Two co-founders of Celsius, the crypto lender that collapsed in 2022, have agreed to settle with the US Federal Trade Commission, Cointelegraph reported. It is another piece of the slow legal cleanup from one of the largest failures of the last crypto downturn.

The amounts, and the number behind them

Shlomi Daniel Leon, Celsius's former chief strategy officer, will pay $4.1 million. Hanoch "Nuke" Goldstein, the former chief technology officer, will pay $2.014 million. Combined, that is $6.114 million. Leon's order was entered on June 29 and Goldstein's this week.

The important detail is what those payments relate to. They sit against a much larger $4.72 billion judgment that is partially suspended, with the co-founders' cash payments credited toward it.

This structure is standard in FTC consumer-protection cases and is often misread. The multibillion-dollar figure represents the agency's calculation of total consumer harm. The suspended portion is not collected, generally because the defendants cannot pay anything close to it; what they actually pay is the smaller sum tied to their ability to pay. So the real cash outlay here is the $6.114 million, while the $4.72 billion is the measure of the harm and the amount that becomes due if the settlement terms are breached or the disclosed finances prove false.

Reporting the big number without the small one overstates what changes hands; reporting the small one without the big one understates what the conduct was found to be worth. Both belong together.

What the FTC alleged

The core of the case is that Celsius told customers their money was safe when, the FTC alleges, it was not.

Specifically, the company is said to have falsely claimed that it held sufficient reserves to meet withdrawal demands, that it maintained a $750 million insurance policy covering customer deposits, and that it did not issue unsecured loans. According to the reporting, executives continued to reassure customers that their deposits were secure in the days before Celsius filed for bankruptcy in July 2022.

Those are the three claims that matter for a lender: that it can give you your money back, that there is a backstop if it cannot, and that it is not taking hidden risks with your deposits. The allegation is that all three were untrue.

Permanent bans

Both settlements carry conduct bans, not just money.

Leon is barred from marketing or selling products or services that can be used to deposit, exchange, invest or withdraw assets. Goldstein faces a related prohibition on marketing or selling retail crypto trading and deposit services. In practice these are industry bans: the two are shut out of the business in which the conduct occurred.

Where it sits in the wider cleanup

This is not the first Celsius-related FTC action, nor the most severe outcome for its leadership.

Former chief executive Alex Mashinsky settled with the FTC for $10 million in April, and separately was sentenced to 12 years in prison in May 2025 after pleading guilty to commodities and securities fraud. His criminal exposure was of a different order from the co-founders' civil settlements, and the distinction is worth keeping clear: a prison sentence for fraud is a different thing from a civil consumer-protection settlement with a suspended judgment.

Taken together, the actions trace a familiar arc for a collapsed financial firm. The company is dealt with first, then the individuals, with the most culpable facing criminal liability and others resolving civil claims by paying what they can and accepting bans from the industry. For depositors, none of it is the same as getting their money back, which runs through the separate bankruptcy process; enforcement punishes the conduct, it does not make customers whole.

The takeaway

The verifiable facts are narrow and clear: two co-founders, $6.114 million in actual payments, credited against a $4.72 billion harm judgment, plus industry bans, over allegations that Celsius lied about reserves, insurance and lending. The larger lesson is the oldest one in finance, restated in crypto: a promise that deposits are safe is only as good as the reserves and the honesty behind it, and "insured" and "fully reserved" are claims to check, not to take.