The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has closed its civil case against Alexander Mashinsky, the founder and former CEO of Celsius Network, with a federal consent order that imposes permanent trading and registration bans.

The order, entered by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, resolves the CFTC's 2023 enforcement action against Mashinsky. The agency said the order permanently enjoins him from further violations of certain anti-fraud provisions of the Commodity Exchange Act and CFTC rules.

The case goes back to Celsius' crypto lending platform, where customers deposited digital assets that Celsius pooled and deployed while promising weekly interest payments or rewards. The CFTC alleged that from 2018 through at least June 2022, Celsius and Mashinsky misrepresented the safety, profitability, and regulatory compliance of the platform. The agency said Celsius received customer funds totaling about $20 billion in value.

Celsius itself settled with the CFTC in July 2023, leaving Mashinsky as the remaining defendant in that case. The new order follows his parallel criminal case, in which the CFTC release says he pleaded guilty in December 2024 to one count of commodities fraud and one count of securities fraud.

For crypto credit markets, the practical signal is narrower than a new rulemaking but still important. The CFTC is treating digital-asset lending fraud as squarely within its enforcement perimeter when commodity interests and customer solicitations are involved. The ban also turns one of the largest 2022 crypto-lending failures into a lasting personal market prohibition.