Three arrows founders break silence over collapse of crypto hedge fund | Hacker News Reader

Three arrows founders break silence over collapse of crypto hedge fund

bloomberg.com

72 pointskazanins20 comments

He rejected the perception that he enjoyed an extravagant lifestyle, noting that he biked to work and back every day and that his family “only has two homes in Singapore.”

Ah yes, living the relatable humble lifestyle while awaiting delivery on the $50M yacht you bought with allegedly borrowed crypto funds.

> S'pore's private property second-most expensive in the world

> Singapore’s average property price is US$874,372 (S$1,183,375), with an average price of US$1,063 (S$1,439) per square foot.

— https://www.todayonline.com/singapore/singapore-worlds-secon...

Most Singaporeans are in subsidized housing only the wealthy buy property, i think its something like 80% of all housing is public in singapore.

From a quick Google I see one of the homes was $35M. Confirmed blue collar guy.

Those numbers are a bit misleading because ~80% of Singaporeans live in government housing built by the Singapore Housing & Development Board (HDB) and offered below market rate. [1] It's pretty clear these clowns weren't among them.

As an aside, the HDB is a very effective housing policy for Singapore. The remaining 20% of Singaporeans - primarily the super-wealthy - live in a free-market-free-for-all. That average property price per square foot is high, yes, but that's likely the price for non-HDB housing - while the vast majority live in HDB housing. And very nice housing at that!

The history of the HDB is really fascinating for those who care about housing policy.

[edit] tl;dr that's not the price of housing in Singapore so much as it's the price for the top 20% of housing in Singapore.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Housing_and_Development_Board

It's a lot harder for today's youth to get an HDB apartment directly from the government and the prices for resale units are just as inflated as private housing.

Do you know why? Has the government policy changed? Building fewer new properties?

Fewer new builds I think. Not many empty lots left.

"exacerbated a selloff that foisted steep losses on mom-and-pop owners of Bitcoin and other tokens"

I find this slightly tendentious language to use – there are zero mom-and-pop type investors in crypto, just blind speculators gambling on an essentially worthless Ponzi with close to zero real-world utility. Mom-and-pops put their hard-earned assets into stable long-term stores of safe value, not digital beans.

"The fool and his money are easily parted" is something I want to write on almost every crypto horror-story that appears on HN. The PhD-level quants at the serious banks and funds must lick their lips every time they hear about companies like 3AC, and rightfully hammer the arse out of them at a second's opportunity. A better name would have been 1AC – an arrow pointing right down to minus-zero.

> Mom-and-pops put their hard-earned assets into stable long-term stores of safe value

The average person is simply not going to be savvy enough - nor have the wherewithal in a life trying to stay above poverty - to steel themselves against all of the advertising and pressures and manipulations that the crypto crowd - the vested interests and ultrabillionaire VCs are bringing to bare.

When suddenly every magazine in the gas station, commercial on tv, or major influential figure you look up to (or are aware of) is talking about this obvious grand new investment for the average man, when people you trust in your social circles are bringing this all to you with continual pressure at all angles as the solution to your honestly miserable day to day, and your 9-6 retail job with an hour commute is filled with coworkers telling you about their success with this golden ticket and billboards after billboards normalizing the stuff - well, it's reasonable that the average person would bow to such systemic and overwhelming and hyperoptimized systemic, social and psychological pressure.

> When suddenly every magazine in the gas station, ...

Yeah, I was surprised by this the first time I saw it recently. Buying crypto (like Dogecoin, for $DEITY's sake!) at some ATM-like terminal... pretending this is a good idea for everyone... they are trying to attract the very least-informed "investors" in existence. And of course these "investors" are not going to real a miles-long Terms of Service that essentially boils down to "you will probably lose all your money, and there is no recourse".

My goodness. It occurs to me (again) that I could be very, very wealthy indeed if I'd only give up my morals. I mean, really, why shouldn't I do that? With a lot of money, I could have some fun times before I die.

>Buying crypto (like Dogecoin, for $DEITY's sake!) at some ATM-like terminal

There are literal ATMs (not "ATM-like") in government buildings that say they do Bitcoin transactions. I haven't investigated exactly what it means, but I've seen them.

But you know what you can't buy with Bitcoin or credit cards? Lottery tickets. Got to have US currency.

True, to a depressing degree. Especially with the modern (poisonously low) levels of trust in more-traditional sources of more-sober financial advice.

OTOH, this is the old "when the shoeshine boy gives you stock tips" signal to bail out of the market -

https://archive.fortune.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archiv...

Of course, all those average people who need to be protected from themselves and their own stupidity by, I suppose enlightened betters such as yourself? Sure, there are plenty of foolish people out there making bad choices, but a fair number of them also exist among the supposedly higher earning, supposedly smarter classes too. Should a widespread program of treating adults like children in all possible be adopted worldwide?

Or should we perhaps recognize that sometimes bad things do inevitably happen and that you can't legislate them away by banning whole categories of activity that sometimes lead to bad outcomes. Many of the people shitting on crypto on this very site, people who often make claims like yours about a public that they seem to look upon as little more than a moronic mass, work at high compensation for some of the world's most manipulative tech mega companies and have for years, but oh hey, lets preach about protecting the masses from themselves. Hypocrisy rarely makes itself absent.

I think the financial industry jargon goes something like this.

"Mom and pop" traditionally run a small family business.

The small investors that need to be protected from scams are "widows and orphans".

The people that are always up for investing in some magic beans are termed "dentists".

"But then yeah, after that day, when, you know, Bitcoin went from $30,000 to $20,000, you know, that, that was extremely painful for us. And that was in, that ended up being kind of the nail in the coffin."

Bitcoin has had 10 drawdowns of 40% or more in its short history of 13 years [0], and yet a mere drop of 33% caused them major problems. Doesn't sound to me like they can blame "a systemic failure of risk management"; more like a profound lack of understanding by these two individuals.

[0]: https://www.livewiremarkets.com/wires/analysing-bitcoin-draw...

More like simple greed. They were over leveraged, because they wanted more money. I doubt they were ignorant of the possibility of a 33%+ drawdown. They just couldn’t resist the money.

https://archive.is/4hmAI

Is the expectation the Emirates won’t extradite? These clowns have left a black eye on Singapore’s MAS. (In their favour, they haven’t pissed off the U.S., who could actually force the issue.)

"Speaking from an undisclosed location" says it all.

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