Mashinsky says ‘Sharks of Wall Street’ circling around Celsius and other projects

cointelegraph.com:

The CEO of crypto lending and staking platform Celsius Alex Mashinsky believes “the Sharks of Wall Street” can smell blood in the water and are causing instability at several crypto projects.

Mashinsky attributes recent Celsius (CEL) price falls, the brief Tether (USDT) depegging, and collapse of Terra (LUNA) — at least in part — to short sellers on Wall Street. CEL has fallen from its all-time high of $8.05 to $0.82, which is a 90% drop.

In a Twitter Spaces event on Tuesday, some Celsius users claimed the platform liquidated their holdings as CEL dropped. They said trading was illiquid as the price fell, worsening their losses, and that Celsius should have supported the currency.

Mashinsky said CEL had been affected by the wider crypto crash due to the collapse of Terra and that he believed someone was targeting the company.

“This is not a coincidence. This is somebody who decided, ‘You know what? I’m going to take down all of Celsius,'” he said during the event.

Cointelegraph contacted Mashinsky for further details. He explained there was a deliberate push on from Wall Street to profit by exacerbating crypto’s problems.

“They took down Luna. They tried Tether, Maker, and many other companies. It’s not just us,” he said. “I don’t think they have [a] specific hate or focus on Celsius. They are all looking for any weakness to short and destroy.

Asked to clarify if he meant regulators, or the funds rumored to have attacked Terra, he clarified; "Nothing to do with regulation. Just short sellers looking for weakness."

Mashinsky also took issue with a Barron’s article about the Spaces event titled “Celsius Faces a Revolt as a High-Yield Crypto Plummets”.

“We have 1.8 million customers and Barron’s wrote this article because two guys