Su Zhu
Co-founded Three Arrows Capital, took it from $1M to $10B, then lost it all in 2022.
- Est. PnL
- -$4.2B
- Location
- Singapore
- Started Three Arrows Capital in 2012 on about $1M of savings and family money, and ran it to roughly $10B by early 2022
- Made the money on a concentrated ETH book from 2018, and early venture in Deribit, Axie Infinity, Solana, Avalanche, Near and Polkadot
- Ran the book on borrowed money: a $2.36B line from Genesis, and $350M plus 15,250 BTC lent unsecured by Voyager
- Built the NFT fund Starry Night at the top of the market, paying 1,000 ETH for a single Rare Pepe card; Sotheby's later sold the remains for about $10M
- Put $200M into LUNA weeks before the Terra collapse; the fund failed that June owing creditors roughly $3.5B
- Arrested at Changi trying to leave Singapore, served three months for stonewalling the liquidators, and called prison a really enjoyable experience
Notable trades
ETH
2018 to 2021
Tens to hundreds of millions
The book that built the firm. Basis and funding trades through the 2018 bear market, then a concentrated long in ETH and the alternative layer ones. Zhu has described the ETH position as taking the crypto book from tens of millions toward hundreds of millions. In December 2021, weeks after posting that he had abandoned Ethereum, the fund bought on the order of $400M of ETH. Davies said the book's purpose was to beat bitcoin.
GBTC
2020 to 2022
~-40% from 2021 mark
Premium harvest that became a discount trap. At the end of 2020 the firm was the largest disclosed holder of the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust at 38,888,888 shares, about 36,000 BTC, discussed publicly as a $1.2B position in early 2021. Genesis financed much of it. When GBTC moved to a discount above 30% and stayed there, the position could not be exited; by May 2022 it had lost roughly 40% from its late-2021 mark.
Deribit
2019 to 2021
$25M to $500M disputed
Venture. Equity in the options venue Deribit, bought during the previous bear market and held in a Singapore vehicle alongside QCP, with 3AC owning most of that vehicle. Creditors later disputed whether the indirect stake near 17% was worth $25M or as much as $500M. Zhu has named as the firm's best venture check.
Trading style
Relative value first, then concentrated directional longs financed with credit. The base of the book is basis and cash-and-carry, run in FX before crypto and as funding and basis trades on the perp venues after it. Directional risk sits on top of that, in size, in whatever he argues is becoming the next monetary or cultural layer.
He borrows against the book rather than trimming it, and treats illiquid holdings as collateral: trust shares, locked staking positions and venture equity pledged against short-dated loans.
He publishes the thesis while he is holding the position and treats the public argument as part of the trade. The frame is supercycle: that adoption replaces the four-year cycle, which makes a book sized for a cycle undersized
Controversies
Asset recovery and the Dubai villa
August 2026
A BVI court has frozen about $1.14B of assets linked to Zhu, Davies and Davies's wife worldwide, alongside the roughly $1.3B the liquidators seek from the two men personally.
In August 2026 the liquidators sued Evelyn Tao Yaqiong, Zhu's wife, for about $40M, AED 146 million, the proceeds of a Dubai villa sold in January 2024. Their case is that Zhu bought the property in June 2022, three weeks before the fund entered liquidation, for around $30M funded by a $50M crypto loan from the firm, then transferred it to her in October 2023 while he was serving his sentence.
She denies wrongdoing. Her position is that she did not know there was any issue with the funds, that the villa was a personal gift, that the couple had been separated since 2022, and that the proceeds are hers. The case has not been decided.
Quotes
“Figure out the market price of what you want and boldly pay it. Price of fitness is discipline, sacrifice. Price of wealth is risk appetite. Price of life is to not fear death. Price of $BTC is $5m+.”
“It was not dead then, it is not dead now, and if you do not have the iron in you then either find it or give it up and move on, this is not a game of cards this is your life and mine.”
“Supercycle price thesis was regrettably wrong, but crypto will still thrive and change the world every day.”
Interviews
- Art of Trading, with Light, Su Zhu and HasuUncommon Core · 2020
- Su Zhu from Three Arrows Capital on the Crypto Super CycleUpOnly · Feb 2021
- The ETH Trade with Su Zhu and Kyle DaviesBankless · May 2021
- Ethereum vs Alt L1s, with Su Zhu and HasuUncommon Core · 2021
- The Game Theory of Crypto, with Jordi Alexander, Su Zhu and HasuUncommon Core · Aug 2021
- Su Zhu on Billion Dollar Trades and the Crypto SupercycleStacks, Luke Martin · Mar 2024
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