A brazen co-founder of bankrupt cryptocurrency hedge fund 3AC has said that he’s ‘not sorry’ the company lost billions of investor cash.
Kyle Davies and his business partner Su Zhu face over $3.5 billion in creditors’ claims after their once-successful fund crashed amid the 2022 crypto downturn.
While Zhu was arrested and served three months in prison for failing to coordinate with liquidators, Davies managed to avoid the same fate by remaining on the run.
In an appearance this week on the Unchained podcast, where he refused to reveal his location, Davies grinned as he was asked about whether he had any remorse over losing billions of investors’ money.
‘Am I sorry for a company going bankrupt? No, like companies go bankrupt, almost every company goes bankrupt, right?’ he said.
Kyle Davies, the co-founder of bankrupt crypto hedge fund 3AC, grinned as he refused to apologize for losing billions of investor cash, saying ‘almost every company goes bankrupt, right?’
Kyle Davies and his business partner Su Zhu (right). In September 2023, Zhu was arrested in Changi Airport in Singapore for contempt of court after ignoring orders to comply with liquidators
Davies and Zhu founded 3AC, or Three Arrows Capital, in 2012, and raked in billions from investors as cryptocurrencies soared.
At its peak, the fund managed around $18 billion, but suffered heavy losses when the LUNA and Terra cryptocurrencies collapsed.
According to Capital.com, the founders then defaulted on loans after their hedge fund went bust, which also came in part from their borrowing from over 20 institutions.
With investors seeking their billions back, court orders in the British Virgin Islands, and subsequently in Singapore and the US, have struggled to nail down Davies.
In September 2023, Zhu was arrested in Changi Airport in Singapore for contempt of court after ignoring orders to comply with liquidators, however Davies claimed in his podcast appearance this week that they didn’t know they were being sought.
Asked by host Laura Shin if he planned to fire the lawyers that allegedly failed to tell them about the court date, he said: ‘Maybe we should.’
He said Zhu clearly didn’t know as otherwise he would never have re-entered Singapore, which is why he has not returned to the country despite renouncing his US citizenship to obtain a Singaporean citizenship.
‘Su’s prison time certainly caught him by surprise, no one wants to go to jail,’ Davies added to New York Magazine.
Su Zhu (left) was sought by officials in Singapore, the Virgin Islands and the US. Zhu was arrested last year and served 3 months behind bars, and Davies has remained on the run
Davies has refused to offer his location, and viewers of his recent podcast appearance reacted with fury at his cavalier attitude to losing billions
Davies (left) and Zhu (right). At its peak, the fund managed around $18 billion, but suffered heavy losses when the LUNA and Terra cryptocurrencies collapsed
In an appearance this week on the Unchained podcast, where he refused to reveal his location, Davies grinned as he was asked about whether he had any remorse over losing billions of investors’ money
Davies has also been sentenced to the same four-month prison stretch as Zhu by Singaporean authorities, however his whereabouts have remained a mystery – although he reportedly told the outlet that he was in Portugal in February.
He added that while he won’t go back to Singapore ‘immediately,’ given the threat of prison, and felt that ‘obviously these things just resolve at some point, there are settlements.’
Many have reacted with fury at Davies’ attitude in the podcast appearance, as he appeared to take a flippant approach to talking about the lost cash.
‘It’s how you build or what you do about it. We’re definitely trying our best,’ he said when asked about his regrets.
‘We can add value in various ways. At a minimum, we can even tell the next Three Arrows how to do things better when they go bankrupt.’
His talk of ‘building’ from the collapsed companies comes as scrutiny has also fallen on an April 2023 startup by the 3AC founders, OPNC, a bankruptcy claims exchange.
According to Coindesk, OPNX was formally reprimanded by Dubai’s crypto regulator for operating an unregulated exchange within a month of its founding.
By February 2024, the exchange had been shut down.
The two founders are pictured hard at work, before the crypto fund collapsed in 2022
Zhu still frequently offers crypto advice on his well-followed Twitter account
AC3’s demise came at the same time fellow crypto heavyweights were facing similar fates, including Sam Bankman-Fried (pictured center), who faces upwards of 100 years behind bars
And with Davies continuing to make appearances in the cryptosphere, Zhu – who was released in December on good behavior – has remained active through his Twitter account, where he still offers trading advice.
Their demise came at the same time fellow crypto heavyweights were also facing consequences, as many said the vulnerabilities in the cryptocurrency industry were becoming more and more evident.
Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of infamous Bahamas crypto firm FTX, was convicted of one of the largest financial frauds in history while Zhu was behind bars.
He is awaiting sentencing, which is scheduled for March 28. He faces upwards of 100 years behind bars.
At the same time, the former CEO of Binance, Changpeng Zhao, pleaded guilty to anti-money laundering violations, and the trader behind Luna – which contributed to 3AC’s collapse – was ordered to be extradited to the US and South Korea.
While Bankman-Fried has been condemned by US prosecutors as one of the worst financial criminals in history, the disgraced trader blamed the wider 2022 crypto collapse directly on 3AC.
‘I suspect they might be 80 percent of the total original contagion,’ he told New York Magazine in 2022.
‘They weren’t the only people who blew out, but they did it way bigger than anyone else did. And they had way more trust from the ecosystem prior to that.’