Tiffany Fong Interview - Celsius Network Debacle, Losing $200K, Alex Mashinsky Fund Withdrawals & Research

Tiffany Fong is an influencer who has been researching and covering the Celsius Network bankruptcy. She discusses losing access to $200K plus in Bitcoin and Ethereum, Celsius employees sharing information with her, Celsius founders Alex Mashinsky and others withdrawing funds and more.

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/tiffanyfong

Twitter: https://twitter.com/tiffanyfong_

Instagram: https://instagram.com/tiffanyfong

Website (posted leaks): https://www.tiffanyfong.com/

Transcript

Welcome back to The Thinking Crypto podcast, your home for cryptocurrency news and interviews. With me today is Tiffany Fong, who’s the influencer researching Celsius Network and all that’s been going on there with Celsius bankruptcy and potential fraud and things along those lines. Tiffany, great to have you on the show.

• Nice to be here. It’s my first show.
• Well, Tiffany, you’re doing God’s work. I’ve been following you, you’ve been exposing folks at Celsius and rightfully so. Before we get into the details, I would love to get to know you. Tell us a bit about your background. Where you from and what do you do?
• I’m from Las Vegas. I went to USC. I got in on crypto quite early and after USC, I kind of set up a few online stores that kind of run passively, so I wasn’t really working full time. I did get in on crypto in like 2011 because I got it as a gift from a relative. So I’m very lucky, like I can’t pretend to be some crypto genius when I was like, I think I was like 17 at the time. But one of my relatives was Bitcoin mining, and that kind of was my first exposure to crypto and learning about it. So I paid attention since then. So I was pretty lucky in that regard I think.
• Wow, that’s, in the world of crypto, you’re an og, you got in 2011.
• I kinda am, and I hate to take credit for it because I’m like, it wasn’t me that was sleuthing around and discovered Bitcoin, it was like a relative who got my feet wet in crypto. But yeah, I was very lucky there.
• Wow. So a relative introduced you to crypto, sent you some Bitcoin, but what was your aha moment? When did it click for you? Like, “Oh wait, this technology is you know, gonna disrupt and here to stay and so.”
• Yeah, I invested little bits just because my relative felt very strongly that there was a future there. I invested bits over time, but didn’t put a ton of my own money in until the 2017, or was it 20? No, hmm, yeah, I invested seven in 2017. I think I put a lot in when the NFTI was happening, so I had to admit I bought a lot of Ethe at that time. Before that I was just holding Bitcoin, so luckily I held through everything, like I didn’t sell anything until like the more recent years. So I held throughout all the ups and downs until things really did get bigger. But yeah, I think I invested a lot of my own money into Ethe that was my first like other coin outside of Bitcoin. .
• Is it primarily Bitcoin and Ethereum that you hold or do you have any?
• Primarily bitcoin, Ethe, I hold some MATIC I hold some Ave. I have a little bit of like just the smart contract protocols, like BNB, DOT, Lana, but I try not to, I don’t really invest in like what I believe to be shit-coins or like any sort of pumping dumps. I don’t really play around with that. I’m more of just like a long term holder, so I just invest in what I believe in and I can understand. So yeah, I’m not really chasing like little dog coins or anything like that.
• For sure, that’s good advice. I don’t either, it’s like.
• Yes.
• A risky game to play.
• I agree, I agree. I don’t consider myself a day trader by any means.
• For sure. So when did you first come across Celsius Network and when did you actually put your funds on Celsius?
• So I initially discovered BlockFi and we talked about this right before the recording. I put a few Bitcoins into BlockFi. I initially didn’t have anything in Celsius, but I think I kept hearing about it, I think mostly from like YouTube and influencers who were promoting Celsius. And I put a little bit into Celsius, but over time, BlockFi was lowering their interest rates and Celsius were remaining the same, which in hindsight probably should have been at red flag, but since their interest rates were higher and I had no like previous issues in terms of withdrawals or I didn’t notice any issues, I was like, okay, and I gradually started moving a few of my Bitcoins from BlockFi over to Celsius. So I ended up leaving, I’ve already posted it, but I left 3.1 Bitcoin and 11.5 Ethe in Celsius amongst a few other coins. So it was a pretty hefty amount.
• Oh man. Well, I’m certainly sorry that you’ve lost access to your funds and you and I don’t know know how many 100s of 1000s of users.
• Yeah.
• I’ve interviewed Alex Mashinsky about five, six times and you know, Alex has a very strong resume. He’s obviously going around saying he’s the creator of voice over ip. He’s in different investments. So there’s a trust factor there, well, it’s Alex Mashinsky’s business and I think a lot of people are thinking back like, “Wow, did we just get rug pulled? Is he the Bernie Madoff of crypto?”
• Kind of, yes.
• Oh man.
• It’s disastrous.
• Yeah, so I know the market value of the tokens fluctuate, but at the bull market peak, what was the total amount of funds that you couldn’t access or the cash?
• At the bull market, I believe it was like about 270K at like peak. It was, yeah, when I put it in, I think it was over 200K. I believe I put most of it in 2019. Was it 2019? Well, I can’t remember the exact date, but I remember the account typically being well over 200K and about 270K at peak. Now it’s looking a lot slimmer ’cause we’re in a bear market. But it was a lot, it was a lot.
• Oh man, that must have been painful and I know everybody has their financial goals and things they want to do in life. So with that money locked up, I mean, I’m sure that’s affected you financially and maybe things you wanna buy and things like that.
• Yeah, I mean we talked briefly about like I wanted to buy a house and I was planning to buy a house soon and I mean, yeah, things like that. I mean, thankfully it wasn’t my entire portfolio so I’m, I know some people are in some way more wrecked than I am because they put everything in, but it was a huge chunk of my portfolio so I was yeah, quite upset.
• This situation has caused you to do a lot of research and to kind of take the reigns and go find out what the hell is happening here.
• Yeah.
• I know there’s a lot, but maybe you can give us like the top five of things that you’ve encountered from your research.
• Okay, well, so I initially didn’t set out for that actually, I posted my first video on YouTube just because I was a bit angry and a lot of my friends, like I’m a girl in my 20s, not a lot of my friends are invested in crypto. So when Celsius shut down withdrawals, I just posted a video on YouTube kind of just to vent ’cause most of my friends were like, “I don’t know what Celsius is, you lost Bitcoins, like, I don’t know.” So I posted my first video just kind of to vent and was like, “I lost a lot of money to Celsius” and then I just started posting a few updates about what I was finding online about what’s happening with Celsius, just to update other people who were commenting on that video, et cetera. So I started posting videos. I didn’t really set out to be a YouTuber or content creator or anything, but then I was contacted by a lot of people and amongst them were a few employees and one of the employees just said that he liked my channel and he watched me and he wanted me to know what was happening in Celsius. So that’s when I received the first couple of audios and I was like nervous, at first I wasn’t sure I was gonna post anything, so I like talked to lawyers and stuff who were warning me against it, but I mean Celsius was completely opaque and they were silent for months and I was like, if I know what’s happening then I need to post this. So the first audio I posted was the leaked all hands meeting and that’s where they unveiled their plans for what they were planning to do with Celsius in their further restructuring steps. And that was the plan of Kelvin. So they essentially planned to reopen as a crypto custodial platform with a zero trust security framework and features like Multisig wallets and make money with transaction fees, which I mean to me after what’s happened with Celsius seems absolutely delusional to think that they can reopen and anyone would wanna leave any of their funds with anything related to Celsius. So I was in shock when I listened to that audio and it was like, people need to know. So I think that was the biggest thing that I’ve like come across, like just the unveiling of what they’ve been working on at Celsius and apparently according to employees that I’m still in touch with, that is what they continue to work on apparently. But they’ve also stopped holding all hands meetings after I leaked the audio, so a lot of the employees don’t have as much transparency on whether or not the plans have evolved or changed since then. So I guess all we have right now is what I’ve leaked on Kelvin. Other than that I also had, I got a leak of another meeting which revealed their plans to create wrapped IOU tokens that represented the value of the crypto a ratio of the value of the crypto that they had left as well as their debt, which also to me seemed like quite convoluted and risky and didn’t love that plan either. So that was the other audio that I leaked. Other than that, I mean, those were the main big audios and big reveals that I’ve gotten. Other than that I’m in constant communication with a few employees, as well as former employees. I recently did leak all of Alex Mashinsky’s crypto wallets because I think that after knowing all the like fraudulent behavior that’s been going on behind the scenes and all these withdrawals that we’ve been finding out about from the insiders, I would like some blockchain sleuths to really look into all of his wallets to expose anything that we can, because I’m hoping for insider clawbacks so that like creditors like me can potentially claw back some of the funds that were withdrawn fraudulently and that can go back towards making some of us whole, I mean, I don’t think we’re ever gonna be whole after they’ve lost so much, but, you know, getting there.
• Yeah, I mean, unbelievable, right. And I’m seeing the reports as well of the funds being withdrawn by Alex and the other founder as well.
• Yes.
• And it just makes me so angry and I know a lot of people as well have the same sense of.
• Appalling, it’s appalling, when they were telling customers to huddle on and everything was fine, everything was fine that they were hearing about, they were in the background withdrawing funds. It’s just like absolutely appalling.
• Well, what’s interesting is that employees were forthcoming with the information, they contacted you just showing what status that the company’s at right now. I’m sure the employees are losing faith, people are just.
• Completely.
• Yeah.
• And that’s the sentiment I’ve been hearing from people who are currently employed. Like especially when they found out that Alex had withdrawn a lot of his money, right, or like, not, yeah, not too far before the withdrawal freeze. I heard that they, like a lot of the employees who initially had more faith in him were like, wow, that is actually like appalling. And yeah, I think that the reason why people are coming forward is because they are frustrated with the situation and that’s what some of them have expressed to me. So like a lot of them have lost faith and they’re seeing like Alex’s true colors and a lot of the other executives true colors. So thankfully some of them are willing to speak up because I feel like this stuff needs to be exposed.
• Now yesterday I think I saw a tweet from you where Alex subscribed to your newsletter, I think is.
• You know what, like, I saw that at first, but I also can’t tell if that was legitimate or not because.
• Okay.
• Once I posted that, other people started subscribing as like other accounts like to be a joke. So I can’t say with certainty that that was really Alex or not. Like I can’t make that claim with full certainty, but I did see that notification come up and I was like, are you, I’m sure he’s keeping tabs though.
• Oh, yeah.
• And I even posted, I received some other files that I don’t know if I’m gonna post, I don’t, but I received some things that I posted summaries of like regarding Alex and New Goldstein’s withdrawals because I received files of their transaction histories that date back to 2018. And Nuke did reach out to me directly when I posted about that. So he like DMed me about it. So I know that they are certainly keeping tabs on my feed and waiting for me too.
• I bet they’re like, “Oh no, what’s Tiffany gonna release on us today?”
• It’s just funny me sitting in my bed over here.
• Oh man.
• Yeah. I’m hellbent on taking them down. I mean, I’m thankful that Alex resigned not too long after the first leaks. I don’t wanna say that they’re related, but I’m thankful that he resigned.
• Well, I’m sure him and the other founder is gonna go into hiding because they they won’t be able to show their face.
• Yes.
• Yeah.
• This is very true. They can’t show their faces after that. So.
• So with the whole judicial process around this, are you optimistic that, I think you alluded to it before, you may get some of your funds maybe 50%, maybe 75%, You know, what you.
• I think that where it stands, the amount of coins that are left, if we were to take some sort of haircut right now, I think we’d be getting a little bit under 50% of our coins back, which is a lot. And I’m sort of like, how did you manage to lose that much of our money? But I guess we just gotta deal with the facts. So it looks like it’s, yeah, we’d get back a little under 50%, but also every day of bankruptcy, every day of chapter 11, they’re bleeding funds. I think that they’re currently running at a $1.5 million deficit every day. And it was also just released on the strato docket, that white or no, Kirkland and Ellis, which is Celsius’s legal counsel, I think they’re charging about 3 million for an 18 day period. So just all the fees, all the legal fees, it’s just really like, we’re really burning through cash every day of this. So I mean, ideally we can try to get out of this as soon as possible, but I don’t expect that to be anytime soon.
• Have you spoken to other users? I don’t know personally with who have funds that are locked up as well?
• Yeah, actually a lot. I have been connecting with a lot of other unsecured creditors and people with a lot more on the platform than I have, people with multimillions on the platform. So it’s like pretty devastating. But yeah.
• Wow. Now the next question is gonna be about regulations and it’s a tricky thing because you wanna make sure that the scammers and the bad actors are stopped, but you don’t want an innovation to be stifled. Right? And this is a global competition with crypto. So what do you think the regulators could have done better, specifically like the SCC?
• I feel like these sorts of bad actors needed to be weeded out, like obviously more quickly. I’m not happy that so many people got burned myself as well, but I mean now that we know all the like fraudulent behavior that was happening in the background, I’m like, Celsius needed to be taken down. So all these bad actors need to be weeded out. As for like specifics, I’m not really an expert in this area, but yeah.
• I feel like some of these centralize, at least crypto firms, they probably need to get FDIC insured similar to banks.
• Yeah.
• And to regulate, they need to issue like monthly reports to regulators, like here’s our books, right?
• Yes. They definitely need more regulations and I’m not even sure that everything that Celsius was doing was, yeah, by the books. So I’m sure a lot more will be revealed over time. But yeah, I think there definitely need to be some stricter regulations if more innovations to move forward in CeFi.
• So has this experience left a bad taste in your mouth or are you still bullish on crypto and this is more of like a Celsius Alex Mashinsky thing?
• Yeah, to me this is mostly a Celsius Alex Mashinsky thing and I also would just be wary of I guess the majority of CeFi platforms, especially ones where you’re earning interest. ‘Cause yeah, I mean, I don’t want to call myself greedy there, but I mean like, yeah, I liked the interest, which is why I left my money there and obviously there’s some risk involved if you’re receiving like returns. So yeah, I personally would be wary of using any sort of interest bearing CeFi platform from Huron. The rest of my money, just cold storage always, I don’t plan on ever moving it onto CeFi platforms, like if I can. So I’m more skeptical of CeFi and yeah, obviously Celsius I think was much more diabolical than even something like Voyager. So I feel like there’s not even a comparison there. I feel like Voyager got burned with the three ACs collapse,
• Right.
• Whereas Celsius, I think there was a lot of fraud and mismanagement, et cetera. But yeah, in terms of crypto, yeah, I plan to be a long term holder. Although, I mean I, yeah, all the ups and downs of crypto from like, I personally don’t really buy a ton of crypto anymore. Like here and there I put a little more money in, but since I got in very early, it does make up a really massive portion of my portfolio. So when I invest now, I actually personally do invest in more like risk averse and stable assets or for example, just, you know, ETF’s. A lot of my more recent investments have just been in, ETF’s, index funds, S&P 500. You know, I’m kind of a boring investor just because crypto’s always been a huge part of my portfolio and the volatility can also often be a little difficult to deal with, but yeah.
• For sure. Well, I think it’s important to be diversified and I personally, similar to you, I have my crypto portfolio, it’s heavy crypto, heavily crypto, but I do have stocks, I do have ETFs and I think it’s important to diversify because there’s nothing guaranteed.
• Exactly, I think so too. Like as much as I am bullish on crypto, I wouldn’t ever recommend anyone putting all of their money into crypto or even like the majority of their money into crypto. So yeah, I’m the same way. Yeah.
• Yeah, I think crypto moves so fast, the volatility, you know, when it swings up, it is amazing. There’s nothing like it, but when it swings back down, the pendulum goes the other way, it’s rough.
• Yes. It’s been like, it was hard to stomach. I feel like the first time Bitcoin hit 20K was in like 2017 and I remember being so ecstatic and then watching it plummet that first time was the hardest. I feel like after I’ve been through enough of those ups and downs, it’s been easier for me to stomach, but I’m just like, okay, this can’t be my entire portfolio. Like I need some more stability in my portfolio than that. So yeah, I’m mostly buying ETFs to be honest, even though that sounds really boring, but.
• Well, Tiffany, I appreciate you coming on and sharing the information. Keep up the good work.
• Thanks for having me, I’m a new on like this, but thank you for having me.
• You did great, and I’ll put links to your podcast, your YouTube channel and Twitter in the description folks. Go follow Tiffany and keep up the good work. Keep exposing Alex, AKA Bernie Madoff of crypto.
• Oh, I will. I’m hellbent. Thank you for having me, it was nice to speak with you.