Former Celsius CEO Alex Mashinsky has agreed to a permanent ban from the cryptocurrency, securities and commodities industries under a settlement with New York Attorney General Letitia James that carries up to $35 million in conditional payments.

The agreement, announced Friday, resolves a 2023 civil lawsuit accusing Mashinsky of misleading hundreds of thousands of retail investors about the safety of Celsius before its July 2022 bankruptcy.

How the $35 million is structured

The payment is conditional, not automatic. Mashinsky must pay New York $25 million if he fails to forfeit an additional $10 million in ill-gotten gains to the federal government beyond assets already surrendered. A further $10 million is owed if he does not serve his full 12-year federal prison sentence.

Mashinsky is currently serving that sentence at the federal level. He pleaded guilty in December 2024 to securities and commodities fraud and was separately ordered to forfeit more than $48 million.

What the New York lawsuit alleged

According to the 2023 complaint, Mashinsky promoted Celsius as a safer alternative to banks while advertising yields as high as 17%. The state alleged he concealed risky bets and mounting losses as the platform strained to meet its promised returns.

By early 2022, Celsius had attracted roughly $20 billion in digital assets. Withdrawals were frozen in June 2022; the company filed for bankruptcy the following month, disclosing an asset-liability shortfall of more than $1 billion. As of August 2026, the bankruptcy estate had distributed more than $3.4 billion to creditors, according to the Attorney General's Office.

"Alex Mashinsky promised New Yorkers that his company was a secure place to invest their hard-earned savings, only to leave them penniless when his risky investments collapsed," James said in Friday's announcement.

What the federal settlements already cover

The New York deal follows a wave of actions by federal regulators this year:

• The Commodity Futures Trading Commission permanently barred Mashinsky from trading and registration with the agency in June.
• The Federal Trade Commission, in April, banned him from crypto and finance work and required a $10 million payment alongside a largely suspended $4.72 billion judgment.
• The Securities and Exchange Commission reached an agreement in principle in September. A federal judge dismissed the SEC's parallel civil suit without prejudice on Sept. 29, pending finalization.

The settlements collectively remove Mashinsky from every major U.S. regulatory perimeter touching digital assets.

What happens next in his criminal case

Mashinsky has been seeking to vacate his federal conviction since May and now represents himself in those proceedings. Federal prosecutors opposed his motion in August, calling his arguments "without merit." A judge denied his request for discovery, and an Oct. 5 order left that ruling unchanged. Mashinsky faces a Dec. 11 deadline to respond to the government's opposition to his petition.

That deadline will determine whether his challenge proceeds to a ruling, while the New York settlement closes the civil book on his role at Celsius and locks in a permanent exclusion from the industry he once pitched to retail depositors.