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A Boat Named After a Meme
In the summer of 2021, at the height of the crypto mania, Three Arrows Capital founders Su Zhu and Kyle Davies did what newly minted billionaires do: they went yacht shopping. The Singapore-based hedge fund — once one of crypto’s most celebrated firms, managing around $10 billion at its peak — signed a contract for a Sanlorenzo 52Steel, a 52-meter steel-hulled superyacht then under construction in Italy. It was, at the time, the largest Sanlorenzo ever sold in Asia.
The name they chose: Much Wow, an inside joke lifted straight from Dogecoin meme-speak, picked to delight their social media followers and signal to everyone else that they were in on it .
The Ship
The 52Steel is Sanlorenzo’s cleverest trick: a 499-gross-ton yacht that packs the amenities of a 62-meter into a 52-meter hull. Designed inside and out by Officina Italiana Design, Much Wow featured five decks, accommodation for 12 guests in six staterooms tended by nine crew, and a glass-bottom swimming pool on the aft deck that doubled as a skylight for the beach club below. The aft garage flooded to become a full-beam beach club — a tender could literally drive in through the stern — while twin Caterpillar engines gave her a 4,400-nautical-mile range. The price tag: roughly $50 million, paid in installments as the build progressed .
The Collapse
Then came June 2022. The crypto market cratered, Three Arrows’ highly leveraged bets evaporated, and the fund defaulted on more than $3 billion owed to creditors. Court filings later alleged that Zhu and Davies had used fund money to buy the yacht and other property. As the bankruptcy proceedings unfolded, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Butererin delivered the era’s most savage line: there were “far more honorable ways to burn $50m to impress people than buying a superyacht” .
The yacht itself never left La Spezia. Zhu and Davies never took delivery — their ownership vehicle, Much Wow Ltd., failed to make the final payments, and the 171-foot white-hulled superyacht sat marooned in her Italian berth .
The yacht still sails. She’s called RMF now, and she charters by the week. The wow, it turns out, was never hers to keep.
