Crypto billionaire Zhu Su in early stage of buying S$49m GCB as trustee for 3-year-old

Kalpana Rashiwala, Claudia Chong, Sharanya Pillai, The Business Times, 17 December 2021

Zhu and wife recently granted option to buy Yarwood property as trustee for child; all 3 are Singapore citizens

SINGAPOREAN crypto billionaire Zhu Su is understood to be in the early stage of buying a bungalow in Yarwood Avenue on 31,862 square feet of land for S$48.8 million.

The price works out to S$1,532 per square foot (psf) on the land area. On the 999-year leasehold site is an old 2-storey bungalow with 6 bedrooms that is understood to be leased currently. It is ripe for redevelopment.

Zhu and his wife, Tao Yaqiong Evelyn, who has a PhD in biology from the National University of Singapore, were recently granted an option to buy the Yarwood property, in the Kilburn Estate Good Class Bungalow (GCB) Area - as trustee for a nearly 3-year-old child.

All 3 are Singapore citizens.

Bungalows in the 39 gazetted GCB Areas are the most prestigious form of landed housing in Singapore, with strict planning conditions stipulated by the Urban Redevelopment Authority to preserve their exclusivity and low-rise character. One generally has to be a Singapore citizen to be allowed to acquire a landed property in a GCB Area.

Zhu and Tao are understood to be residing in a strata landed home in the Balmoral area owned by Zhu.

Zhu is regarded as one of the most prominent crypto investors in the world. He and his Columbia University mate Kyle Davies, now also a Singaporean, left their jobs as traders at Credit Suisse in 2012 to found Singapore-based crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital.

The fund started off trading traditional currencies in emerging markets, according to a Bloomberg report in May. It later diversified into cryptocurrencies and became one of the early adopters of Bitcoin and Ethereum, benefiting from the global spike in investor interest later on.

Three Arrows is also the largest investor in DeFiance Capital, which invests in decentralised finance. The fund has invested in popular blockchain game Axie Infinity, and Mark Cuban-backed Mintable, a Singapore-based non-fungible token (NFT) startup.

Zhu and Davies, along with influential pseudonymous NFT collector Vincent Van Dough, also started the Starry Night Capital NFT fund.

The pair is among the crop of young millionaires and billionaires minted from the spectacular rise of cryptocurrencies. The price of Bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency by market value, surged to an all-time high of over US$68,000 last month.

Zhu has an active presence on Twitter, where he has expressed bullishness on cryptocurrencies including Dogecoin and Ethereum challenger Avalanche. Together with a crypto researcher and writer who goes by the pseudonym Hasu, he hosts a podcast called Uncommon Core that explores the ins and outs of the crypto world.

Zhu and Tao have been granted the option to buy the Yarwood bungalow by a company owned by 3 members of the Guok family linked to Soon Lee Holdings.

Earlier this year, the family is understood to have sold Zion Mansion, a low-rise apartment block on a site with dual frontages on Holland Rise and East Sussex Lane, for S$56.7 million, or about S$1,325 psf on land area of 42,770 sq ft. The property is within the Holland Rise GCB Area.

Boutique property agency Realstar Premier founder William Wong described the S$1,532 psf for the Yarwood property as a "fair price for the seller, given that the buyers will most likely need to redevelop the entire house as it is already more than 20 years old". "The redevelopment land cost for this area is in the range of S$1,400-1,600 psf in the current market."

SRI co-founder Bruce Lye said: "If you are looking for a GCB plot of more than 25,000 sq ft to redevelop, this is one of the more fairly-priced sites."

Neither SRI nor Realstar were involved in the transaction.