3AC founders’ crypto exchange OPNX is another smokescreen
Zhu Su, Kyle Davies, Mark Lamb, and Leslie Lamb’s new cryptocurrency exchange, reportedly first called GTX and then later renamed OPNX, is set to open in April, according to a Twitter Space by chief exec Leslie Lamb.
The exchange, which was originally intended to simply be a trading platform for asset claims on bankrupt exchanges, hedge funds, and other broken companies, has shifted to being a spot, futures, margin, and bankruptcy claims trading platform.
OPNX promises transparency, fantastic UX, and fair pricing on order books. The reality is that OPNX is opaque and run by shady people with shady pasts.
Notably absent from the discussion on the Twitter Space were the names Zhu Su, Kyle Davies, or Mark Lamb – the trio who helmed multimillion dollar failures, while simultaneously hurting every counterparty they touched. Leslie Lamb is Mark Lamb’s wife.
Lamb did say at one point, “Our team experienced a lot of crypto carnage first hand.” This is putting it euphemistically: Su and Davies lost hundreds of millions of dollars by leveraging long Bitcoin and a host of other coins, and could soon be found in contempt of court.
Mark and Leslie Lamb, US citizens, seem to have fled to the non-extradition UAE after the collapse of their lending exchange, along with their partners.
OPNX will sell unregistered securities
During the Space, Lamb suggested that OPNX would be tokenizing asset claims from bankrupt exchanges and companies – basically acknowledging that the platform would be specializing in offering unregistered securities.
“That’s a security,” said a lawyer familiar with securities law on background. “Same old Howey Test in a common enterprise with an expectation of profit based on the effort of others (in this case the successful recovery of claims).”
Meanwhile, FLEX, the token that will be tied to OPNX, has continued to leap in price since the announcement that it would be utilized the same way BNB is used on Binance. The coin has jumped from lows of $0.05 to $2.80 at press time.
Read more: Token of choice for Zhu and Davies’ new exchange up 3,000%
If the token is used in the way that Lamb suggested – the same way BNB is used – it’s likely to also be an unregistered security.
Lamb suggested that the new exchange would have “better liquidity” than OTC platforms and offered a suite of features that wouldn’t be available to claimants otherwise. There’s no reason to believe this is true. In a surreal video posted to Twitter, Davies, co-founder of the new OPNX exchange and the failed hedge fund 3AC, started discussing the budget for… food. Clearly the group has their priorities in order.
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