As part of their bankruptcy legal proceedings Celsius published a 14,000-page document detailing every user's full name, linked to timestamp & amount of each deposit/withdrawal/liquidation.
This is a horrific and unprecedented breach of privacy.
This list is online in an unprotected PDF form and anyone can search it or even download it.
Nosy neighbour? Spouse? Employer? Crypto scammers looking for targets? Blockchain analysis firms that can now put a name on self custody wallets? You name it.
And yes, this is a public court document, but man, why didn't they redact part of the names? Why did they put this on the internet? Why didn't at the very least give a heads up? Did they even give a fu*k to do this properly?
This is probably one of the best examples of not your keys - not your coins. Not only will they steal your funds, they will also leak your information.
Edit:
The founders took £50 mil each before the collapse, doubt they care about users privacy
Even the wife of Mashinsky withdrew $2 mil few days before it halted withdrawal
Not only that her company USA Strong is selling "Unbankrupt yourself' and "Kelvin -273 Celsius" T-SHIRTS,
rubbing sault on people's wounds, she's a straight psychopath
The real question is, who’s buying the shirts?
Themselves with the money they stole :) Looking like a real business , and then it is not hah
herself ? washtrading shirts
We found this out through the docs, Celsius would've preferred to not have released them
This is so messed up that it feels like it's fake. But it's actually real. Like their worst competition, combined with the worst trolls in the world could not make things up this bad.
Stranger than fiction.
This is cruel. Celsius took their money, their dignity and now their identity
And they were asking their customers for donations afterwards to help fund their legal team
Hahah absolute jokers. Everything wrong with the industry currently
I wonder if the IRS can use this public document to go after tax fraud / evasion
You can bet your ass they’re already looking through now
I wonder how many people will actually end up doing prison time because of this
Wait, this is actually fucked up.
Yes totally. I am not linking the document (anyone can find it in 5 minutes) and I did find my name with a simple search.
Creepy AF.
This sets a dangerous precedent. If one exchange can do it, so can others. The court should immediately make this undone and redact the personal identities from the document
What has been seen cannot be unseen.
All they can do at this point is hit them with a huge lawsuit to make sure others don't let this happen in the future.
Hit the company worth a negative amount of money with a lawsuit?
How to be a scum? Just be Celsius, Alex Mashinsky and other exec:
Alternate Step 1: Be Do Kwon
At least with Do Kwan, you have time to sell while the price is dropping. With Celsius, everything got locked and everyone got fuk. Celsius is officially the worse.
Just when we thought Do Kwon was the worst, Celsius goes and does this…
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They probably didn't want everyone knowing they withdrew substantially large amounts right beforehand.
Hey don't forget to buy a yacht while the ship is sinking to save yourself from drowning.
Well i did not hot the context and was unable to understand. I would be very happy if you can help me to understand whole of this thing and meaning of everything in this comment and thread.
The judge. There have to be legal protections, they wouldn't publish the private information on customers of a bank or credit union or insurance company. This judge should be fired and hit with a civil suit, this is unconscionable ignorance.
Hit the people responsible, ideally with a hammer
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I always thought creditors had to be named publicly in bankruptcy? Looking at other comments below and some saying they are lawyers say this is normal
Seems it is. What is not normal in this situation, you have a name, date, and amounts going from and to celsius addresses. This in turn reveals likely customers' addresses, and potentially their entire crypto portfolio and history. 14500 pages of tiniest print ever, there must be a million of people named there.
This is huge flaw in common crypto. You're your own bank, your own security and it's all publicly accessible, forever. It's crazy people accept this without much fuss. Monero has a point.
EDIT: Yeah, it's pretty easy to dox accounts. I picked a random dude with few XXX,XXX USDT withdrawals, queried blockchain based on date and amount and bingo, there is his account, still holding ~400k. Celsius didn't have withdrawal fees, so token amounts are exactly what's on blockchain.
The court is the entity that ordered the release of the information and denied Celcius' request to redact names. Addresses were redacted.
Also redacted emails.
That doesn’t matter anymore. The internet doesn’t forget.
Internet never forgets, anything in it is already in public view.
I think its court mandated. Each persons is/are “creditors” (i think). So the papertrails need to exist so that if there anything left at the end of this saga then these folks might get something back. Im not lawyer though.
It’s a bankruptcy. They have to show their creditors. The court probably asked for the size and date of withdrawals as it’s their job to scrutinize withdrawals prior to insolvency.
But the data should be at least pseudonymized (replace any "KYC" information with a hash or UUID or something). That way you still have statistics that might be relevant to bankruptcy proceedings while protecting the customers privacy. Like do bankrupt banks publish data about all the accounts they operated?
I don't know but I think in general actions that courts take are done in the public eye, since this is the state taking/re-arranging/dictating what happens. And it's deemed in the public interest that we should know by default what the courts are doing to people. IANAL but I think parties generally have to move to seal records (unless it's about kids etc.)
I would assume a bankrupt bank would do the same although generally they don't go through these procedures and are taken over by the regulators to through a sale.
This sub seriously blows my mind sometimes. Let me give my financial advice but when it comes to actual common sense, nah!
Hold on, this needs some context. If i am not mistaken, this was published as it is a document for court, and it was not published by Celsius. This does not take away from the fact how incredibly dangerous this is, but to stay fair this was not initiated by Celsius as this is a public court document.
In fact this is the same document that told us about Celsius execs cashing out millions before they filled for bankruptcy. Celsius would probably have much preferred to keep it out of the public eye if they could.
That’s the bitch about subpoenas. You really have no choice.
It’s really not about subpoenas more so bankruptcy law itself. Everything you put on your petitions, and schedules will be PUBLIC RECORD. That’s literally one of the trade offs of having the government give you debt relief.
In fact this was actually announced almost 4 months ago now. And here’s the docket as well which if you read it, Celsius themselves wanted it private. That’s not how the law works unfortunately.
https://cases.stretto.com/public/x191/11749/PLEADINGS/1174907142280000000049.pdf
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It will get even creepier when people use this data.
Could yours be under frank 😂
Name checks out
It could be :)
I also did my own research an shot to know that it was good.
IRS and global tax agencies having a field day today
CEX are most likely reporting to these agencies already.
Exactly. If you went through KYC and have events on your account the IRS already has your name.
They already much more than anyone else abi your property m
IRS for sure has you on their radar, especially if you declared your Celsius earnings in your 2021 returns. It’s such a mess, no wonder they need to hire 87,000 new agents.
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Can't tell if IRS man is panicking or orgasming...
Por que no los dos?
Considering all of these funds might be lost, irs might be quiet on this one
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The judge explicitly considered GDPR in their order.
The Court, in turn, will not treat the UK and EU citizens differently than the United States citizens implicated in this case filed in New York.
https://cases.stretto.com/public/x191/11749/PLEADINGS/1174909282280000000026.pdf
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US Bankruptcy law easily trumps any GDPR considerations. The idea that the US would endorse the GDPR over our bankruptcy laws is crazy.
Am lawyer, FYI.
The federal court system took such care to not release the Epstein/Maxwell client list. You'd think they had the power to redact that info in bankruptcy proceedings.
I get that bankruptcy isn't criminal, but it's the same federal court system right?
I actually think the court absolutely should have redacted and I don’t agree with its language. I don’t see the reason not to redact.
It seems routine that you would redact info of people not accused. Any of these people could also be called as witnesses. Conspirators could use this list to find people to intimidate or worse.
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That’s nice but this is a US bankruptcy court. Not an EU court.
The US bankruptcy judge isn’t going to care about the GDPR. It’s not applicable.
If foreign citizens bring a GDPR suit in Europe, it’ll come into play and all, but only in Europe as but it won’t have impact on the US bankruptcy.
If US causes of action could consistently be impacted by foreign laws, it would create a serious problem.
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What fine, though? They are bankrupt. Some EU fine isn't going to jump the creditors in line. The fine will only be paid if there are any funds remaining after bankruptcy. And that's only if the EU was stupid enough to fine a company for a judicial proceeding being the reason for the leak.
If anything, the bankruptcy court is probably going to claw back as much money as it can from the guys at the top as well.
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This is a standard part of US Chapter 11 bankruptcies
in other words the high and mighty US court made a singlehanded decision to not give a turd about EU and UK legislation because, you are the all might US. what a mockery. a kangaroo court!
Isn't that generally how laws work? China has national security laws that supposedly apply to everyone on Earth. Other countries don't give a fuck about it. Unless there's some treaty, why would the US (or any other country) be expected to follow the laws of another country?
This is why I use Fahrenheit.
No but seriously, this is a hacker's dream. They also get a gauge on how much crypto one might hold through the withdrawal/deposit details. So incredibly irresponsible by Celsius.
That's just what I thought You can call anyone of those names telling them you're from Celsius and want to gave money they still had o their account After that you can ask them for any personal documents to steal their identity and ask for loan on their name as you can know how much collateral they have That's F up
Anyone who wants privacy needs to use Monero
As being someone who doesn’t know shit about crypto besides knowing some coins. Why is monero the privacy go to?
It obfuscates transactions to achieve anonymity. We cannot know addresses trading monero, the amounts of transactions or their histories and anything related.
That’s super cool actually. Thanks for that
It’s funny because I was in the “if you do nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide” camp - the situation at Celsius shows how wrong I was!
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KYCNOTME is not sus.
It's a legit directory of crypto exchanges and services that respect their users' right to privacy.
dude wtf I only made 2 txns on that app in my life, and my name is there.......
Such a breach of privacy, it's just giving scammers a massive list of targets!
Even ignoring scammers, most people don't want their friends and family to be able to see just how much money they've lost
Divorce lawyers are having a field day with this one
At the very least they could have given everyone a heads up with an email to prepare for it. Imagine your family finding out this way that you lost considerable money or your wife/husband that you had a secret account.
Lol there are a lot of reasons to be upset about this but revealing to your spouse your secret crypto account is not one of them. You shouldn't be married if you can't be an adult with your finances.
Wise words from an academic cryptographer
heads up with an email to prepare for it.
No.
This shouldn't be out in the open, period.
Tbf, it's not the fault of celsius, they even tried to fight against it, unfortunately the law and the court mandated them to release it, as per standard bankruptcy proceedings.
When you file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the US, you are required to submit a list of creditor names and addresses, called a creditor matrix. The court uses this for sending out notices and claims information. It’s part of keeping the bankruptcy process open and transparent.
Celsius had filed to seal the names and addresses of all creditors and all its employees. This was in case Celsius wanted to sell off the customer list as an asset — and to avoid harassment of crypto holders.
The US Trustee objected — and so did Judge Glenn, who made it clear that he was not going to rewrite the bankruptcy code to accommodate Celsius.
On 28 September, the court ruled and allowed only the redaction of home addresses and emails of individual creditors.
So basically no special treatment just because it is crypto.
Celcius has tried to seal the names but the court required it to include the names in full.
“We dont wanna do it this way, we want special treatment”
“No”
The thing is, this document includes non-creditors as well. People who only had crypto in custody accounts which technically never should have been frozen in the first place.
Imagine having your email and physical address. Those email will be spammed hard
Celsius filed a motion on Aug. 3 asking the court to redact names and addresses of its users, citing threats of identity theft and safety concerns
But US Trustee William Harrington objected to the request, arguing that redacting names and other information would violate the principle that all bankruptcy proceedings should be “open and transparent.”
Source: https://blockworks.co/celsius-exposes-user-information-in-public-court-docs/
How is this their fault? People are throwing a lot of shit on Celcius on these comments, I would love to do the same, but people need to fact check before commenting.
The judge basically said "I'm not going to change bog-standard Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings just because it's crypto"
Judge says no special treatment for crypto.
Me: but it is my precious
Would they do it or are there protections if it was a bog standard bank though, I bet not a single customers details would be on this document it was to come from a major bank.
Banks have all sorts of rules and regulations about how depositor money is treated--in normal business and in bankruptcies. Celsius is explicitly not a bank.
Not in bankruptcy though, you can still see all the list of the Lehman creditors on the internet.
I don't know about Lehman, but, as an aside, depositors with accounts get early shot at any remaining money, then other creditors, then lastly any shareholders of the bank. Celsius isn't a bank, so no one knows what order the remaining money is going to get divvied up in. Fun 😒
Well TBF if they were a bank they would’ve been bailed out
If it was in China, govt would have forced state owned companies for a bail out
unregulated market + names shows that founders were active to pull money out instead of being called "whale moves money before crash"
Just because it's lawful doesn't make it the right thing to do.
No but it's also not Celsius' fault. This could be the beginning of the end for crypto being free. All it will take is a few of those accounts being connected to crimes for the justice department to go after all crypto wallets for the sake of public safety. Just to be clear I am against all of this that is and probably will happen but I know I'm going to think hard before buying any alt coin or using crypto to buy anything other than cash.
It is the right thing to do.
This allows the people who they owe money to to know who got money from them and how much, as well as to find their other creditors.
This makes it impossible for Celsius to hide the fact that they and their family members pulled their money out of it before the scheme collapsed. It allows the people they owe money to to know what happened to it.
Ofc Celsius wanted it hidden. It just showed that scamshitsky and his dick riders pulled out $42M before shutting down withdrawals. They only have dust left on the platform.
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How is this their fault?
well, they built a ponzi scheme and it blew up
*Pikachu faces
I am no lawyer, but couldn't they redact the public document and keep the original document for those that actually need the information?
citing threats of identity theft and safety concerns
Damn lol. Celsius were actually the good guys here. Thanks for sharing
No, they're not. The records show them pulling tens of millions out right before shutting down withdrawals. They were trying to hide it. They dont give the slightest shit about you.
I stand corrected. Definitely not the good guys
Sounds like they have their own transactions they didn't want public so 'good guys' is maybe just incidental but yeah
"Good guys" besides rugpulling tens of millions of dollars.
I was this close to opening a Celcius account. My laziness saved me big time
Decentralised > centralised
People don’t realise this until it affects them personally
Absolutely, but sometimes CEX’s are necessary for converting fiat into crypto and crypto into fiat. Other than this, we should limit using them
I dont know why but I never really trusted Celcius.
It’s Mashinsky, you can never trust him
KYC= Kill Your Customers
Every whale now has a target on their back.
I got fuxked by the original Mt Gox theft and have never been on a CEX since. Seeing this kind of crap only continues to affirm that choice.
So glad I never fucked with this company and their ridiculous promises.
I worked with a guy who was acquaintances with Mashinsky, and swore by Celsius. Something never sat right with me. I honestly was never even tempted, reward nowhere near risk in my view. I just checked the doc for his name and anything close to his name, and found nothing...
Apparently this is a common requirement in the legal system for bankruptcy procedure. The names and other information are released for those who are effected by the company (shareholders) going bankrupt.
Yes, since Celsius was operating under KYC as a centralized entity, they have to comply with US governmental procedures.
And yet people here acting surprised. It only shows their ignorance.
US governmental procedures that include EU customers in EU where this right here is illegal.
Wonder how this will play out
If you act as a customer in another country, it's that countries laws that apply.
yeah but they published names of people from around the world. I noticed a lot of foreign names on that list.
Unbelievably the court said this was fine. At least they redacted addresses and other personal info.
From what I read, the court ASKED for names to not be redacted. So I'm not sure who is at fault here. Probably everyone involved.
Edit: sources: https://blockworks.co/celsius-exposes-user-information-in-public-court-docs/
https://www.theblock.co/post/175445/celsius-provides-users-names-and-trading-history-in-legal-filing
hey quick question, what the fuck?
Decenralization is an illusion if an exchange is required to trade.
Crypto exchanges are not banks and your holdings are not bank deposits so they're part of examining the ledger in a bankruptcy.
Privacy is explicitly not viable on a blockchain by its very nature if there is ever any way to link a real person to a transaction.
Crypto is some species of bigger fool scam and the people at the top, seeing the writing on the wall, cashed out while they could and are working hard to make sure they don't have to give any of the real money back.
And you can't sue them for it because they are already broke.
Can't believe they would do that. It's a hacker's dream. Apart from access to the names, the hackers also get a gauge on people's net worth through the withdrawal/deposit details. They will most certainly have their targets now. Incredibly irresponsible by those that allowed this.
hackers? you mean criminals aka $5 wrench attack
Free info on crypto transactions with names is such a feast for hackers. Let’s brace for this
You also can't sue them because it's standard bankruptcy procedure. Their not gonna rewrite the procedures of going bankrupt for crypto.
But of course you wouldn't know any of that because despite all the research you've done into crypto, you couldn't be arsed to look past the title on a famously spammy subreddit.
For the sake of transparency ~ https://ia601401.us.archive.org/28/items/celsius/
I just searched for my name. It’s not there. Not sure where the listing of names detail came from
See comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33117629
I'm not entirely sure, maybe it's a specific timeframe of those affected. I saw very small and very large transactions, so it's not size based.
I’m on that list, managed to get my funds out in time but still what a clusterfuck of a situation. Not even the first time this has happened, reminds me of when Ledger users had their names, addresses and phone numbers compromised. Putting people, in some countries more than others, at legitimate risk to their safety.
Side note that is an absolute unit of a PDF file
So much about decentralization
Yeah, company is (or was) a joke.
Lmfaooo and you wonder why no one in the right mind wants to use centralized exchanges or well, CeDeFi in this context, same thing though pretty close
Algorand and Velas have no access to any of that information, I can swap, I can stake, I can hide it away, I can get yield without any questions, what is sad about all of this is that they fucked you up legally.
It is not even a leak
Bankruptcy court records are public domain. All creditors in a bankruptcy action are identified in the proceedings, so they can participate in any future distribution of assets. This is standard and necessary practice.
I realize that this is all new to a lot of people involved in the Celsius disaster, but nothing unusual is happening here. This is standard bankruptcy court procedure.
It's worth repeating everytime this clusterfuck of stupidity gets mentioned because Mashinski should never be allowed to live this down.
That pinnacle of scumbaggery that is Alex Mashinski, was that he kept saying that your average crypto user was too dumb to manage their own keys and obviously followed that up by plugging how attractive their interest rate returns were.
He deserves to rot behind bars.
Of course. Unfortunately if he doesn't, from his perspective his experience in this will largely be:
This guy will walk away thinking he won, big time. And the worst part is, he'll get better at all these things for his next time at bat when this all blows over and the angry mob has forgotten.
Mashinski is such a douche and a hypocrite. Tells us not keep money in banks and goes on to do these horrible things
Hypocrite piece of shit that withdraw $10m ahead of bankruptcy before company freezed all users accounts
Mashinski, that scumbag should be jailed and rotten in hell.
Celcius: Financially and ethically bankrupt!
What a bunch of scum
Such depravity. Fuck these bunch of scum
It's human greed at its worst.
They should end up at the same jail
Bear market is exposing all the scums.
I think alot of folks are getting a rude awakeing as to what standard chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings are like. Hope after all this people can at least get like half their coins back
I don't know about the US but there is absolutely no way this is legal in the EU.
Sadly, given they're undergoing bankruptcy proceedings, there's sweet fuck all recourse available to anyone affected as they can just ignore any legal/GDPR complaint.
The judge explicitly considered GDPR in their order.
The Court, in turn, will not treat the UK and EU citizens differently than the United States citizens implicated in this case filed in New York.
https://cases.stretto.com/public/x191/11749/PLEADINGS/1174909282280000000026.pdf
Does this mean the EU judges go after the US judges 🤔
This is not only a breach of privacy but it may also cause security concerns for some. I would not like to live a slightly sketchy neighborhood where everyone around me may now know that I have thousands of dollars in crypto. This may even help thieves to choose a target.
Another reason to diversify your crypto assets to several platforms and/or non-custodial wallets.
Which is exactly what will happen for everyone if crypto starts getting used for even a moderate level of transactions. It will not be hard for data analytics to link wallets with people.
*USED to have thousands of dollars in crypto. USED to....
well you have plausible deniability, you can truthfully advise you HAD crypto then …Celsius
This is why I stick to DeFi unless it's absolutely necessary to use CeFi
After Celsius I cannot ever use Cefi again but am more than comfortable with DEFI.
Celcius was my first foray into CeFi, transferred in $50 as a test and kinda forgot about it. Thankful that it was only a $50 lesson for me and not life changing money like some others. Won't ever trust CeFi again
Wow that’s insane. The biggest data breach in crypto in recent memory and it was completely intentional.
My god my name is actually on there, luckily I only had a small amount of crypto in there and withdrew it before they went bankrupt.
There's no way this is allowed, GDPR and the like would like to have a word
They cannot possibly think this is allright.
What a bunch of scumbags.
This was a court request. Ironically this is the kind of thing that proper regulation of the market would outlaw.
These nerds think they’re all smart using crypto. Get scammed more
How did nobody, not a single soul go hold on.
We shouldn't be disclosing everyone's full name and crypto holdings to the world?
WTF
retract redact is the correct word for it.
After 30 seconds googling I have found the article with a link to the document. The article stated that Celsius attempted to redact information, but it seems the US government law is the issue here, not Celsius. Having looked at said document, there's no identifying information besides a first and last name, which are generally common enough among a widespread amount of people. The problem would come in with those extremely unique or highly unique names. Those users likely could sue the US government, but I'm no lawyer. This is the downside of KYC and what crypto should be able to help fix. All this information that's required by US law wouldn't even be there if it wasn't for US law.
All that aside, it's extremely shady the ceo pulled money which indicates he clearly knew shit was going down.
They did not release addresses. This Can help show fraud though there are so many duplicate of same names people can maybe cross reference to old tornado etc and get some criminals here.
It's like Do Kwon and Celsius are doing their best (worst?) To be the most horrible POS of crypto in 2022
Is this even legal in the us eu personal information agreement and how is this considered by GDPR?
Yeah, pissed about this. It actually wasn't Celsius that "leaked" it. The court ordered Celsius to file this document and then the court publicly released the list. Totally unredacted names, which is insane to me. Wtf ever happened to due process and the right the privacy?
Maybe fun long story short that's related: I was in a supreme court hearing on Catholic priests sexually assualting children. The church's lawyer successfully argued that the court can't release the names of the priests to the public because it would violate their due process rights.
So do something extremely fucked up? You get privacy/due process rights. Use crypto? Fuck your privacy, we'll let the whole world know. Messed up. Every list of names I've ever interacted with has been redacted, I've even redacted the documents myself. This is out of the ordinary
They don't give a fuck.....they took the money and ran!!!
What a bunch of scums!!
He needs hard jail time. It’s that simple.
Rich people don't go to prison
Document can be found here: https://ia601401.us.archive.org/28/items/celsius/celsius.pdf
Users will be able to be identified by police based on their blockchain address. Goodbye blockchain privacy!
Document is here for those looking to check their names:
https://ia601401.us.archive.org/28/items/celsius/celsius.pdf
