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Understanding Celsius Network: a review

TL;DR: You can get a summary of this article on its last section

The Celsius Network is a major decentralized finance application that offers Crypto savings and loans. The service is accessible via mobile applications for both [iOS] and [Android]. Support is available via ticket and email. Besides Crypto finance, the Celsius wallet offers a zero-fee payment product in CelPay.

I will divide this review into 5 sections covering the Celsius Network’s most salient features:

1. origin and team
2. potential
3. CEL token
4. Crypto savings & loan
5. summary.

Origin and Team

The Celsius project was conceived by Alex Mashinsky, a veteran hi-tech entrepreneur and inventor of the voice over internet protocol (VOIP), and cofounders S. Daniel Leon, an early-stage growth expert, and Nuke Goldstein, a software architect and AI specialist — both from Israel, where Mashinsky grew up. Celsius, after raising $50M in its ICO, has been backed with venture capital by, among others, [BnkToTheFuture] and [Tether][USDT]. The founding team still runs the company as CEO, COO, and CTO respectively.

Celsius Network, after its launch in March 2018, has grown to a team of 50+, distributed in offices in London (where the project is headquartered), New York, New Jersey, Tel Aviv, and throughout the world. Starting with the Celsius wallet, and providing interest payments since August 2018, the Celsius Network now has $700M+ in assets under management, has originated $8B+ in loans, and is supported by $124k+ active wallets. Needless to say, the Celsius Network is one of the most successful DeFi applications in existence.

Potential

Mashinsky refers to the Celsius Network as like going “from VOIP to MOIP”. In more elaborate words, he is alluding to the effects of putting the banking system over the Internet, and particularly, over decentralized applications. In a similar vein to how almost nobody 25 years ago believed calls would be free as an Internet app, no one is ready for the eventual growth of the Blockchain to absorb both existing financial systems and the Internet itself.

So what does MOIP look like according to the Celsius team? According to Mashinsky, banks who pay 1% APY to depositors and charge 30% APR to cardholders take 90–95% of the value in the system for themselves. Celsius, on the other hand, by using Blockchain, AI, and other advanced technologies, is capable of providing 80% of the value back to depositors, which translates to savings with up to 9% APY and credit lines as low as 1% APR. Mashinsky believes this has the potential to bring to Crypto the next 100M users.

Applications like Celsius Network are but the beginning of the transformation of Blockchain, which is continually expanding its capabilities. [Bitcoin][BTC] and [Ethereum][ETH] are already amongst the largest networks of computing power in the world. Mashinsky swears by the adage that the largest network eventually wins, and that if we required more proof we would see most advances in computing today are being driven by the demands of running more and more applications and serving more users in the public blockchains.

CEL token

The CEL token is an in=app utility for the Celsius Network. The relative amount of CEL in your Celsius wallet will determine your membership level and thus rewards you will get as bonus interest for savings as well as rate discounts for loans. For CEL holders, if the ratio of CEL compared to the rest of the user’s portfolio is