On Friday, April 21st, a seemingly innocuous post made by OPNX, the latest project of 3AC’s Su Zhu and Kyle Davies, in which it thanked its major investors caused a great deal of confusion. Soon after the initial thread was published, several of the alleged investors came out to deny any connection to the crypto bankruptcy exchange.

DRW and Nascent Deny Investing in OPNX

After OPNX published a Twitter thread thanking and naming several of its major investors, some of the mentioned companies came out to either completely or partially distance themselves from the exchange. The first of the companies to deny their connection was DRW Trading which stated that “DRW is not an investor in OPNX nor are any of its affiliates investors in OPNX.”

Nascent similarly stated that it had never directly invested in OPNX, but clarified that it had invested in FLEX in 2021—two years before OPNX was even announced. Together with DRW and Nascent, OPNX named Merchant Bank International, Token Bay Capital, Tuwaiq Limited, AppWorks, Susquehanna (SIG), and several others as major investors. The other companies are yet to comment on the matter.

Several hours after the initial announcement, OPNX published another Tweet in which it stated that its primary commitment is to transparency and seemingly criticized DRW and Nascent. Due to the confusion, the exchange’s FLEX token sharply declined and was about 15% in the red at the time of writing.

At OPNX, our core value is transparency. We believe in full disclosure of our institutional backers and key strategic partners. It’s ugly for firms to seek financial gain while simultaneously denying association due to fear of social media backlash. Should any party waver in their dedication to transparency and industry advancement, we express our disappointment at their misrepresentation and prefer not to have them as investors in future.

OPNX’s Ridicule-Ridden Launch

Considering that Su Zhu and Kyle Davies’ reputation in the crypto community isn’t particularly good due to the Three Arrows Capital fiasco, the launch of their OPNX has been marked by public ridicule since the very beginning. The project has been on a thorny path since the very beginning in part thanks to the fact that it was initially revealed under the name “GTX”—a play on the name FTX, an exchange whose collapse revealed unbelievable levels of fraud and incompetence.

Despite the cynicism, the exchange’s founders remained undeterred. CoinFLEX, the main partner of Zhu and Davies, published a statement offering more details on the project stating that FLEX would be its token and confirming that “GTX” was indeed both an inside joke and only a working title. Su Zhu later took to Twitter to describe OPNX as the result of much discussion and thought and painted the picture of a “next-level” CEX.

OPNX’s launch earlier in April only added more fuel to the fire. In the first 24 hours after going live, the company confirmed that the trading volume on the exchange stood at only $13.64. Later on the same day, the firm’s Twitter account was suspended and remained dark for several days without an explanation.

This article originally appeared on The Tokenist

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