Three Arrows Capital founders break silence, describe ‘LTCM moment’

livemint.com:

After five weeks in hiding, the disgraced founders of Three Arrows Capital spoke extensively about the spectacular implosion of their once high-flying hedge fund, saying their bungled crypto speculation unleashed cascading margins calls on loans that should never have been made.

Su Zhu and Kyle Davies, both 35, first became friends in high school. They built 3AC into a crypto-trading behemoth before its collapse bankrupted creditors and exacerbated a selloff that foisted steep losses on mom-and-pop owners of Bitcoin and other tokens. At times contrite and at times defensive, Davies and Zhu, speaking from an undisclosed location, described a systemic failure of risk management in which easy-flowing credit worsened the impact of wrong-way bets. 

They acknowledged the collapse triggered widespread pain, but mostly talked around questions about the effect on others in the industry. Instead, they stressed they suffered deep losses while denying allegations they pulled money out of 3AC before it all blew up. “People may call us stupid. They may call us stupid or delusional. And, I’ll accept that. Maybe," Zhu said. “But they’re gonna, you know, say that I absconded funds during the last period, where I actually put more of my personal money back in. That’s not true."

Advisers in charge of liquidating the fund said in July 8 filings that Zhu and Davies hadn’t cooperated with them and that the founders’ whereabouts were unknown. Zhu said death threats had forced them into hiding. “That does not mean that we haven’t been communicating with all relevant authorities," said Zhu in the telephone interview with Davies and two lawyers from Solitaire LLP. “We have been communicating with them from day one."

The two declined to say where