June 14, 2026
Bankman-Fried and the Beanstalk
FTX's former Anthropic stake would be worth about $75B at today's valuation
FTX’s lost AI jackpot has commenters screaming: too late, still stolen, still messy
TLDR: FTX’s former investment in Anthropic might be worth about $75 billion today, far more than the hole left when the exchange collapsed. But commenters say this doesn’t redeem Sam Bankman-Fried at all: the real scandal was taking customer money, and many argue victims needed it then, not in some fantasy future.
The internet has officially entered its "what if the crooks had just gotten lucky?" era. News that FTX’s old stake in artificial intelligence company Anthropic could be worth a jaw-dropping $75 billion today sent commenters into a full-on moral food fight. On paper, that’s way more than the roughly $8 billion to $9 billion hole left behind when crypto exchange FTX collapsed. But the crowd was not in the mood for a redemption arc.
The hottest reaction was basically: "Please stop accidentally making Sam Bankman-Fried look smart." One commenter summed up the dark irony perfectly: if Sam hadn’t been caught, he might have eventually had enough money to replace what was missing. That sparked instant backlash. Critics hammered the same point over and over: the problem wasn’t bad luck, it was taking customer money in the first place. As one legal-minded commenter reminded everyone, the judge’s view was brutally simple: "The crime charged is that he took the money."
Then came the spreadsheet warriors. Some argued this comparison is totally unfair because customers weren’t just owed dollars from years ago; many were owed crypto, which has since risen in value too. Others piled on with practical reality: money years later is not the same as money when you need rent, food, or survival now. Another spicy angle? Even if the stake had exploded in value, plenty of people suspect FTX would have sold it early, diluted it away, or used it to cover even more reckless bets. In other words, commenters aren’t buying the fantasy ending — they’re calling it financial fan fiction.
Key Points
- •The article says FTX’s former Anthropic stake would be worth about $75 billion at today’s valuation before further dilution.
- •It states that FTX’s customer shortfall was roughly $8 billion to $9 billion.
- •The article argues that FTX’s plan effectively involved trying to recover from losses while concealing the true state of customer funds, but that this failed.
- •It says any successful recovery would still have required years of hiding facts from auditors and avoiding employee leaks or whistleblower action.
- •The article challenges a direct comparison between past USD-denominated shortfall figures and today’s asset values, using bitcoin price changes and possible stake dilution as examples.