The founders of Three Arrows, the failed crypto fund, live big

Mr. Zhu said he tuned out the criticism. On Twitter, he responded to a negative Wall Street Journal article by quoting John F. Kennedy: “We choose to go to the moon and do the other things this decade, not because they’re easy, but because they’re hard are.”

“I’ve already created 75 jobs,” he said over dinner in Singapore. “At least these people like me.”

This month, Open Exchange introduced its own cryptocurrency called OX, similar to the beast. The price shot up within a few days. “I’m getting early 3AC vibes again,” Mr Davies wrote on Twitter on Tuesday. “Nothing compares to the energy of a startup.”

Privately, Mr. Davies has encouraged Three Arrows’ creditors to trade their bankruptcy claims on the Open Exchange. In January, he invited creditors to an “ad hoc 3AC creditors’ meeting.” But during the call, Mr Davies spoke the whole time, according to two people familiar with the matter; He was just ending the session when someone tried to ask a question.

Last month in Barcelona, ​​Mr Davies seemed relaxed and spoke enthusiastically of the “amazing cafes” on Las Ramblas, a busy thoroughfare that runs right through the city. On a Saturday night he had a late dinner at Els Pescadors, a seafood restaurant near the beach, and ordered oysters, croquettes, local wine and three rounds of whiskey.

At the end of the meal, Mr. Davies rattled off business ideas. In Dubai, he said he was inquiring about opening a chicken restaurant, possibly in the form of a cloud kitchen without a storefront. For a while, he and Mr. Zhu considered making a film about Do Kwon and Luna’s collapse. “Our idea was basically that we would do an empathy piece,” he said. “We had a whole team that was supposed to produce it in Sundance or whatever.”