Celsius Network paused withdrawals, swaps and transfers after weeks of speculation over the sustainability of the outsized returns being offered by the "decentralized finance" lending platform, fueling a broad cryptocurrency selloff.
Crypto markets tumbled after the Celsius announcement, with bitcoin dropping as much as 14% to the lowest level since December 2020 and other major tokens such as ether also falling sharply. Celsius’s CEL token was down about 50% to 19 cents as of 7:16 a.m. in New York, according to pricing data site CoinGecko.
The meltdown is the latest blow to decentralized finance, or DeFi, crypto’s answer to traditional finance, with more control and less costs for users but also less oversight and more risk.