Celcius, a global crypto and Bitcoin mining company has faced a fraud case since last year. Now, the founder pleaded guilty and agreed to be jailed for 30 years.

Alex Mashinsky, the founder and ex-CEO of Celcius Network, is set to plead guilty to fraud charges, Reuters reported on Dec. 03. The federal prosecutor accused Mashinsky of pursuing customers to invest in them and unnaturally inflating the value of the company on the crypto token.

In order to deal with prosecutors, Mashinsky agreed to be jailed in prison for 30 years or less. Therefore, his sentence is set to be announced by the court later next year on Apr. 08.

“I know what I did was wrong, and I want to try to do whatever I can to make it right,” he said.

Previously, he was counted for seven charges, including fraud, conspiracy, and market manipulation since last year. In court, he stated that he pleaded guilty to two out of those seven charges, which were commodity fraud and manipulating the Celcius token (CEL) price back in 2021.

Celcius price movement

Since the token was released, the CEL price has seen a meteoric increase of 14,700% from $0.05 to $7.4 in 2021. The surged price was only recorded in that year; after being accused, CEL saw an outflow and made the price go back to under $1 until Mashinsky’s arrest in July. 13; the token price was only $0.1.

Another development of the cases, Ben Armstrong, known as BitBoy Crypto, believes that Canadian businessman Kevin O’Leary was a key player in Celcius’s bankruptcy, as well as the FTX.

SynFutures, a decentralized exchange for perpetual derivatives trading on Base, has introduced SynFutures Foundation and announced an airdrop of its native token, F.

The SynFutures Foundation will collaborate with the community to oversee the DEX platform’s development and secure key partnerships. As a community-led governance initiative, the foundation aims to ensure the success of grants, project collaborations, and funding programs.

The F token is an Ethereum (ETH)-based mainnet asset, will grant holders governance rights, staking rewards, and fee discounts. The airdrop will distribute 10 billion F tokens to the community, with additional airdrops planned in the future.

SynFutures noted in a press release that the airdrop will benefit the community, the DEX’s backers and advisors, the foundation treasury, and core contributors. F is also reserved for liquidity and protocol development.

The community will receive 28.5% of the total F token supply, with 7.5% available for distribution during the Season 1 Airdrop on December 6, 2024. Eligible participants include users who have interacted consistently with SynFutures from v1 to v3.

Several crypto exchanges, including Bybit, Gate.io, Bitget, and KuCoin, have expressed support for the F token airdrop. Bybit will host a launchpool initiative between Dec. 2 and Dec. 5, allowing participants to earn F ahead of its listing. Gate.io is offering a similar program with 75,000 F tokens available.

SynFutures is backed by prominent venture capital platforms such as Pantera, Dragonfly, Polychain, Standard Crypto, and SIG.

The platform recently unveiled a Perp Launchpad, offering a $1 million grant to support tokens deemed under the radar. In September, SynFutures rolled out two perpertual contracts with 10x leverage that allowed traders to bet on the U.S. election.

HODL has been the time-honored philosophy of Bitcoin (BTC) holders. Rather than spending their growing wealth, those who own the biggest cryptocurrency have chosen to ‘hold on for dear life’ with an evangelistic zeal. Nevertheless, while Bitcoin, the king of crypto, continues to capture the headlines, the cryptocurrency space is in a very different place now from where it was just a few years ago. 

Dogecoin (DOGE) may have been launched in 2013, but it is currently in the cycle of an explosion of interest in memecoins. While this market has unfortunately been prey to scams and pump-and-dump schemes, the growth and increasing significance of meme coins is an undeniable fact. 

Meanwhile, the architecture and payment rails of the space have also changed dramatically. In the past, Bitcoin holders who chose to sell their holdings and off-ramp rather than HODL often had to rely upon shady intermediaries, exorbitant fees, and snail-paced processing times. Now, holders of cryptocurrency have a variety of options for off-ramping, with payment specialists in the web3 space forming partnerships with giants from the TradFi space, such as Mastercard. Off-ramping from digital tokens into a fiat currency can now be done in a seamless and secure way with low fees and charges. 

Meme coin frenzy

In the current bull market cycle, which has seen Bitcoin pierce a new all-time high above $97,000, the market capitalization of meme coins has skyrocketed from $56 billion to $118 billion following Trump’s re-election and a subsequent crypto bull run. 

Originally created as a joke based on the ‘Doge’ meme featuring a Shiba Inu dog, DOGE is the biggest and most recognisable meme coin. Many meme coins are also named after endearing animals, one example being Moo Deng (MOODENG), the baby pygmy hippopotamus living in a Thai zoo. 

Elon Musk’s appointment to President-elect Donald Trump’s cabinet as head of the new Department of Government Efficiency, DOGE, has fueled DOGE’s ascent, with the digital token now having a market capitalization of $58 billion. We’re now witnessing tens of thousands of meme coins attempting to emulate DOGE’s success being created each day on Pump.Fun, a Solana-based tool that removes technical barriers to developing the tokens. 

Crypto traders are FOMing into newly launched meme coins, often for just a few dollars, in the hope that the token will capture a cult-like following and soar in value. Non-custodial wallet Phantom, which provides users with an array of opportunities to bet on meme coins, has been propelled to the second spot on the charts in the utility section of the Apple App Store in the US. Those who make winning bets on meme coins often swap the tokens into established cryptocurrencies such as Solana to lock in profits and as a bridge before converting their holdings into a fiat currency. 

End of creaky payment rails 

The cryptocurrency space has evolved to a point where it is almost unrecognizable from where it was a decade ago. Notably, Mastercard and Visa have now entered the web3 ecosystem. Mercuryo’s Mastercard crypto debit card, Spend, bridges the gap between non-custodial crypto wallets and traditional payment methods. Spend is a plug-and-play solution that can be quickly integrated into a non-custodial wallet and rolled out to users who can add it to their Apple Pay or Google Play wallet. Spend is available to use online and in-store across Mastercard’s 100 million-plus network of merchants, providing users with a seamless, low-cost means of off-ramping their crypto holdings. Holders of the Spend card benefit from a level of consumer protection on a par with a traditional debit or credit card. 

The cryptocurrency space is continually evolving. The growing significance of meme coins has partly been driven by Generation Z’s dominance of social media channels such as Instagram, TikTok, and X. These social channels provide a public forum for newly launched meme coins to go viral and obtain a cult-like following. 

At the same time, we are witnessing the emergence of new payment products that provide crypto traders with an accessible and low-cost means of spending their trading profits. While the philosophy of HODL still resonates strongly with Bitcoin evangelists, newcomers to the web3 space arguably have more of a ‘live-for-today’ philosophy. Driven by a belief that life is short and crypto profits should be spent, these consumers are taking advantage of payment products that facilitate the off-ramping of cryptocurrency at a low cost. While it is pure speculation to guess how long the current crypto bull market will go on, what’s certain is that the market is continuing to evolve at a breakneck pace. This is reflected in a somewhat comedic fashion with the meme coin mania that we’ve been witnessing but also in the increasing sophistication of payment products in the space. These off-ramping services have levels of compliance and protection that are on par with payment products from traditional finance and enable people to spend their newfound crypto wealth in the real world.

Greg Waisman

Greg Waisman is the co-founder and chief operating officer of the crypto wallet service Mercuryo. He has been creating products for over 10 years: he takes the idea and turns it into a working product with a real audience. Greg has extensive experience in managing cross-functional teams.