tested several times. Sometimes the market dropped XXXX XXXX. Celsius did good, yep, Celsius did good. '' * XXXX XXXX, XXXX XXXX, XXXX : " Many people use this just as a safe place to store coins... gosh really, you know, the safest place for me to store my coins is on Celsius. '' * XXXX XXXX, XX/XX/XXXX : " We are what's called a XXXX strategy, we're not, Celsius does not bet on the market going up or down. Our job is just to take advantage of different prices for example, between future and spot ... '' * XXXX, XX/XX/XXXX : " The number XXXX question from people is are our funds safe in Celsius. Can you address that for the audience? '' XXXX XXXX : " Yes. So, not just that they're safe. Again, we provided anyone who wanted to withdraw partially or fully, there were no problems. '' * XXXX XXXX, XX/XX/XXXX : " We've seen that before, every drawdown is kind of the same thing. And when the markets come down everyone comes running back. Celsius has billions in liquidity, right, and we provide immediate access to everybody, anyone who needs access to it, to the liquidity, and that includes institutions, and that includes people who want to, you know, get their coins back, that includes people who are taking loans. '' XXXX XXXX XXXX directly assured me and other community members that our money would be safe and that Celsius was solvent. In retrospect, my money was handled unprofessionally with no real risk management, and Celsius appears to have been operating insolvent for quite some time. Celsius has lost a good portion of my money and refused to return the rest.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation