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Olga Kharif
Crypto lender Celsius Network, which has been a subject of state and federal scrutiny, has named Rod Bolger as chief financial officer.
Celsius Chief Executive Alex Mashinsky confirmed the hiring in a post sent over Twitter after the Wall Street Journal reported it earlier. Representatives of Hoboken, New Jersey-based Celsius didn’t reply to requests for comment from Bloomberg.
Bolger spent more than 10 years at the Royal Bank of Canada, Canada’s largest bank, most recently as its chief financial officer. Before that, he was chief financial officer of Bank of America’s global technology and operations unit.
Celsius’s previous CFO, Yaron Shalem, is reportedly being investigated in Israel over his connections to a different startup. In November, the company announced it suspended an unnamed employee who is under investigation in Israel. Shalem is no longer listed on Celsius’s team page.
As of Feb. 11, Celsius said it had $20.4 billion in assets and more than 1.6 million users. The company offers yields of as much as 17%.
Companies offering digital-asset lending have attracted tens of billions of dollars in deposits by promising yields that far exceed those available through traditional savings accounts. The SEC under Chair Gary Gensler has frequently warned crypto platforms that they likely need to be registered with the agency or face the prospect of sanctions by the regulator.
Competitor BlockFi Inc. agreed earlier this week to pay record $100 million to the Securities and Exchange Commission and state regulators over allegations it illegally offered a product that pays customers high interest rates to lend out their digital tokens.
What’s Crypto Lending? Why Did BlockFi Make a Change?: QuickTake
