In a blog post on October 11th, WOO has reached an agreement with Teneo, the asset liquidation firm for 3AC, to purchase over 20 million WOO tokens and additional shares acquired by the hedge fund during WOO’s Series A funding round in November 2021.
Jack Tan, co-founder of WOO, stated, “We are pleased to remove the uncertainty associated with 3AC from the WOO ecosystem. We proactively cooperate with liquidators to ensure a fair deal for the buyback of our shares and the tokens vested from 3AC’s assets.”
WOO mentioned that the buyback of shares and tokens will be done “at an attractive discount,” a move that will sever all remaining ties with the collapsed hedge fund and its creditors. As part of the agreement, WOO will also cancel 3AC’s shares and increase the ownership rights of all other corresponding shareholders in proportion to the canceled shares.
Furthermore, WOO announced that the 20 million tokens they repurchase will be sent to a burn address, permanently removing them from circulating supply.
“Over the past 18 months, our industry has seen a series of setbacks, from major-scale failures to overly aggressive regulatory agencies. The system has been thoroughly cleansed, and we look forward to rebuilding alongside our partners and communities,” added Tan.
3AC was the largest investor in WOO’s 2021 fundraising round, purchasing 25 million WOO tokens and owning significant equity in the cryptocurrency exchange. The cryptocurrency hedge fund collapsed in July last year after making a series of oversized leveraged bets on Do Kwon’s Terra Money ecosystem, which had already collapsed two months prior in May.
The buyback agreement comes less than two weeks after Su Zhu, one of the co-founders of 3AC, was arrested in Singapore. Zhu is set to serve an additional 4 months in a Singaporean jail for contempt of court orders.