FTX's former Anthropic stake would be worth about $75B at today's valuation
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aadam_rida about 4 hours ago 21 comments
ZH version is available. Content is displayed in original English for accuracy.
FTX held a diluted 7.84% stake in Anthropic, according to Reuters.
Anthropic’s latest reported valuation is around $965B.
That implies the former FTX stake would be worth about $75B before further dilution.
FTX’s customer shortfall was roughly $8B to $9B.
The estate sold the Anthropic stake during bankruptcy to repay creditors.
Sources: https://www.reuters.com/technology/crypto-exchange-ftx-sell-shares-ai-startup-anthropic-2024-02-22/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/openai-files-us-ipo-after-anthropic-ai-giants-head-public-markets-2026-06-08/
Discussion (21 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews
> FTX’s customer shortfall was roughly $8B to $9B.
I think these hindsight analyses are interesting because they're leading a lot of into retroactively playing devil's advocate for SBF.
It is interesting to imagine a world where FTX made a one-time oopsie, broke some laws to cover it up, but then put all the money back and recovered like nothing ever happened.
You have to remember that this was literally their plan, though. They tried that. It didn't work.
If it had worked, they would have had to spend years hiding the facts from auditors and hoping that none of their employees ever leaked the info or tried to claim a whistleblower reward for what they knew.
If they had gotten past all of that, their continued existence would hinge on them not getting into the same position again. I have my doubts about that. Usually when people in these positions get away with their crimes they are only emboldened to continue taking the same or more risks in the future.
> Jury leave, witness [Ellison] leaves.
> Judge: We can talk about [Anthopic] What about it?
> AUSA: Post-collapse performance is irrelevant.
> SBF's lawyer: It was a $91 million investment now worth $1 billion.
> Judge Kaplan: The crime charged is that he took the money.
https://x.com/innercitypress/status/1712199547915813241
Mt. Gox also ran a fractional exchange for a long time until the bottom fell out. The trouble is that you simply can’t run an unannounced fractional exchange.
Like the customers were largely owed _not_ USD and so compared the USD value owed _4 years ago_ to the _current day_ USD value of something else that wasn't owed is just not correct.
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To do some of the math, assuming all the funds owed were bitcoin then 9 Billion / $17,000 ~= 47 thousand BTC owed.
At current $64k/BTC prices that's roughly $30 Billion. Which while still lower than $75B is much higher than just $9B and doesn't excuse SBF from fraudulently and very publicly claiming that all the money invested as backed 1:1 when it wasn't.
I also don't know how much more FTX's stake would be diluted as well and another commentator talked about nearly half so then it might not cover the "actual" owed value.
A fraudulent bank is one that doesn't have enough liquidity or assets to cover all their obligations. Mt Gox and FTX were perfect examples of this.
The fact that some of their assets went up in the years or decades since is irrelevant. Madoff would probably be in the green now, too, simply thanks to asset inflation.
That's exactly what the US judging SBF said: those shares were acquired will stolen funds.
Not only that: it's obvious, now that we know that the Amodei behind Anthropic are from that same despicable EA movement as SBF, that these were EA-bros helping each other (with stolen funds).
Like EA's guru who acquired a 15 million pounds mansion in the UK with Alameda/FTX stolen funds "gifted" by SBF. This mansion, AFAIK, hasn't been clawed back yet but I know for a fact that misappropriated funds in the "Hermes" fund in the Bernie Madoff ponzi have been clawed back for more than a decade after the fact.
These things takes time: so hopefully at some point this little EA clique gets this mansion seized.
P.S: as a sidenote it's interesting that they didn't effectively altruistically handed that mansion back when they "learned" (as if they didn't know it) that SBF was scamming users.
P.P.S: the returns promised in the Alameda leaflet, before FTX even existed, were already bullshit. SBF was a scammer from day one.
Amother hypothetical outcome might have been "Alameda continued to make risky, over-leveraged investments, immediately rolling any gains into other over-leversged investments and using FTX's customer's money to cover losses until disaster struck".
I find the second hypothetical a bit more plausible than the first, but I probably just don't understand finance.
They levered into wrong-way bets into the crypto winter while stealing the money for yachts and effective-altruism philanthropy and political donations. This wasn’t a Madoff-type leak and confession. Their risk setting didn’t permit a world in which they didn’t blow up.
Which is a much more interesting statement in the context of certain other crypto organizations than it is about FTX...
*of course, it could still go to zero in the future
The 7.84% state would probably be significantly diluted over this time frame so 4-5% is probably a more accurate estimate but perhaps high estimate.
This "not doing well" is being three times higher than at the time of FTX collapse.
If only the role of trustees wasn't to do as they can to make creditors as whole as possible now, without risk, rather than keep playing the same kind of bets that got the bankrupt entity into the hole it was in...