The $100 Billion Mistake: How FTX’s Bankruptcy Estate Undersold Everything

TLDR:

• SBF’s 8% Anthropic stake sold for $1.3B in bankruptcy is now estimated to be worth $30 billion today
• Alameda’s $200K Cursor investment was sold at cost and is now valued at $3B after SpaceX’s acquisition offer
• FTX’s 58 million SOL tokens were auctioned at $64 each while the market price had already surpassed $174 per token
• Bankruptcy lawyers recovered roughly $8B total from asset sales that could have returned over $100B if retained

Sam Bankman-Fried remains behind bars while his former investment portfolio tells a different story. The assets once held by FTX and its sister firm Alameda Research have grown dramatically in value.

Bankruptcy lawyers sold those positions for a fraction of what they are worth today. Had those stakes been retained, estimates place the total portfolio value between $52 billion and $118 billion.

Missed Gains From Early Bets on Anthropic and Cursor

SBF made an early bet on Anthropic in 2021, putting in $500 million for an 8% stake. At the time, artificial intelligence had barely entered mainstream conversation. Bankruptcy lawyers later sold that stake for $1.3 billion, which seemed reasonable then.

That same 8% stake would be worth an estimated $30 billion today. That figure alone exceeds the peak valuation of FTX at its height. The timing of the sale proved costly for creditors who could have benefited far more.

Satoshi Club posted on X, noting that Alameda invested just $200,000 for 5% of Anysphere, the company behind Cursor, in April 2022.

The bankruptcy estate sold that position one year later at the same price it was purchased. Yesterday, SpaceX announced a $60 billion acquisition option for Anysphere.

That 5% stake would now carry an estimated value of $3 billion. That represents a 15,000x return on the original investment. The sale at cost stands as one of the most expensive decisions made during the bankruptcy process.

SpaceX, Solana, and Robinhood Round Out the Losses

FTX channeled $700 million to K5 Global in 2022, which then invested in SpaceX at a $140 billion valuation. SpaceX is now eyeing a valuation of $1.75 trillion ahead of a potential IPO. That exposure is now estimated to be worth around $15 billion.

FTX and Alameda also held 58 million SOL tokens at one point. Bankruptcy administrators auctioned between 25 and 30 million of them at $64 per token.

SOL was already trading at $174 when buyers received their allocations, giving Galaxy and Pantera immediate gains.

The remaining Solana holdings would be worth over $5 billion at current prices. Those gains went to outside buyers rather than creditors. SBF had also acquired 7.6% of Robinhood for $648 million in 2022 at $11.52 per share.

The DOJ seized those shares, and Robinhood’s market cap is now approaching $75 billion. That stake alone would be worth $5.7 billion today.

In total, bankruptcy lawyers raised roughly $8 billion by liquidating everything, a fraction of what the portfolio became.

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