Rapture #226: Tweets from Zhu on the run, Big Raises for VCs, and More
Man, only in crypto do you have the manager of a multi billion dollar imploded fund shit post his liquidators while on the run. This space is crazy. I am constantly amazed.
In addition to briefly covering Zhu's tweets and what they specifically were referencing, I also want to touch on two big VC raises that were announced.
Let's dive in!
Zhu.... you're nuts
Approximately 14 hours ago, Zhu Su tweeted out this message to the public:
The circumstances of this tweet are absurd. Both Zhu Su and Kyle Davies are nowhere to be found. Even Bloomberg is covering how mail is starting to pile up at their empty office.
The audacity!
In the post, Zhu linked two emails sent by Christopher Daniel, who is a managing partner at Advocatus Law LLP, to the liquidators of 3AC's assets. The emails and the tweet claim that the liquidator, Teneo, acted in bad faith for failure to exercise a token purchase offer for StarkWare's token in time, which allowed the purchase agreement to expire worthless. Because of this failure to exercise the token purchase, Zhu and his lawyer claim 3AC has lost substantial value.
Just as a side note, for those of you who have never heard of Teneo, the consulting firm has a long history of being associated with the most influential Democrat politicians in the US.
While I seriously doubt Teneo understood the StarkWare TPA (token purchase agreement), Zhu and his lawyer are trying to use this event as justification to remove them as 3AC's liquidator. Likely this move centers around buying more time for their founders to decide what their next tactic is.
Never a dull day. Eventually I will stop being distracted by this train wreck, but right now I cannot take my eyes off the crash.
Multicoin and Lightspeed Announce new Funds
Contrasting the 3AC blow up, both Multicoin and Lightspeed announced two new funds. Multicoin released news regarding a new $430 million venture fund, VF III. This venture fund represents their largest to date, as they closed $100 million for VF II last year.
According to Multicoin, this fund will focus on projects that incentivize people to do verifiable work that builds real-world infrastructure, pointing to Helium and Hivemapper as examples.
Additionally, Lightspeed, a leading traditional venture firm, raised over $7 billion to fund early and growth-stage entrepreneurs. A portion of this raise will be devoted to Lightspeed Faction, which is a new independent crypto native team led by Samuel Harrison. Samuel Harrison previously led Blockchain.com's venture arm.
It's pretty cool to see big traditional VCs launch their own independent crypto arms. These arms even have their own names and unique branding! I think within the next 3 years, every major traditional VC will follow Lightpseed's lead and have their own crypto specific factions.
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