Celsius Network Weekly AMA– November 20, 2020
With Alex Mashinsky and Zach Wildes, Community Manager
This week’s AMA begins with some updates from Alex, followed by community questions. As always, the timestamp from YouTube is hyperlinked to each question below.
Summary: Alex starts off with the news that this week, Celsius is paying out $2.2 million in interest payments—another all-time record. COMP is now live in the app, earning up to 7.5%, and DOT should be added in the next week or so, pending final testing. Alex also revealed that he holds over $100 million in assets in the Celsius wallet—again, showing that when he does what’s in the best interest of the community, he’s also doing what’s good for himself (and keeping interests aligned)! Additionally, earning in CEL is coming very soon to accredited investors in the US.
Alex also announced that Celsius had hired a third-party firm to conduct an audit of Celsius’ AUM and total assets, and would be publishing the results of this audit sometime in the next few weeks. Additionally, Alex also mentioned some exciting features coming to the next version of the Celsius app in January—namely in-app swaps (which will be peer-to-peer, hopefully making compliance less of an issue), Proof of Community, and more options to purchase in the app. Regarding exchanges, Alex explained that Celsius was happy with Uniswap, because their values align with Celsius, but also hinted at the future possibility of discounted purchases from within the Celsius app.
Finally, there were several exciting announcements about the OTC desk. First, Celsius has extended the 5% discount program, meaning that buyers of $25k or more at the OTC desk can get up to a 5% discount on their CEL token purchases. The OTC desk will also now be accepting USDT, BTC, or ETH for purchases, whereas previously only USDC or wire transfers were accepted. And finally, Alex announced an interesting new program. Users can deposit up to $100,000 in USDC or USDT, earn ~4% on it, but receive the full value back in CEL token as collateral. Celsius hopes that the reduced risk of a fully collateralized deposit might help uncertain users feel more secure and make the decision to deposit.
And if you’d like to earn interest on your crypto, gold, and stablecoins with Celsius, scroll to the end for instructions on how to get $20 in BTC when you sign up.
Celsius Updates
- $2.2 million in interest payments. This has been another great week for Celsius, with more users and deposits, as well as the highest weekly interest payments yet. Celsius continues to buy back CEL token every week, and has paid out close to $100 million total in interest payments.
- COMP is live in the wallet. Deposit today and start earning up to 7.5%.
- Audits coming soon. Celsius will be publishing audits of AUM and total holdings within the next few weeks. These audits were conducted by an external firm.
- Mr. $100 million. Alex currently holds $100 million in assets in the Celsius wallet. His assets are sitting in the same pool as ours, which further supports aligning incentives of protecting Celsius’ AUM. The best thing Celsius can do to protect assets in case of an exploit is not to have insurance on cold storage (which doesn’t produce yield) but to instead have a large balance sheet that could cover such a loss.
- Earn in CEL coming to the US. This is still coming soon, but for now will only open to accredited investors. However, the definition of who can be an accredited investor has changed recently, so it’s worth checking to see if you qualify.
- Celsius works for you and is not neutral. Whether it’s a centralized (Coinbase, Binance) or decentralized exchange or protocol (Uniswap, Aave, Compound), something these services all have in common is that they are neutral regarding buyers/sellers or borrowers/lenders. This means that neither group gets special treatment vs the other. However, Celsius is always trying to extract more money from institutional borrowers to pay out to depositors, and thus is always working in your best interest.
- Why do you have your job? So many people don’t like the job they have, but it’s their best option to make money. If you had a million dollars in the bank, what would be your perfect job? To make it to the point where you have enough money to do what you love, the easiest way to get there is by making your money work for you. Instead of borrowing from the future (credit cards) to buy fancy things, invest in your future and grow your wealth by taking advantage of compounding interest.
- One way to take advantage of inflation. There’s only one way to take advantage of the US Federal Reserve printing at such high levels over the past year. Most of this money has gone to the stock market, so how can the average person benefit from it? If you can refinance your mortgage to lower the rate, you are essentially borrowing from the bank and paying them back in the future with dollars that are worth less. This is a big reason why banks will need to be bailed out—they’re lending money against real estate that will increase in value, while the dollars they get back will decrease in value.
- Deposit stablecoins, receive CEL as collateral. This is a new idea that we have—if you’re on the fence about using Celsius, we’ll allow you to deposit stablecoins with us (USDC or USDT), and we’ll give you a lower interest rate (~4%) but also give you a matching amount of CEL token as collateral to hold, and will adjust this amount over time based on price fluctuations of CEL. This will be run through the OTC desk, with a maximum deposit size of $100,000. So if you’d like to try this out, email otc@celsius.network. OTC purchases still get up to 5% off purchases, and we’re also adding the ability to buy at the OTC desk with USDT, BTC, or ETH in addition to already existing options of USDC or wire transfers.
Community Questions
Q: What do you say to the people who argue to not put all of your eggs in one basket?
Alex: I think it’s a great argument, you should never put all of your eggs in one basket. You shouldn’t keep all of your assets in Celsius, or in the stock market, or in one bank. I have about 60% of my assets in stocks—but these are all digital economy stocks like Netflix, Zoom, Amazon, etc. 20% in gold or gold-like assets, and 20% in digital assets. That’s what I do, but you need to make your own decisions for yourself. I also don’t count my CEL token in those values—since I consider that completely separate.
Q: Where is Celsius’ headquarters?
Alex: We are incorporated in the UK, and so we are governed by their laws. However, we have offices in New York, London, and Tel Aviv, with remote workers all around the world.
Q: How much is the company worth? Is Celsius a unicorn?
Alex: It’s my third unicorn—Arbinet, Transit Wireless, and Celsius. And this one is definitely my fastest one. I don’t think there are too many people in the world who have founded three unicorns—I bet less than 20.
Q: Any plans to translate the app into other languages?
Alex: We need to hire our next 50 employees first. Right now, we’re just swamped—we have a new version of the app coming out that’s adding in-app swap, we’re adding purchasing in the app, Proof of Community—and that’s coming in January.
Q: Lots of people missed the DNS promo code—could you reactivate it?
Alex: We can’t do that, but we will be coming out with lots more specials and promos in the future—just make sure to tune into the AMAs so you don’t miss out!
Q: Any comments on the Liquid.com situation?
Alex: I don’t know the details of what happened with Liquid—I don’t even know the details of what happened with GoDaddy; we’re still waiting for them to give us their report. We’re back to normal, and reset everything for security reasons, but we don’t know what exactly happened to GoDaddy. When we have the information, we’ll hopefully be able to share it with the public.
Q: When will the Australian dollar be accepted in Celsius?
Alex: We’re waiting for that license to be issued—it’s being very slow, but as soon as that license is issued we will be allowed to directly accept AUD from our customers. Right now you have to use stablecoins, but soon we should be able to accept Australian Dollars.
Q: Celsius has had some coins labeled as “coming soon” for a while—why are they taking so long?
Alex: Sometimes it’s a security issue, sometimes it’s an issue with our custodians—sometimes our custodians tell us they’re going to add support and then they take forever to do it. We are beholden to the companies that provide the infrastructure to us. For instance, I would love to add BNB, but there are some issues with the infrastructure. However, if it’s on the list, that means we’re still working to add it.
Q: Will Celsius be able to post a list of self-directed IRA vendors?
Alex: Yeah, I definitely want to add that to the site. Also, it would be great if the community could recommend vendors who they’ve had a good experience with. Send us your recommendations and we’ll aggregate and post them.
Q: When will CEL be added to a new exchange?
Alex: Exchanges only care about trading volume (fees)—they’re not adding tokens because they’re good projects. For Celsius, being on Uniswap is much better for the community. Some exchanges have offered us revenue sharing, but that wouldn’t be in the best interest of our community. The beauty of Uniswap is that the fee goes directly to LPs who are holding ETH and CEL when you’re trading. We think that’s a much better arrangement than listing on another centralized exchange.
Q: Is there a chance that Celsius will offer discounts for buying assets in-app?
Alex: Yeah, that’s something that we’re thinking about. We can’t spill all of the beans in one AMA, so you’ll have to tune in again to find out about things like that.
Q: Any updates on the Polkadot listing?
Alex: Yeah, that’s coming along well. We just have a little more testing to do, so that will either go live next week or the week after.
Q: Are there any plans to burn CEL tokens?
Alex: We did burn CEL tokens during the ICO—we burned ~5 million CEL that weren’t bought. And just like with other tokens, our circulating supply is consistently going down from people who do things like lose their private keys or send CEL to the token contract address.
Q: How did you come up with the 700 million CEL supply?
Alex: I don’t think there was any special intent for the number, it’s just where we started with, and then we burned 5 million to end up with our maximum of 695 million CEL.
Q: Have you considered reaching out to YouTubers who talk about stocks and personal finance?
Alex: Yeah, we should talk to some of those guys. A lot of them think that crypto is funny money, and that instead you should just keep buying Tesla at all-time highs. But I think it would be great if we could talk to them and show them what it’s really like to have a company that is always working in the best interest of their customers.
Q: Will US residents be able to use the in-app swap, and which coins will be offered?
Alex: I think it’s pretty broad what we can offer with this, because it’s going to be a peer-to-peer swap. Because it’s going to be peer-to-peer, we’re thinking there should be fewer compliance issues and we can support more assets. Probably a good guide is that if something is approved on Coinbase, we should definitely be able to support it for swaps.
Q: Will there be a chance for the community to help translate the app?
Alex: Yeah, I think we’ve repeated ourselves a thousand times in English. I think it’s fine for anyone who wants to take any of our videos and dub over them, or put on subtitles. If you’re worried about permission, just email us (app@celsius.network) and it won’t be a problem.
Q: Why do you think PayPal doesn’t let you actually hold the crypto you buy from them?
Alex: They partnered with Paxos, but they didn’t go and build all of the infrastructure needed to buy, hold, sell, and transfer the assets. They just have someone who buys and holds it for them, so that’s why you can’t transfer it.
Q: What prevents Celsius from lowering the 80% that they pay back to their community?
Alex: I’m probably the largest holder inside Celsius, so if I reduce that percentage then I’ll be paying myself less. We built Celsius so that everyone’s interests would be aligned, you and I are sitting next to each other on the bus. I agree, that in a normal company, executives want to get as much money as possible from the customers—but with Celsius, everything is designed to act in the best interest of the community, which also benefits Celsius and our employees.
Q: What positions are still open? Are you still looking for an assistant?
Alex: Yeah, we’ve had a lot of applications for my assistant but no perfect applicant yet. Send your applications to jobs@celsius.network. The thing that we’re looking for most is passion! We don’t want people who are just looking for a job or looking to make money—we’re looking for people who are excited about our mission.
Q: You mentioned recently that you were going to lower Simplex fees—is that live yet?
Alex: Not yet—the next release in December or January will have the lower fees, more currency options, and more crypto options to buy.
Q: Can you give us some tips to share with our family about crypto and Celsius?
Alex: So many presents that you get from your family or friends don’t hit the mark—and all of that wasted money could’ve been working for you for the rest of your life. If you want to give someone a gift that keeps on giving, show them how to use a product that is acting in their best interest and will help them move closer to financial freedom.
Q: Are the open positions at Celsius available for remote workers?
Alex: We do have offices all over the world, but you just need to convince us that you are a self-starter and that you can manage working on your own if you would like to be remote. I think we actually have more people in Atlanta right now than in New York City. But passion is #1, don’t worry about where you live.
Q: With banks recommending Bitcoin, how do you think that’s going to change the crypto landscape?
Alex: Banks are not recommending because they want to, it’s because they have to. I wouldn’t listen to the banks when they didn’t recommend it, and I wouldn’t listen to them now that they do recommend it.
Q: How is the health of Celsius as a company?
Alex: Celsius is doing phenomenally well. Celsius is the largest holder of CEL token, so we are benefitting from the meteoric rise of CEL token over the past year. We have over $700 million in CEL token on our balance sheet, in addition to around $70 million in cash. We also have almost $3 billion in AUM! Celsius is a profitable company, keeps growing, and is always moving to be as transparent as possible. We’ll be publishing an external audit of AUM and total assets, and Proof of Community is set to go live in January.
Q: We’re coming up on time, do you have any closing thoughts for everybody?
Alex: Yeah, it’s a humbling experience to see how fast Celsius is growing. We’re proving all of the skeptics and naysayers wrong, and it’s not about being wrong that CEL token will do well, but instead it’s about being able to pay your community 80% of revenue and be profitable—paying your community $100 million in earned interest. It’s about being able to do good and do well, and we think that we are doing both. We want for our community to do better, and we want to keep extracting as much value as possible from all of the financial players who have been stealing from you your whole life.
Want to unbank yourself with Celsius (and get a free $20)?
- Install the Celsius wallet (https://celsius.network/get-the-app/)
- Use a referral code during registration (137247d31d)
- Deposit $200 of crypto or stablecoins
You will earn $20 in BTC once you hold your deposit for 30 days
