- When hedge fund Three Arrows Capital collapsed last year, it left the crypto world reeling.
- But the firm's founders, Kyle Davies and Su Zhu, have reportedly had it pretty good ever since.
Just because your crypto firm collapsed, doesn't mean you are going to end up on house arrest at your parents' pad.
Since their crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital collapsed last year — leaving the firm owing creditors $3.3 billion and the crypto market reeling — founders Kyle Davies and Su Zhu have been living the high life, according to a New York Times report.
As the liquidation process began for their crypto firm, both founders flew to Bali — Indonesia notably doesn't have an extradition treaty with the United States — the Times reported.
Davies spent his time "painting in cafes and reading Hemingway on the beach," according to the Times. He meditated, took shrooms on a rooftop, and flew to Bahrain for a Formula 1 event.
"You eat very fatty pork dishes, and you drink a lot of alcohol, and you go to the beach and you just meditate," he told the Times. "You have these magical experiences."
He posted photos of his travels, which were ongoing as of May, on Twitter. In one he was petting a Tiger. In another, he marveled at Southeast Asian architecture.
—Kyle Davies (@KyleLDavies) April 8, 2023
"When faced with doubt and public scrutiny while building a business, it's important to find inspiration in unlikely places. For me, it is oysters," he tweeted in May, along with a series of photos of him with the mollusks.
Immediately following the collapse of his company, Zhu played a lot of video games, he tweeted.
"Things got a lot better mentally when I started going into the ocean, surfing, taking hard walks, getting back into gym routine, reading books, learning new languages," he added.
According to the Times, Zhu started to hang out with surfers and UFC fighters. After returning home to his mansion in Singapore, he and his wife installed a permaculture farm in their backyard with ducks, chickens, and dragonflies, the Times reported.
Davies and Zhu did not respond to requests for comment from Insider.
As the pair traveled, liquidators complained about being unable to locate them. They did not show up to an emergency court meeting, and when they did appear on a Zoom meeting, were unresponsive.
The fact that they are under investigation in both the United States and Singapore didn't seem to bother them as they spoke excitedly about their new venture to the Times.
There was also fallout exending beyond Three Arrows, as its collapse led a number of crypto lenders to crumble. Three Arrows failed to repay a $667 loan from crypto exchange Voyager Digital, causing liquidity problems, and an $80 million loan from Deribit.
But in April, Davies and Zhu launched Open Exchange, on which people who lost money in the crypto collapse can buy and sell bankruptcy claims.
Who knows if it will take off. It doesn't really matter, as the pair told the Times they had enough in savings to never work again.
Though there's one big thing they did have to forego: The superyacht the two had built. The boat, which featured five decks, two retractable terraces, and a swimming pool, was named "Much Wow" in a reference to a crypto meme, the Times reported. The duo missed their last payment to the shipbuilder, per the Times, and the boat was sold to another buyer.