FTX logo with crypto coins with 100 Dollar bill are displayed for illustration. FTX has filed for bankruptcy in the US, seeking court protection as it looks for a way to return money to users.
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The co-founders of a now-liquidated cryptocurrency hedge fund are courting investors for a new trading marketplace that aims to capitalize on a growing volume of bankruptcies related to digital currency.
Kyle Davies and Su Zhu are listed under the founding members slide of a pitch deck obtained by CNBC for a distressed debt marketplace called GTX. Davies and Zhu founded Three Arrows Capital, a Singapore-based cryptocurrency hedge fund that was ordered to liquidate by a British Virgin Islands court.
The deck noted Three Arrows Capital “went bust in 2022.” It was previously considered one of the most prominent crypto hedge funds that once managed about $10 billion in assets.
Followers of technology and financial exchanges have grown increasingly interested in how bankruptcies and fraud within the crypto space will be handled following the collapse of FTX. 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.
It aims 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 and Three Arrows Capital 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