Celsius network, a decentralized finance (defi) platform, announced Sunday night that it was’pause all withdrawals, swap, and transfers between accounts’. It has 1.7 million customers.

The company’s token, CEL, is trading at 23 cents as of this writing. That’s a 92 percent decrease from April 8th, when CEL was worth $ 3.

The value of assets on its platform dropped by half to $ 12 billion in May, from $ 24 billion in December 2021. Between March and may, a billion dollars flowed out of the system.

‘Celsius has the reserves (and more than enough ETH) to meet obligations, as dictated by our comprehensive liquidity risk management framework’.

On June 12th, an email to all customers started off from June 12th to June 12th. The email was posted online on June 12.

Today we are taking this action to put Celsius in a better position to honor, over time, its withdrawal obligations. This is due to extreme market conditions.

An advertisement on Celsius’s site as of this writing offered an 18.63 annual percentage yield on crypto deposits. Unlike a bank, Celsius does n’t have FDIC government insurance that protects people in case of a bank failure.

Skeptics have repeatedly warned that Celsius network is bound to fail. Some have even argued that Celsius is a Ponzi scheme.

Celsius network borrowed $ 500 million from tether, the dollar-pegged stablecoin. The loan is collateralized in Bitcoin.

Canada’s second-largest pension fund invested in the company. Caisse de Depot and placement du Quebec invested as part of a $ 400 million equity round for the company.

On September 17th, 2021 alone, New Jersey issued a cease-and-desist order to Celsius network. Alabama asked of the company why it should n’t be banned within a month.

The defi platform badgerdao was hacked in December. Blockchain activity showed Celsius network lost $ 54 million worth of crypto. Celsius claimed client and user assets were not affected.