ALEX Mashinsky is a serial entrepreneur but is best known for founding Celsius Network – a cryptocurrency lending platform which went bankrupt on July 13, 2022.
But what is the story behind Mashinsky and what is his net worth?
Who is Alex Mashinsky?
Alex Mashinsky was born October 5, 1965 in Ukraine but later immigrated to Israel.
Mashinsky went to a number of universities where he majored in electrical engineering but didn’t graduate.
He then went on to serve in the Israeli Army from 1984-1987, where he trained as a pilot.
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After visiting New York in 1988, he never left saying: “I looked around and I’m like, I’m never going back.”
Since then he has founded eight companies, including Transit Wireless which provides Wi-Fi to the New York City subway.
When he first arrived in the US, Mashinsky ran a business trading chemicals such as urea, gold, and sodium cyanide but following the Tiananmen Square, China protests in 1989, business slowed as exports of sodium cyanide from China stopped.
Mashinsky then went on to work at A+ Systems, a computer-based voicemail software company before founding VoiceSmart in the early 1990s, one of the first firms to offer telecoms switches that could handle call routing for both ordinary voice and voice over Internet Protocol networks.
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In 1996, Mashinsky founded Arbinet, which was a marketplace which allowed telecommunication companies to trade minutes.
In 2005, he sold his stake in Arbinet and used the profits to start GroundLink.
GroundLink was a service to book limousine and car services from a computer or smartphone.
He also founded Q-Wireless, which later became part of Transit Wireless.
Mashinsky’s company Q-Wireless is one of the four companies that made up Transit Wireless, a joint venture to install wireless cellphone and free Wi-Fi internet service in the New York City Subway system.
From 2014 to 2015, Mashinsky then served as CEO of Novatel – a provider of Wi-Fi hotspot products before joining the cryptocurrency industry in 2017, when his venture fund Governing Dynamics brought on blockchain company MicroMoney as a strategic partner. He then founded Celsius the same year.
Celsius operated like a traditional bank, but for cryptocurrency rather than fiat.
Celsius claimed it had 1.7 million users and $11.7 billion assets under management at its peak.
The firm offered over 7 per cent return on stablecoins such as USDC and Tether, 7.25 per cent for Polygon, 6 per cent for Ethereum, and 6.25 per cent for Bitcoin.
Celsius then loaned out its tokens at higher rates to borrowers.
But the company struggled to generate enough revenue to pay the yields and collapsed in July 2017.
Mashinsky resigned as Celsius CEO on September 27, 2022.
What is Alex Mashinsky’s net worth?
Despite Celsius going bankrupt, Alex Mashinsky is still believed to be worth $50 million.
Mashinsky has invested in more than 60 businesses and reportedly raised more than $1 billion in funding for his ventures.
He has also achieved over $3 billion in exits.
Mashinsky still lives in New York City with his wife, Krissy Mashinsky, and six children.