Three Arrows Capital received authorization from a U.S. court on Tuesday to issue subpoenas and lay claim to the assets of the bankrupt Singapore-based business, despite the fact that 3AC's founders are no longer in charge of its accounts due to their disappearance.
U.S. The liquidators were given the go-ahead by Bankruptcy Judge Martin Glenn in Manhattan to seize 3AC's assets located in the United States and to summon the company's founders, approximately two dozen banks, and cryptocurrency exchanges who might be able to provide information on its holdings and movements.
The whereabouts of the company's founders Zhu Su and Kyle Livingstone Davies are still a mystery, according to Adam Goldberg, a lawyer representing the liquidators, who made this statement during a Tuesday emergency hearing before Glenn.
The liquidators have not been able to obtain a clear picture of 3AC's assets and their whereabouts without the founders' participation, according to Goldberg. Because the assets are digital, there is a significant risk that the founders or other parties will steal them unless a court injunction prevents them, he said.
The world being made aware that the liquidators are currently in charge of the debtor's assets is a crucial component of this order, according to Goldberg.
Zhu and Davies did not show up in court and did not raise any objections to the liquidators' motion for subpoena power. On Tuesday, Zhu tweeted for the first time in nearly a month, claiming that the liquidators had declined their offer to work with them in good faith.
According to the liquidators' court statement, 3AC, which had $10 billion in cryptocurrency earlier in 2022, had $3 billion in assets as of April. In the British Virgin Islands, the company declared bankruptcy in late June after suffering greatly from a dramatic decline in the value of digital currencies. View More
Due to 3AC's insolvency, other cryptocurrency lenders have become unstable, including Blockchain.com, which lent 3AC $270 million, and Voyager Digital, which declared bankruptcy after 3AC failed to repay a debt of around $650 million in cryptocurrencies.
A British Virgin Islands court instructed the liquidators to wind down the business and settle its debts. To protect 3AC's U.S. assets, they filed a parallel bankruptcy action in Manhattan.
Singapore's crypto aspirations shaken
Following the recent failure of cryptocurrency fund Three Arrows Capital, a high-profile victim of the global digital currency crisis, Singapore's ambitious cryptocurrency sector, by some metrics Asia-largest, Pacific's faces an unclear future.
Players in the financial hub of Southeast Asia are preparing for more bankruptcies and legal disputes and anticipate that the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), whose hospitable attitude helped to draw companies from China, India, and other countries, may become less friendly.
Hoi Tak Leung, a senior technology sector lawyer at Ashurst, stated that it is likely that the MAS will become more strict regarding cryptocurrencies and digital assets in light of recent developments.
According to KPMG, investment in Singapore's blockchain and cryptocurrency startups increased tenfold in 2021 to $1.48 billion, accounting for roughly half of the region's total investment.
In stark contrast to China's ban, an Indian cryptocurrency tax that has crippled trade, and upcoming laws in Hong Kong that would only allow professionals to invest in cryptocurrencies, regulators at the MAS have stated that they seek to stimulate the provision of crypto-related services.
Only a small number of the more than 150 crypto businesses who sought for a new crypto payments licence from the MAS in 2020 have so far been granted one.
However, the situation has become more complicated with the collapse of Three Arrows Capital (3AC), which started liquidation proceedings in the British Virgin Islands on June 27 after being unable to fulfill hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of obligations due to the global decline in digital currencies, according to court filings.
Kyle Davies and Zhu Su, the fund's creators, were not reached for comment, and 3AC's liquidators informed a US bankruptcy court that they are unable to find them.