Crypto Lending Company Celsius Names New CFO

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Cel­sius Net­work LLC, a cryp­tocur­ren­cy lender, has hired the for­mer finance chief of the

Roy­al Bank of Canada

to become its new chief finan­cial officer.

Rod Bolger,

who left Canada’s largest bank in Sep­tem­ber after five years as its CFO, offi­cial­ly start­ed work­ing at Hobo­ken, N.J.-based Cel­sius on Monday.

Mr. Bol­ger suc­ceeds inter­im CFO Roni Cohen-Pavon, who stepped in after the pre­vi­ous finance chief, Yaron Shalem, was named in Israel as part of a police inves­ti­ga­tion into mon­ey laundering.

Rod Bolger is the new CFO of Celsius Network.



Photo:

Cel­sius Network

Mr. Shalem had been CFO for 10 months, accord­ing to his LinkedIn pro­file. Cel­sius sus­pend­ed him in Novem­ber and said that no com­pa­ny assets were mis­placed or mis­han­dled. The com­pa­ny declined to com­ment beyond its ear­li­er statement.

Cel­sius holds more than $20 bil­lion worth of cryp­tocur­ren­cies, includ­ing bit­coin. Though it is not a bank, the com­pa­ny emu­lates many of the ser­vices offered by tra­di­tion­al finan­cial firms. Cel­sius accepts cryp­to deposits, allows peo­ple to bor­row U.S. dol­lars against their hold­ings and offers returns to depos­i­tors as high as 17.85%, depend­ing on the currency.

It is part of the decen­tral­ized finance indus­try, or DeFi, where com­pa­nies offer finan­cial ser­vices on pub­lic blockchains.

Cel­sius has also invest­ed in cryp­tocur­ren­cy min­ers, includ­ing Rhodi­um Enter­pris­es Inc. and Lux­or Tech­nol­o­gy Corp., in a bid to diver­si­fy its rev­enue sources.

The pri­vate­ly held com­pa­ny raised $750 mil­lion in a Series B fund­ing round in Novem­ber from investors includ­ing San Fran­cis­co-based investor West­Cap Group LLC and Caisse de dépôt et place­ment du Québec, one of Canada’s largest pen­sion funds, giv­ing it a val­u­a­tion of $3.5 billion.

Mr. Bol­ger will be tasked with shep­herd­ing the cryp­to lender through its next phase of growth, said Cel­sius Chief Executive

Alex Mashinsky.

“His sea­soned expe­ri­ence as the CFO at one of the world’s largest banks will be piv­otal to our com­mit­ment to remain com­pli­ant with new reg­u­la­tions as we scale, and fur­thers our com­mit­ment to our cus­tomers in pro­vid­ing a world-class expe­ri­ence on our plat­form,” Mr. Mashin­sky said in a statement.

Mr. Bol­ger is the lat­est exec­u­tive that Mr. Mashin­sky has hired to bol­ster Cel­sius’ ranks. The com­pa­ny appoint­ed a new chief oper­at­ing offi­cer and a chief invest­ment offi­cer in Jan­u­ary, look­ing to build out the company’s infra­struc­ture, gov­er­nance and man­age­ment practices.

While the SEC hasn’t announced major actions against big cryp­to exchanges, the com­mis­sion has threat­ened to sue com­pa­nies offer­ing cryp­to lend­ing. WSJ’s Dion Rabouin explains why this one part of the cryp­to mar­ket has drawn such a strong reac­tion. Pho­to: Mark Lennihan/Associated Press

Mr. Bol­ger said he joined the com­pa­ny because he is inter­est­ed in how quick­ly tech­nol­o­gy and ser­vices in finan­cial ser­vices have been devel­op­ing, and wants to help pro­vide a gov­er­nance and finan­cial frame­work for ser­vices that have yet to be ful­ly inte­grat­ed into the finan­cial sys­tem by regulators.

Cel­sius plans to even­tu­al­ly go pub­lic, said Mr. Bol­ger. Mean­while, he expects the learn­ing curve to be steep, though root­ed in famil­iar ideas, he said.

“It’s about help­ing clients earn mon­ey, bor­row mon­ey and swap mon­ey. Those con­cepts are sec­ond nature to me,” Mr. Bol­ger said.

Caisse declined to com­ment on the hire, and West­Cap didn’t imme­di­ate­ly respond to a request for comment.

Write to Vipal Mon­ga at vipal.monga@wsj.com

Cor­rec­tions & Ampli­fi­ca­tions
A quote attrib­uted to Mr. Bol­ger should read, “It’s about help­ing clients earn mon­ey, bor­row mon­ey and swap mon­ey.” An ear­li­er ver­sion of this arti­cle incor­rect­ly quot­ed him as say­ing, “It’s about help­ing clients earn mon­ey, move mon­ey and swap mon­ey.” (Cor­rect­ed on Feb. 18.)

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