Key points to remember
- 3AC co-founders Su Zhu and Kyle Davies want to launch their own crypto exchange.
- They are asking for $25 million from investors.
- GTX, as the project is called, aims to be a public marketplace for crypto claims.
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Su Zhu and Kyle Davies want to tap into the booming crypto claims market by launching their own exchange. The crypto community is unimpressed.
GTX
Three Arrows Capital is planning something of a comeback.
3AC co-founders Su Zhu and Kyle Davies are while searching to raise $25 million to start a new crypto exchange by the name of GTX. They are joined in the venture by CoinFLEX co-founders Mark Lamb and Sudhu Arumugam.
According to the pitch desk, GTX will enable the exchange of crypto claims — which the document describes as a $20 billion deal — in deals tied to FTX, Celsius, BlockFi, Mt. Gox and other bankrupt crypto companies . The GTX team next plans to expand the product offering to enable trading in cryptocurrencies, stocks, and currencies.
Zhu and Davies’ crypto hedge fund, 3AC, exploded in June 2022 following the collapse of Terra, triggering massive contagion within the crypto industry and forcing several crypto lenders into bankruptcy. The two co-founders shamelessly refused to cooperate with liquidators and creditors, to the point that the Supreme Court of Singapore and the United States Department of Justice recently issued them subpoenas via Twitter.
CoinFLEX, meanwhile, was the crypto exchange that gave Bitcoin evangelist Roger Ver a $47 million loan and then tried to monetize its bad debt by issuing a token called rvUSD. It then decided to lay off part of its workforce in order to finance the restructuring of the company.
Unsurprisingly, the GTX pitch desk was poorly received in the crypto community. “If you are investing in the ‘Exchange’ CoinFLEX/3AC(‘s), you may find it a bit harder to work with Wintermute in the future (on the relationship building side)”, declared Wintermute CEO Evgeny Gaevoy. “Also, we’re not going to be in venture capital rounds where these guys are about to enter the cap table, so founders beware.”
Nic Carter, co-founder of Castle Island Express a similar feeling. “You can make ‘upsetting’ ‘back story’ bets on anyone you want, even bottom-of-the-barrel dishonored fraudsters, but there are costs associated with that.”
Disclaimer: At the time of writing this article, the author of this article owned BTC, ETH, and several other crypto assets.
