Hedge, Speculative or Ponzi

Hyman Minsky taking Celsius' temperature

One of the darling businesses of the last cycle, having raised a total $850M+ in venture funds, centralized crypto lending platform Celsius just froze account withdrawals amid today’s selloff.

This reminds me of Hyman Minsky’s three-part taxonomy of finance, described below in this excerpt from the latest edition of the book “Manias, Panics and Crashes” by Charles Kindleberger.

During crisis, hedge businesses can become speculative.

And speculative businesses can quickly become ponzis.