Cody McGrath 
According to the company, Celsius CEO Alex Mashinsky has remained to work on restoring liquidity and operations rather than trying to flee.
According to the company, struggling cryptocurrency lending startup Celsius is doing everything it can to restore operations alongside CEO Alex Mashinsky, who is now based in the United States.
A spokeswoman for Celsius has refuted claims that the Celsius Network’s persistent liquidity crisis caused the company’s CEO to attempt to leave the country last week.
On Monday, the representative informed Cointelegraph that the company is still attempting to restore liquidity, saying:
“All Celsius employees — including our CEO — are focused and hard at work in an effort to stabilize liquidity and operations. To that end, any reports that the Celsius CEO has attempted to leave the U.S. are false.”
After Mike Alfred, co-founder of the cryptocurrency analytics company Digital Assets Data claimed on Twitter on Sunday that Mashinsky attempted to leave the nation last week using Morristown Airport in New Jersey, Celsius made his statement shortly after.
According to Alfred, the CEO of Celsius was attempting to travel to Israel, citing an unnamed source. “Unclear at this moment whether he was arrested or simply barred from leaving,” he added.
Alfred’s comments came after Celsius experienced a significant “short squeeze” akin to that of GameStop, with the native token Celsius (CEL) rising by 300 percent in just one week by June 21. On June 14, the price of CEL also rapidly rose by more than 600%, with observers attributing the occurrence to an exchange error or the liquidation of short speculators.
According to CoinGecko, CEL is currently trading at $0.741, down about 5% over the previous 24 hours. Over the last 14 days, the native token of Celsius has increased by more than 160 percent.
The claims Alfred made in his tweets regarding Mashinsky have drawn criticism from several industry watchers in the crypto world, many of whom view them as FUD.
Celsius officially declared on June 13 that it would be “pausing all withdrawals, swaps, and transfers between accounts,” as Cointelegraph has previously reported. The investigation into Celsius was subsequently launched by American officials as a result of the freezing of several accounts on the network.
According to some observers, given that other lenders in the market have lately had similar concerns, Celsius’ liquidity issues should be linked to flaws in the current crypto lending paradigm generally.
Celsius has apparently been working hard to address the platform’s liquidity crisis, hiring advisers and restructuring consultants to assist with any prospective bankruptcy proceedings. BnkToTheFuture, the principal investor in Celsius, and co-founder Simon Dixon committed to helping the network by implementing a recovery plan on June 18.