Community Trust ScoreVerified
Sam Bankman-Fried’s collapsed empire sold off some of the best tech bets of the decade — at the worst possible prices. The FTX estate, scrambling to repay creditors after the 2022 implosion, dumped stakes in Anthropic, Solana, Robinhood, and Cursor for fractions of what they’d eventually be worth.
The numbers are brutal. A $200,000 seed check that Alameda Research wrote for Anysphere — the company behind AI coding tool Cursor — bought a 5% stake. The FTX estate sold it back at cost. No premium, no negotiation. Just $200,000 returned. SpaceX later moved to acquire Anysphere in a $60 billion stock deal, which means that tiny 5% position would be sitting at roughly $3 billion today. Three billion dollars, gone for $200,000. And that’s just one line item.
Anthropic Stake Sold for $1.3 Billion, Now Worth $30 Billion
The Anthropic situation is probably the most painful one. FTX put $500 million into the AI firm back in 2021, locking in an 8% stake. The estate sold that holding in two separate tranches during 2024, collecting about $1.3 billion total. Decent money, sure. But Anthropic’s valuation has since climbed to $380 billion. At 8%, that stake would be worth more than $30 billion right now. The estate left roughly $28 billion on the table — not because of bad judgment, exactly, but because bankruptcy courts don’t wait for AI valuations to moon.
John J. Ray III, the restructuring veteran brought in to manage the FTX estate, was operating under court-directed timelines. Speed mattered more than upside. Creditors needed cash. The legal machinery kept moving.
That’s the core tension here. Every sale was technically correct — approved by courts, structured to maximize near-term recovery. But the market kept moving after the gavels came down.
Solana Tokens Sold at $64, Peaked at $293
Solana is another case that stings. Alameda had been an early backer of the network, and the estate ended up offloading roughly 30 million locked SOL tokens at $64 each through a court-approved process in 2024. The token later hit $293 in early 2025. Solana has since pulled back to around $74, but even at current prices, the math is ugly — the estate sold near the floor of what turned out to be a massive move.
Thirty million tokens at $64 is about $1.92 billion. At $293, that same stack would’ve been worth close to $8.8 billion. Even at today’s $74, it’s $2.22 billion — still more than what the estate collected.
Robinhood’s story is similar. Bankman-Fried’s investment vehicle, Emergent Fidelity Technologies, had built up a 7.6% stake in Robinhood worth roughly $648 million at acquisition. After FTX collapsed, US prosecutors seized the shares. The US Marshals Service sold them at $10.96 each, pulling in $605.7 million. That’s already a loss versus the purchase price. And Robinhood’s valuation has since climbed to the point where that stake would be worth more than $5 billion.
So the Marshals sold at $10.96. The stock kept climbing. That’s not really anyone’s fault in the traditional sense — the seizure and sale were legally mandated — but it’s still a staggering gap.
Mysten Labs Buyback and the Pattern of Forced Exits
It wasn’t just the headline names. In 2023, Mysten Labs — the team behind the Sui blockchain — repurchased FTX’s equity and token warrants for about $96 million. FTX had originally paid around $101 million for that position. So basically a wash. No gain, minimal loss, but also zero upside captured on what Sui has done since.
The pattern is pretty consistent across all of these deals. The estate needed liquidity fast. Courts set deadlines. Buyers knew the seller was distressed and couldn’t wait. So prices reflected urgency, not value.
Bankruptcy law isn’t built for venture capital timelines. A typical early-stage investor in Anthropic or Cursor would’ve held for years, maybe a decade, before cashing out. The FTX estate had no such luxury. Ray’s team was under pressure from creditors, courts, and the sheer complexity of unwinding one of the messiest collapses in crypto history.
And it’s worth saying — some creditors are getting paid back. The sales did generate real cash. The $1.3 billion from Anthropic alone moved the needle. But the gap between what was collected and what could’ve been collected keeps growing as these companies appreciate.
Cursor at $3 billion. Anthropic at $30 billion. Robinhood above $5 billion. Solana’s 30 million tokens worth multiples of the sale price. The FTX estate sold Anysphere’s 5% stake for exactly $200,000.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much did FTX’s estate collect from selling its Anthropic stake?
The estate sold its 8% stake in Anthropic in two tranches during 2024, collecting approximately $1.3 billion total — compared to a current value exceeding $30 billion based on Anthropic’s $380 billion valuation.
What happened to FTX’s Robinhood shares?
Emergent Fidelity Technologies, Bankman-Fried’s investment vehicle, held a 7.6% stake in Robinhood acquired for roughly $648 million. US prosecutors seized the shares after FTX’s collapse, and the US Marshals Service sold them for $605.7 million at $10.96 per share.
