While markets are going up, people get more comfortable putting their cryptoassets into trusted third parties such as centralized exchanges and centralized lending platforms that promise increasingly enticing returns. The good times never last, though. As markets peak and monetary policy tightens, companies that overleveraged on the way up expose themselves to liquidity risks. If you deposited your cryptoassets into these products, perhaps unaware of their risk taking, your assets are exposed to their risks.
Self-custody doesn’t completely protect from risks associated with failing projects. We saw this spectacularly with LUNA/UST a month ago. However, there is a difference between custodial and self-custodial projects. The risks of LUNA/UST were apparent for many to see because the finances were mostly on-chain, transparent and free for anyone to observe. Despite that, plenty of participants, both retail and “sophisticated” institutional users were wiped out.
A far worse problem is the centralized crypto products because their finances are shrouded in mystery. It prevents any foreknowledge of their impending problems until it suddenly blows up. This is already unfolding now.
Celsius Network, a centralized borrow/lend crypto platform suddenly announced on June 13 that they were freezing customer assets. This was especially shocking given their CEO’s tweet responding to rumors of freezing customer withdrawals the day before.
Mike do you know even one person who has a problem withdrawing from Celsius?,
why spread FUD and misinformation.
If you are paid for this then let everyone know you are picking sides otherwise our job is to fight Tradfi together…
This caused a market wide sell-off, during which centralized exchange Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, announced the “temporary pause of bitcoin withdrawals.”
Funds are SAFU.
We are in the process of communicating with relevant parties and fully committed to working this out
