Problems at Voyager and Celsius (CEL) pile up: deception and leaked email files

You have undoubtedly heard something about the liquidity problems at Voyager Digital and Celsius in recent weeks. The two American crypto lending platforms are on the verge of financial ruin. That, in itself, is bad enough for users, but today there is even more misery for both parties.

False and misleading promises

According to the Federal Reserve and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), the lending platform Voyager Digital has made false and misleading promises on its website. The legal representatives of both parties wrote a letter to Voyager Digital about the misleading practices. They accuse the lending platform of having lied to their customers about possible protection from the US government in the event of bankruptcy.

Normally, private individuals are insured up to a certain amount for the collapse of banks, for example. In the Voyager Digital’s case, there is no such insurance or protection, while the organisation claims on its website that there is. According to the legal representation of the Federal Reserve and the FDIC, Voyager misled its users.

They now demand that Voyager Digital come up with a complete list of claims it makes on its website and in contracts about this “protection.” Furthermore, they indicate that it is possible that in the future, even if Voyager Digital complies with this request, a lawsuit will be filed against the lending platform. So, extra problems for the company that has been having a hard time over the past few weeks.

Email addresses of customers on the street

Voyager Digital is not the only one with piling up problems. Celsius, which is currently in the middle of bankruptcy proceedings, has also encountered new problems. On 26 July, the company sent out an e-mail to its customers, in which, it confessed that their e-mail addresses had been leaked. According to Celsius, the email addresses were leaked by an engineer from Customer.io, a third-party company that Celsius uses.

Announcement from Celsius: “We are writing to let you know that we
were recently informed by our vendorhttps://t.co/452EROQtbc that one of their employees
accessed a list of Celsius client email
addresses held on their platform and
transferred those to a third-party.”

— Celsians (@CelsiansNetwork) July 28, 2022

“We have just been informed that one of the employees of customer.io has obtained a list of Celsius email addresses,” reads Celcius’ tweet. Interestingly, this is part of the same data breach as the attack on OpenSea that took place in June this year. An e-mail file of OpenSea’s users was stolen then.

Little risk for customers Celsius

Although the leak of Celsius’ customer database is not nice for the customers, according to Celsius, there is no “high risk for our customers.” By sending out the email, it mainly wanted to inform its customers of the fact.

In principle, Celsius is right about that. However, it is still possible for malicious persons to launch a “phishing attack” in which they try to collect additional personal data. For example, the leak of Celsius’ customer database is less serious than the earlier leak at Ledger.

Ledger is a hardware manufacturer of wallets, and devices with which people store assets. The data leak at Ledger meant that these people’s full address details were made public. Naturally, this does constitute a risk that makes you, as a user, a little less happy. After all, it is possible that criminals will suddenly turn up on your doorstep with this information.