Three Arrows Capital executives launch NFT fund

Published at: Aug. 31, 2021

Executives hailing from Singapore-based fund manager Three Arrows Capital (3AC) have launched a fund focused on collecting premium digital art in the form of nonfungible tokens (NFT).

The fund, dubbed Starry Night Capital, was founded by Three Arrows Capital CEO Su Zhu, 3AC co-founder Kyle Davies, and pseudonymous NFT collector Vincent Van Dough.

Van Dough announced the fund via a tweet on Tuesday, stating, “Our thesis is simple, we believe the best way to gain exposure to the cultural paradigm shift being ushered in by NFTs is owning the top pieces from the most desired sets.”

Zhu shared the tweet, adding, “Excited to make history together.”

3AC is a digital asset-focussed fund manager that was founded in 2012. The firm has made investments in leading layer-one blockchains, including Ethereum, Avalanche and Polkadot, in addition to building an expansive decentralized finance portfolio, including blue chips Aave, Synthetix and Balancer.

While details on the new fund’s roadmap are sparse at this stage, Van Dough revealed that Starry Night Capital hopes to launch a physical gallery “in a major city,” launch an NFT education portal, and explore other “community-building initiatives'” by the end of the year. They added:

“The NFT space is not a zero-sum game, it is driven by strong flywheel effects and functions best when the pie is growing for all.”

Zhu, Davies and Van Dough appear to have already teamed up to purchase nonfungible art together.

On Friday, NFT enthusiast Pixelpete tweeted that he had sold his one-of-a-kind Art Blocks NFT of Dmitri Cherniak’s artwork “Goose Ringer” to Zhu and Davies in a transaction that Van Dough brokered. The NFT is from Cherniak’s collection “Ringers” — each of which was generated algorithmically on the Ethereum blockchain.

The pair paid 1,800 Ether (ETH) for the token (roughly $5.8 million). However, it is unclear whether Starry Night Capital will take possession of the artwork.

Van Dough’s wallet on the OpenSea marketplace also shows an impressive collection of 1,913 NFTs, including work from renowned NFT artist Pplpleasr.

The community’s reaction to the fund’s launch on Twitter was mostly positive, with names such as Ryan Wyatt, head of gaming at YouTube, and Bankless founder David Hoffman congratulating the team.

However, Twitter user Edgar Dubroviskiy questioned the idea of purchasing only the “top pieces” in the NFT space, highlighting the high expense and poor liquidity of premium NFTs.

Wow! Out of interest: wouldn't "owning the top pieces from the most desired sets" mean buying the very top at the very top - so it will cost A LOT to be a part of + low liquidity and/or high premiums if we talking fractionalised (currently these at like 10x to the actual floor).

— Edgar Dubrovskiy (@Edgar_DOP) August 30, 2021