Crypto exchange WOO to buy back shares from 3AC to ‘clear uncertainty’

Crypto exchange WOO plans to repurchase its own shares and tokens that were previously acquired by the failed hedge fund Three Arrows Capital to “clear the uncertainty,” the company said today.

WOO said in a statement shared with The Block that it has reached a settlement with Teneo, the liquidator of 3AC, to buy back the shares and tokens acquired by the hedge fund as part of WOO’s Series A funding round in November 2021. WOO added that it plans to increase the ownership of all other shareholders proportionally, while the 20 million repurchased tokens were sent to a burn address. WOO declined to disclose the total value of the repurchased shares and tokens. 

3AC was WOO’s largest investor in its series A round, purchasing equity along with 25 million WOO tokens, the remainder of which were set to vest over the next 12 months, according to the statement. 

“We are pleased to clear the uncertainty related to 3AC from the WOO ecosystem,” Jack Tan, co-founder of WOO, said in the statement. “We proactively collaborated with the liquidators to secure a fair deal to repurchase our shares and both vested and vesting tokens from 3AC's estate.”

Tan added, “The past 18 months have seen a concentration of bad news hit our industry from large-scale failures to more overzealous regulators. A thorough cleansing of the system has taken place and we are looking forward to rebuilding with our partners and team.”

Su Zhu arrested

Photographs obtained by The Block last week showed that 3AC cofounder Su Zhu was arrested on Sept. 26 at the Singapore Changi airport while trying to leave the country.

3AC was once one of the largest hedge funds in crypto, but it filed for bankruptcy in July 2022 shortly after the collapse of the Terra ecosystem last year. It owed at least $3.5 billion to its top creditors, according to filings at the time.