ARTHUR CHEONG
Founding DeFiance Capital and being one of Asia's most-followed DeFi investors as Arthur_0x.
Arthur Cheong quit commodities trading to bet everything on DeFi, and for a while he looked like a genius. His fund DeFiance Capital, launched in August 2020, rode the DeFi boom hard. Then two disasters hit. A phishing hacker stole about $1.7 million of his NFTs in March 2022. Months later the collapse of Three Arrows Capital, which DeFiance had once called its umbrella, dragged it into a mess it had to fight its way out of. He is still one of the most-followed crypto voices in Asia as Arthur_0x. Proof that in crypto, being early and getting wiped out can happen in the same year.
Net Worth
Not publicly disclosed
Verified Oct 2026
Time Horizon
Long-Term
Risk Appetite
10 / 10
CAREER & BACKGROUND
Cheong did not start in crypto. After economics at Nanyang Technological University he worked in metals market risk at Cargill from 2013, then joined BP in 2014 on the oil trading side.
Former colleagues introduced him to crypto. In 2019 he went in full time, first as a DeFi research and trading analyst at JST Capital, then briefly as vice president of growth and strategy at Zilliqa.
He built a following writing sharp DeFi research under the name Arthur_0x. In August 2020 he launched DeFiance Capital, a Singapore-based fund focused on decentralized finance.
The timing was perfect. DeFi exploded that year and DeFiance rode the wave.
COMPANIES & ROLES
DeFiance Capital is his firm. It invests in DeFi tokens and blockchain projects.
Think lending protocols, decentralized exchanges, and crypto gaming. In its early days DeFiance's own website described it as a sub-fund and share class of Three Arrows Capital, the giant crypto hedge fund, though DeFiance later said it was set up as an entirely separate entity in 2020.
That link became a nightmare in 2022. Cheong is also known simply for his public research.
His Arthur_0x account is one of the most-read feeds in crypto.
INVESTING STYLE & PHILOSOPHY
Cheong is a DeFi maximalist. He believes finance is being rebuilt on public blockchains, with no banks in the middle.
So he hunts for the protocols that will run that new system. Lending platforms.
Trading platforms. Tokens that earn fees from real usage.
He does deep research and then bets big on conviction. He is not a diversify-into-everything investor.
He concentrates into a handful of projects he thinks will win. In plain terms, he picks a few horses and rides them hard.
THE PLAYBOOK
Risk Approach
Extreme, and he has the scars to prove it. Cheong runs a concentrated DeFi portfolio, which means brutal swings.
Crypto routinely drops 80% and he holds through it. But 2022 showed the real cost of that risk appetite.
He lost $1.7 million in NFTs to a single phishing email. Then the Three Arrows collapse froze and endangered a chunk of his fund's assets.
He survived both. Most people running that much risk in that year did not.
Money Habits
Cheong keeps his personal spending private, so do not expect Buffett-style trivia here. What is public is his relationship with risk and security.
He was a heavy NFT collector, holding blue-chip pieces like Azuki and CloneX until a March 2022 phishing attack took about $1.7 million of them. After that he became a loud voice for wallet security and self-custody.
His real habit is being extremely online. Arthur_0x posts constantly, and that presence is part of the job.
BIGGEST WIN
The 2020 to 2021 DeFi boom was his moment. Cheong launched DeFiance Capital in August 2020, right as decentralized finance took off.
He had early conviction in DeFi tokens when most traditional investors would not touch them. As lending and trading protocols exploded in value, DeFiance did very well.
He called the DeFi wave early and rode it while Wall Street was still asking what a token even was.
BIGGEST MISTAKE
The Three Arrows disaster is the one that hurt. DeFiance had once described itself as a sub-fund of Three Arrows Capital.
When 3AC imploded in mid-2022, DeFiance said it had been materially affected by the liquidation, and it had to publicly insist it was a separate firm and that Cheong had never been a director of 3AC or involved in running it. The lesson was expensive and clear.
It does not matter how good your own trades are if your assets sit with a partner who blows up. He has since been raising money for a new fund.
FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY
Cheong's core belief is that DeFi is the future of finance and most people are too early to see it. So he invests ahead of the crowd and waits.
He values deep research over hype, and he shares that research openly. He also learned a hard lesson about counterparty risk.
When Three Arrows blew up, he saw how trusting the wrong partner can sink you even when your own bets were fine. Now he preaches self-custody and caution about who holds your money.
FAMILY & PERSONAL LIFE
Cheong keeps his family life completely private, which is rare for someone so public online. He has said he moved to Singapore around a decade ago, and the crypto community there is where he built his name.
His identity is tied to the Arthur_0x persona more than to any personal details. In crypto, the pseudonym often is the person.
EDUCATION
Cheong studied economics, with a minor in entrepreneurship, at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. His real training came after, in commodities.
He worked in metals market risk at Cargill and then in oil trading at BP, where he learned how real markets move and break. Then he taught himself crypto the way most early investors did, by living in it daily.
BOOKS & RESOURCES
Cheong is more of a research-thread guy than a book guy, so start with his Arthur_0x writing
It is free and it is where he built his name
The best history of Ethereum, the chain most DeFi runs on
And co-authors, a clear academic take on the world Cheong bets on daily. Between them you get the story and the theory
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Investors
Stani Kulechov
Kulechov founded Aave, a DeFi lending protocol of exactly the kind Cheong hunts for and backs through DeFiance Capital.
Su Zhu
Su Zhu co-founded Three Arrows Capital, which DeFiance once described as its umbrella. When 3AC collapsed in 2022, Cheong had to fight to separate DeFiance from the wreckage.
Head-to-Head
Compare Arthur Cheong vs another investor.