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“Lotta stadiums getting renamed in the next few years”

— Ben McKenzie

TerraUSD

Centralized finance (CeFi) is centralized DeFi — investment firms that played the DeFi markets. CeFi was where a lot of the money in DeFi came from.

CeFi looked like an industry of separate institutions — but it turned out to be a few companies all investing in each other. The chart of who invested in who would look like an inverted pyramid resting on a single point — Terraform Labs’ Anchor protocol.

Anchor offered 20% interest rates on holdings of dollar-equivalent stablecoin Terraform USD (UST), the interest being paid in UST. You could get UST by buying Terraform’s luna token from exchanges like Crypto.com or KuCoin. (Crypto.com Arena used to be Staples Center in Los Angeles.)

All the other CeFi firms just put their money into Anchor at 20%, then offered slightly lower interest to their own investors and skimmed the difference. Terraform made its money by dumping luna on these UST buyers.

UST and luna were both tokens that Terraform made up one day — neither had any reason to be worth anything. Everyone in DeFi knew how rickety UST/luna was for months — they just went along with it while it made them money. A truly fiat currency.

The party ended on May 9, when UST and luna imploded, setting off a cascade of insolvencies across cryptoland. We’re still seeing the fallout.

Crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital (3AC) went into liquidation as it was heavily invested in UST and luna. Firms that had big loans to 3AC, such as Voyager, Celsius, and BlockFi, had to file bankruptcy or seek bailouts from other crypto firms. Even crypto exchanges had been playing the CeFi markets with customer funds, and many had to close their doors.

Thousands of South Koreans also lost money when UST and luna collapsed. Terraform Labs founders Daniel Shin and Do Kwon are stuck in South Korea for now, while investigators look into the incident.

On Wednesday, July 20, investigators from the Seoul Southern District Prosecutors Office raided seven crypto exchanges, including Upbit, Bithumb, and Coinone. They’re looking for clues as to whether Terraform intentionally caused the collapse. They also raided some exchange executives’ homes and the home of Daniel Shin. [Yonhap News; Donga News, in Korean]

Elsewhere, South Korean prosecutors have discovered a shell company called “Flexi Corporation” that Kwon allegedly used to launder large sums of money out of Terra and into his own private accounts via over-the-counter trades. How can this be? Kwon said he only took a small salary from Terraform. [KBS, in Korean; Twitter] 

Three Arrows Capital 

UST and luna went under, and pulled crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital down with them.

The Terra collapse completely nuked 3AC. Their exposure was about $600 million. (This is triple what co-founders Su Zhu and Kyle Davies had claimed in mid-June.) [Fortune]

Zhu and Davies are in now hiding. Nobody knows where they are. They told Bloomberg they were headed to Dubai. [Bloomberg, archive]

The pair knew immediately that they were screwed. But on May 11, when investors asked if 3AC had survived the Terra collapse, 3AC told them everything was fine — and kept taking in money! 

3AC had abandoned its Singapore office by late May — they just locked the door and skipped the country — and they finally admitted there were problems only in mid-June.

But Zhu and Davies have been telling the public — especially their creditors — how they lost money too, how they fear for their lives, and how they are so overwhelmed that they can’t turn over banking information just yet, but they’ll get to that soon, for sure.

The two old school buddies say they were shocked by how quickly things unraveled. “What we failed to realize was that luna was capable of falling to effective zero in a matter of days.”

Never mind that the instability of UST/luna was obvious to outside observers, that UST/luna worked exactly the same way as the Titan/Iron pair that collapsed in 2021, and that these guys were supposed to be a crypto hedge fund with alleged competence, and not the drooling crypto degen brainlet rubes they appear to have been trading like.

Zhu and Davies never planned for number go down, and had just been piling leverage on leverage. “We positioned ourselves for a kind of market that didn’t end up happening,” Zhu told Bloomberg. Never mind that a “hedge fund” is named for the act of hedging your speculations, and not just assuming you’re a genius because there’s a bubble going on.

Teneo is the firm handling 3AC’s liquidation, and they are moving quickly. They filed Chapter 15 in the US on July 1. Shortly after, they also filed for recognition of 3AC’s British Virgin Islands liquidation with the Singapore high court. 

Someone leaked Teneo’s 1,157-page Singapore filing earlier this week. The comprehensive document is a gem — it gives us a full update on the bankruptcy proceedings up to July 9. Teneo’s Christopher Farmer and Russell Crumpler left no rock unturned. [Filing, archive]

We recommend reading at least the first 35 pages — it tells the story of Ponzi borrowing, multiple defaults, ghosting creditors and liquidators, and doing deals with some lenders while cutting out others. The rest of the filing is exhibits, other court filings, and affidavits of furious creditors.

3AC’s biggest creditor is Barry Silbert’s Digital Currency Group, the parent company of Genesis Trading, which had a $2.4 billion partially collateralized loan to 3AC. DCG is now stuck with up to $1.1 billion in losses. [The Block]

Other large creditors include Voyager Digital ($687 million), Blockchain.com ($302.6 million, up from the originally claimed $270 million), and Deribit ($80.6 million).  

Kyle Davies’ wife, Chen Kaili Kelly, filed a claim for $65.7 million, and Zhu Su himself submitted a $5 million claim. We have no idea how 3AC was structured to allow an owner and a cofounder to be a listed creditor in a bankruptcy.

Zhu and Davies reportedly made a $50 million down payment on a yacht — with borrowed money, while they defaulted on their lenders. (We’re definitely feeling the Quadriga vibes with this one.) They wanted it to be bigger than any of the yachts owned by Singapore’s billionaires, and ready for pick-up in Italy. Zhu told Bloomberg that the yacht story was a “smear.”

Tai Ping Shan Capital, an over-the-counter desk in the BVI, claimed it operated independently of 3AC, but it turns out to have tight connections. On June 14, 3AC transferred $30.7 million in USDC and $900,000 in USDT to TPS. It’s unclear where those funds subsequently went. [Coindesk]

Good news! In a supplemental Chapter 15 filing, Teneo says it’s recovered $40 million of assets! The bad news is that this is a drop in the bucket. Creditors have so far submitted $2.8 billion in claims, and there’s plenty more coming. [Court filing]

3AC creditors have picked a creditor committee consisting of the largest creditors: Voyager, DCG, CoinList, Blockchain.com, and Matrixport. The committee will work closely with Teneo to “maximize the value of the assets available for distribution.” [The Block] 

Blockchain.com is struggling to survive in the aftermath. It just laid off 25 percent of staff. [CNBC] 

In addition to owning CryptoDickButt #1462, 3AC had also started a $100 million NFT fund with pseudonymous NFT trader Vincent Van Dough. They supplied the funding, while Van Dough curated the art. (We mentioned CryptoDickButt last time, and we’re shocked that some of you thought we were just making that up. You should know by now that crypto is always stupider.)

The fund, called “Starry Night Capital” planned to launch a physical gallery in a “major city” by the end of 2021. [The Block, 2021]

The Defiant noted on June 17 that the Starry Night portfolio had been aggregated into a single Ethereum address, probably controlled by Zhu, Davies, and Van Dough. Teneo has noticed and is concerned. [The Defiant]

Climate change talk is cheap, but sailing the seven seas on your yacht as an international fugitive is expensive. https://t.co/kq12Me4HFD

— Zhu Su 🔺 (@zhusu) February 8, 2019

Celsius

Celsius promised 18% returns on your crypto. When too many people tried to pull their money out at once, Celsius paused withdrawals on June 21 and filed for bankruptcy on July 13. We covered the bankruptcy filing and CEO Alex Mashinsky’s declaration in our last post. 

Celsius admits to a $1.2 billion hole in its balance sheet. Others think the assets are fake and the liabilities are very real, which would put the hole at $4 billion to $5 billion.

Mashinsky says that Celsius’ losses include $15.8 million from investments in UST and luna, along with $40.6 million in loans to 3AC. He also said that Celsius lost 35,000 ether tokens in 2021 due to an incident involving a staking provider that “misplaced” the keys to its tokens. Oops!

Celsius held its first bankruptcy hearing on July 18. SDNY Judge Martin Glenn is presiding over the case. Kadhim Shubber from the Financial Times live-tweeted the hearing, which took place over Zoom. Here’s a copy of the presentation Celsius gave to the judge on Monday. [Stretto; Twitter thread]

Celsius’ lawyer Patrick Nash told the judge there won’t be a liquidation. Celsius has a recovery plan: to HODL — and mine bitcoins! That’s right, Celsius wants to mine their way out of bankruptcy. Nash says the plan is to mine 10,000 bitcoins in 2022.

How did Celsius end up in bankruptcy? You might think it had something to do with Celsius making horrible investments and losing everyone’s money, but no! As Nash explained, Celsius was driven to insolvency by unfounded Terra/luna fears, worries about Coinbase’s bankruptcy risk factor disclosure in May, and a bank run that knocked over an otherwise well-run business.

Former Celsius employees tell a different story. Celsius compliance and financial crimes director Timothy Cradle spoke of the company’s “sloppiness and mismanagement.” [Coindesk] 

Cradle also told CNBC that Celsius execs “were absolutely trading the token [CEL] to manipulate the price.” A former HR employee said she was told not to do a background check on Yarom Shelem, the former Celsius CFO who was arrested in Israel for fraud. [CNBC]

Celsius creditors have been filing claims since July 18. [Twitter] The letters make for some disturbing reading. Molly White has been posting excerpts on Twitter. It’s a reminder that Celsius investors were ordinary people lured in by Mashinsky’s false promises. [Twitter thread]

Québec pension fund CDPQ also has some questions to answer. CDPQ invested $150 million in Celsius in October 2021 as part of a $400 million funding round co-led by WestCap Investment Partners LLC. “We understand that our investment in Celsius raises a number of questions.” [Bloomberg] 

Celsius’ next bankruptcy hearing is August 10.

Voyager

Crypto broker Voyager said its secret sauce was “low-risk investments.” Yet it loaned out three-quarters of its assets under management to 3AC.

In June, the firm signed an agreement with Sam Bankman-Fried’s Alameda Ventures for a revolving line of credit so it could keep the music playing a bit longer. But on July 1, Voyager Digital filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

Coffeezilla points out that Voyager is trying to sell people on this “Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorg,” and hides the fact that under bankruptcy law, a company that describes itself as a broker cannot file Chapter 11. They should be required to liquidate under SIPA. (Securities Investor Protection Act) [Youtube; Twitter]

The CEO of of crypto media outlet Benzinga will be on the unsecured creditor committee in the Voyager bankruptcy. Jason Raznick is among the largest unsecured creditors for Voyager. [Inside Bitcoins]

Voyager’s next bankruptcy hearing is on August 4. It has $350 million of customer money in an omnibus account at Metropolitan, and it keeps reassuring everyone that they’ll get their money soon! It just has to work things out with the judge first. [Voyager blog; archive]

In the meantime, Bankman-Fried proposed a partial bailout. Under his proposal, Voyager customers would have the opportunity to open new accounts at FTX with a cash balance funded by their bankruptcy claim. They would be able to withdraw the cash, or use it to purchase crypto on FTX. [FTX press release; FT, archive]

Other CeFi firms that are definitely robust and doing fine 

Vauld is a Singapore-domiciled crypto lender that serves mainly customers in India. It stopped withdrawals on July 4 and owes $402 million in crypto to its customers. 

After suspending withdrawals and laying off 30% of its staff, Vauld filed for protection against creditors in Singapore on July 8. [WSJ]

A Singaporean moratorium order is similar to Chapter 11 in the US. It allows Vauld to avoid a complete cessation of operations and liquidation of assets, while it tries to get its act together. 

Vauld later disclosed they were short $70 million, partly from exposure to UST/luna. Vauld issued a statement on July 11. Vauld and Nexo are still discussing an acquisition of Vauld. [Vauld blog, archive]

BlockFi released its Q2 2022 transparency report. The report showed it had $1.8 billion in open loans from retail and institutional investors by the end of June and $600 million in “net exposure.” [BlockFi blog, archive; Decrypt]