Celsius lawyers is having a smorgasbord, they are the only winners here
It is looking like the lawyers will have the last laugh here, again. They seem to have been granted a blank check and are taking full advantage of it. The term ride it like it's stolen comes to mind.
There can be only one, winner that is
And just like in Highlander, there can only be one. And in this case, with the recent indictment against Alex Mashinsky and Celsius. And if you do not know of the snake in human clothes that is Alex Mashinsky, first be glad. Second, he is the former CEO of Celsius. One of the bigger crypto Ponzi schemes. I think only rivaled by FTX.
The list of who is suing them is a long one as well. DOJ, SEC, FTC, and the CTFC, so more or less the entire alphabet of who is looking to have their day in court. And Alex is also facing civil charges on top of the criminal once. All of this only means one thing, Celsius lawyers are having a smorgasbord feast. They are able to rack up an incredible amount. Abd By the looks of thing they will only leave as few crumbs as they can to Celsius victims.
Twitter user @camcrews has been tracking the Celsius lawyer's billing
But it can't be that bad surely, right, right? Well, back when Celsius filed for bankruptcy, in July last year. Twitter user @camcrews has been keeping a tally of the legal billings. And so far the total has landed at $144 million for the initial nine months. And this is before the entire alphabet decided to sew them. With four different branches of the US government deciding to sew Celsius this completely insane figure will only continue to keep on rising to new insane heights. While I think it is fairly far from breaking any records. I think this can be a serious contender. Also, it is surprisingly hard to find out any good numbers. But I am guessing that the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy ranks among the top. And I would find it hard to believe that lawyers were not able to get anything less than half a billion payday there. And I think that the Celsius lawyers easily could achieve that. Especially if they have to appeal a losing verdict. And seeing how effective they apparently are at squeezing every penny out of the Celsius carcass.
There appears to be some life in Celsius still
It appears that CElsius have been doing fairly ok tho. I mean considering the company is supposed to be bankrupt. They have not let what little remains of their assets sit idle. Instead, they have staked the majority of it. And from the looks of things that have earned them a pretty penny.
According to known Celsius addresses they have just last month staked, directly or through a second party, a total of 771,600 $ETH. And there might be some that are not publicly known as well. They are also currently running what is called MEV botts. And thanks to them they have made $10 million in staking rewards. And they are currently earning around $1 million a month thanks to the MEV bots.
If you are like me and have not here about these MEV bots before this. I will be happy to share what I recently learned. They apparently work by including uber-quick arbitrage, front-running, and so-called “sandwich attacks,” all taking place within the same block. And while it is a grey area, there are a lot of people not super happy about the entire thing. But then there are those who just see it as getting that little extra, and they're not hurting anyone.
Lawyers and MEV, my 2 cents
I have to say I am feeling very Natalie Imbruglia over all this (she had a massive hit with a cover called Torn). While I approve of not letting the funds just sit idle, staking them and thus earning interest would mean, in the best of worlds, that more people can get more money back. But then utilizing MEV botts, that to me is not really sitting very well. And if we look at crypto globally I think that this indeed can lead to some serious repercussions.
What these MEV bots are doing is the exact thing that the BIS report highlighted as a problem with mining. And while Ethereum now has moved away from proof of work to proof of stake. It appears that have not solved any of these issues. Talking about frontrunning and sandwich attacks. This could very well be a pandora's box situation if it is left to continue as is. Because the majority of people are blissfully unaware. As soon as that changes all it takes is one person to start the legal ball rolling. And there is n telling where or when that ball will stop if it starts rolling. To summarize I think the staking is very good. But the MEV botting is extremely crap.
Now we are getting to the lawyers. I will start by saying this, I can not wait for AI to make these f-kers unemployed fast enough. I have no idea why or how they are left totally unchecked like this. Well, I know because if anyone tried to do anything about it they would sue them because they are lawyers. And that's sort of their thing. But I mean if they put in salary roof in several sports, which I am totally for by the way. Where is the billing roof for layers? Why are they able to just bill left and right insane amounts of money? I mean wtf are they doing over there? What is it Celsius is doing that they need to hire not one, not two, but 14 law firms? Either someone should be held accountable over at Celsius for approving all that crap. Or better yet, the lawyers should be held accountable.
Link to this document is at the bottom
I mean just look at this breakdown that @camcrews have put together. I can get that if you're being sued by four branches then you might need to retain more than one law firm. So we will count that as four to be on the safe side. And then one law firm to manage the estate and help oversee things. So what are the other nine vultures doing? I mean this is just pure insanity to me.
But I am really looking forward to hearing what you, yea you. What are you making of all this? Think things are as they should or are you slightly thinking that this is a bit insane? Let me know what you make of this situation. And make a guess at what you think the final legal bill will land at.
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Picture provided by: https://pixabay.com/, Fair use, https://twitter.com/camcrews
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Lawyers generate money from attacks like that! 144 million already is a lot of money on the table.
144 million is a crap ton of money for seemingly nothing. Thats on average 16 million a month during the initial 9 months. Just crazy amounts of money.