When Retirement Meets Leverage: The Nexo Trap - Case 2025-000001

In 2021, I believed I had found a safe and flexible credit line against my crypto holdings through Nexo.

What I didn’t realize — and what no reasonable retirement-age investor could be expected to realize — was that I was entering a complex, high-risk margin account structure designed to maximize liquidation risk.

Despite presenting the product as a stable APR loan secured by collateral, Nexo operated a fully discretionary leverage engine:

• There were no protective guardrails against volatile market swings
• Loan-to-value (LTV) ratios were obscured and subject to change without notice
• Traditional risk mitigation tools like stop-loss mechanisms were unavailable
• Risk assessments were not conducted as required by regulators across jurisdictions
• Borrowers were not warned in advance of the systemic risk they were assuming

I lost over $3 million, including my entire retirement savings due to forced account liquidation.

This was not a business failure. It was a legal design failure. One that exploited asymmetry, jurisdictional fog, and procedural intimidation to avoid meaningful scrutiny.

As a retirement-age investor, I had no realistic chance to earn back what was lost. The product was irreparably unsuitable for my time horizon and risk profile — something any responsible financial institution would have evaluated.

This was not just bad luck. It was structural abuse.

And I am not the only one.

🧭 If you have experienced something similar, or have insight into systemic investor harm, please reach out via Content Integrity & Challenge Policy.