Cryptocurrency ‘bloodbath’ threatens multibillion-dollar hedge fund

theguardian.com:

The “bloodbath” in the cryptocurrency sector may claim another victim, with the co-founder of multibillion dollar hedge fund Three Arrows Capital using Twitter in an attempt to battle rumours that the company is insolvent following the market collapse.

With a net asset value of $18bn (£14.9bn) in its last public statement, the Singapore-based hedge fund was known for taking large, highly leveraged stakes in crypto businesses and cryptocurrencies directly. It holds positions in cryptocurrencies including bitcoin, Ethereum and Solana, as well as equity investments in companies such as the BlockFi exchange and options trading platform Deribit.

The turmoil in the crypto markets has substantially reduced the value of those holdingsand wiped out some other stakes the fund, known as 3AC, has taken, including in doomed “algorithmic stablecoin” project Terra and “play-to-earn” game Axie Infinity, which was the victim of a $700m hack late last year, attributed to North Korean state-sponsored hackers.

Zhu Su, the Dubai-based investor behind the crypto-focused trading house, tweeted on Wednesday morning that “we are in the process of communicating with relevant parties and fully committed to working this out”.

With traders already nursing wounds after a 25% drop in the price of bitcoin in a single day, sparked by the announcement by ersatz crypto bank Celsius that it would be suspending withdrawals, Zhu’s statement kicked off a further day of turmoil in the crypto sector. Crypto exchange Binance’s chief executive, Changpeng Zhao, described the situation as a “bloodbath”.

Bitcoin’s value continued to