Kyle Davies and Su Zhu, the founders of hedge fund Three Arrows Capital, recently helped launch OPNX, a new cryptocurrency exchange. That same exchange recently hinted at a collaboration with 3AC Ventures, leaking the news that the bankrupt fund would be back under a new name.
3AC back under a new name
Kyle Davies and Su Zhu, the founders of bankrupt hedge fund Three Arrows Capital (3AC) – which owes more than $3.5 billion to its creditors, have managed to spring a second surprise within the cryptocurrency ecosystem.
Back in January, we reported that the 2 partners wanted to set up a crypto exchange alongside Mark Lamb and Sudhu Arumugam, the 2 founders of CoinFlex, an exchange that was itself undergoing restructuring.
Well, this exchange did indeed see the light of day under the name OPNX (for Open Exchange) last February, keeping its promise to participate in the reimbursement of its customers, as its manifesto indicates:
“Open Exchange is a solution and a home for people harmed by the crypto crises. It allows them who want to to immediately unlock the value of their claims, either by exchanging them into crypto or using them as margin collateral. “
This initial announcement had already provoked its fair share of negative backlash from the crypto community, with Kyle Davies and Su Zhu keeping their past relationship with FTX unclear. Recently, however, we learned via a tweet from OPNX that the platform has “3AC Ventures” as a partner, which of course suggests a new iteration of the failed fund, to everyone’s surprise.
We are excited to announce OPNX’s ecosystem partner- 3AC Ventures.
The partnership will invest in projects building in the OPNX ecosystem and working towards a decentralized future.
– OPNX (@OPNX_Official) June 21, 2023
Furthermore, no information is currently available on the 3AC Ventures website, other than a note on the home page stating that “3AC Ventures focuses on superior unleveraged risk-adjusted returns” with an email contact form.
An important detail, as 3AC is notorious for having used some of its $10 billion in assets under management to open leveraged positions, an operation that proved unsuccessful.
An attack on the co-founder of The Block
OPNX has filed a defamation lawsuit against Mike Dudas, the co-founder of crypto media outlet The Block and now full-time at 6th Man Ventures, a Web3-focused investment fund he himself founded.
According to the complaint, Mike Dudas wrote defamatory comments about OPNX a few months ago, although the comments in question have not been disclosed. A detail that Mike Dudas’ lawyers themselves seem to be waiting for, according to a comment made to our colleagues at CoinDesk:
“To prove defamation, you have to show, among other things, damage to reputation. We look forward to seeing how the plaintiff plans to prove that in this case. “
Following the case, OPNX launched a “justice token” called $DUDAS, which should be used to “compensate” exchange customers who may have been harmed by Mike Dudas’s defamation. The whitepaper for OPNX’s justice tokens mentions “memecoins with no intrinsic value, no support and no expectation of return”. A promising project
