3AC wallet buys NFT due to bid placed three years ago missed by liquidators
A wallet address belonging to bankrupt crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital (3AC) managed to buy an NFT on Friday morning due to a bid placed nearly three years ago seemingly missed by its liquidators.
The 3AC wallet placed a bid of 20 ETH ($58,800) for the “Neon Village” NFT from the “Ninja Village” collection by artist SeerLight on Aug. 21, 2021, according to NFT marketplace SuperRare, less than a year before the former hedge fund filed for bankruptcy.
That bid was accepted on Friday by its prior owner, “@anonymoux,” who originally bought it for 100 ETH ($348,700) in October 2021, per SuperRare data, and confirmed via the Ethereum blockchain explorer Etherscan. Onchain analytics platform Arkham labels the address as belonging to 3AC, first noted by community member "@0xBriann."
Teneo, which is managing the liquidation of the 3AC estate, appeared to miss the bid, allowing it to be accepted despite the firm’s ongoing bankruptcy process.
“[3AC] made an offer on SuperRare and the ETH were put on escrow in the smart contract so they were not seen in the liquidation process as retrievable assets,” Grail Capital CIO and former Ledger executive Jean-Michel Pailhon said.
In March, Mechanism Capital co-founder Andrew Kang purchased the original Pepe the Frog NFT from the 3AC estate for an undisclosed sum. Auction house Sotheby's facilitated the private sale as part of the liquidation of 3AC's remaining NFTs at the time.
The Block reached out to Teneo for comment.
3AC Implosion
3AC, once a prominent hedge fund manager in the crypto sector that managed assets over $3 billion, filed for Chapter 15 bankruptcy in July 2022 after running into liquidity issues following the collapse of the Terra ecosystem in May of that year.
Its co-founders Kyle Davies and Su Zhu moved on to launch Open Exchange, or OPNX, a crypto derivatives and claims trading platform in April 2023. However, the platform subsequently closed down in February.
While Zhu was arrested in Singapore last September and remained imprisoned until December for failing to cooperate with investigations related to 3AC’s liquidation, Davies was not apprehended as he remained outside of the city-state. Davies said in a podcast interview earlier this year he would actively avoid returning to Singapore to dodge jail time.
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