Founders of bankrupt Three Arrows Capital pitch new platform for crypto debt claims

The co-founders of failed cryptocurrency hedge fund Three Arrows Capital are now courting investors for a new venture that looks to capitalize on a growing list of bankruptcies in the space.

Kyle Davies and Su Zhu are listed as founding members in a pitch deck obtained by CNBC for a distressed debt marketplace called GTX. Davies and Zhu founded Three Arrows Capital, a once $10 billion Singapore-based hedge fund that filed for bankruptcy in July. The fund, also known as 3AC, was ordered to liquidate by a British Virgin Islands court after a plunge in prices and risky trades left it unable to repay lenders.

The new investor pitch comes as the Three Arrows founders navigate their own controversial bankruptcy. Advisors working to liquidate 3AC have accused Davies and Zhu of not cooperating with the liquidation process. The advisors served the co-founders a subpoena over Twitter last week, claiming that their whereabouts were still unknown. Representatives from Three Arrows did not respond immediately to CNBC’s request for comment.

The Block first reported the 3AC founders’ plans for a new exchange.

Davies told CNBC in November that he was in Bali and refuted claims that he and his co-founder were not cooperating.

“We’ve been cooperating the whole way,” he told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” in an interview.

Davies and Zhu are part of a group arguing that the so-called crypto “claims” market, in reference to bankruptcies impacting holders of digital currencies, should have a public marketplace. The space has seen a handful of high-profile bankruptcies including BlockFi, Celsius, Three Arrows, and most recently, FTX.

The new marketplace looks to appeal to the more than one million FTX depositors that are now involved in a bankruptcy proceeding, a slide in the pitch deck said. Many of those FTX clients are selling claims at about one-tenth of their value for immediate liquidity as they try to avoid what could be a years-long wait for repayment, according to the deck.

They cited a “clear need to unlock” the claims market, one they value at $20 billion and believe GTX could “dominate” within two or three months. GTX said in its pitch that, once scaled, the platform could fill a “power vacuum left by FTX” within crypto trading and move into the securities lending market.

GTX is raising a $25 million seed for the platform, with a goal of coming to the market by the end of February at the latest, according to the deck.

Mark Lamb and Sudhu Arumugam, co-founders of crypto trading platform CoinFLEX, are listed alongside Davies and Zhu as founding members. Representatives from CoinFLEX did not respond immediately to CNBC’s request for comment.

Beyond the four founding members, the deck lists Kent Deng as GTX’s CTO, Leslie Lamb as CMO and Ewelina Mielecka as chief digital officer. GTX has a team of more than 60 developers, according to the deck.

— CNBC’s MacKenzie Sigalos contributed reporting