SPECULATION about the financial health of cryptocurrency hedge fund Three Arrows Capital intensified on Wednesday (Jun 15) after a tweet from co-founder Zhu Su hinted at potential stress amid a deep selloff in digital assets.

“We are in the process of communicating with relevant parties and fully committed to working this out,” the former Credit Suisse Group trader tweeted from his verified account, without providing further details. Zhu and Three Arrows co-founder Kyle Davies didn’t respond to requests for comment.

While information on the fund’s size and trading strategies is sparse, blockchain analytics firm Nansen estimated in early March that Three Arrows managed about US$10 billion. It owned more than 5 per cent of the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust as of December 2020, according to the latest available regulatory filings, though it’s unclear whether Three Arrows has maintained that position. The trust has a market value of about US$10 billion.

Recent attention on Three Arrows has centred around its exposure to a cryptocurrency called staked Ether, or stETH.

The fund started withdrawing stETH from decentralised platforms last month, according to Nansen. As recently as Tuesday morning, it withdrew more than 80,000 stETH from decentralised lending project Aave in 4 transactions and then swapped 38,900 of the stETH for 36,700 Ether.

The trade may have resulted in a “big haircut”, said Andrew Thurman, content lead at Nansen. The stETH token is supposed to be redeemable for 1 Ether coin, after a planned upgrade to the Ethereum network takes effect.

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The price of stETH has tumbled 35 per cent in the past 7 days to US$1,137.38, while Ether has declined 34 per cent to US$1,193.98, according to CoinGecko.

The total market value of cryptocurrencies tracked by CoinGecko has plunged to US$984 billion from US$3 trillion in November. Losses accelerated in recent weeks amid concerns about Federal Reserve rate increases, the collapse of the Terra blockchain and a crisis at crypto lender Celsius Network. BLOOMBERG