Judge Freezes Assets of Crypto Hedge Fund Three Arrows Capital

A federal bankruptcy court has frozen the assets of Three Arrows Capital, the once-prominent crypto hedge fund that managed as much as $10 billion in assets until it fell into liquidation last month, the Washington Post reported. In an emergency hearing Tuesday, Judge Martin Glenn of the Southern District of New York granted a motion allowing liquidators to “transfer, encumber, or otherwise dispose” of any Three Arrows Capital assets located in the United States. In addition, the court authorized subpoenas for the founders, whose whereabouts are unknown. The Singapore-based company, also known as 3AC, was founded a decade ago by Su Zhu and Kyle Davies, who both studied at Columbia University in New York City and worked for the same investment bank before making their names as crypto influencers and managers of a multibillion-dollar fund. It did not, however, survive the broader crypto market meltdown that has erased hundreds of billions in value this year. Bitcoin, the most valuable digital currency, is trading below $20,000, having shed more than 70 percent of its value since last fall. On June 27, crypto broker Voyager Digital said that Three Arrows Capital had not made payments on a loan worth more than $665 million. The same day, a court in the British Virgin Islands ordered the fund into liquidation. Four days later, 3AC filed for bankruptcy under chapter 15 of the U.S. bankruptcy code, which allows a foreign debtor to deal with their U.S. assets. The court-appointed liquidators — Russell Crumpler and Christopher Farmer of the global advisory firm Teneo — cited a “lack of cooperation to date” by Zhu and Davies in a July 8 filing, whose whereabouts they say are unknown. Though the fund’s lawyer, Christopher Anand Daniel of Singapore-based Advocatus Law, has been in contact, liquidators say, the co-founders have not begun to cooperate “in any meaningful manner.” Read more.