Our weekly roundup of news from East Asia curates the industry’s most important developments.
Blowing up a Singaporean crypto hedge fund worth an estimated $10 billion at its peak was, by all means, a life-changing event for its co-founders Kyle Davies and Zhu Su. It appears that the trauma from the incident had been so severe that the two executives embarked on a series of spiritual journeys starting mid-2022 to transcend the effects of Three Arrows Capital’s (3AC) bankruptcy.
The voyage appears to have been fruitful. From escaping the pursuit of creditors, to making philosophical observations after witnessing the deaths of German tourists, to discovering the grace of Allah through Islam, to reigniting their passion for life through the culinary arts, to finding companionship in Japanese NFT avatars, Davies and Su may have finally found the answer to overcoming life’s hardships: If you don’t get it right the first time, keep trying until you succeed.
After reportedly soliciting $25 million from investors in January, the former 3AC co-founders launched the OPNX exchange on April 5. The exchange is designed to trade bankruptcy claims of fallen crypto entities, such as their own bankrupt hedge fund. It is unclear how the highly personalized and private nature of bankruptcy claims can allow them to be traded on a public exchange without prior approval from bankruptcy trustees or courts.
Nevertheless, Davies and Su decided to press forward with the idea anyway. On the first day of trading, the total trading volume on OPNX in the previous 24 hours was reportedly $1.26. The report drew swift condemnations from OPNX, which clarified that the exchange’s 24-hour trading volume was actually $13.64, or 982% more than stated.