Researcher: If FTX's Venture Capital Portfolio Is Not Liquidated, Its Nominal Value Could Exceed $110 Billion

This set of "what if we hadn't sold back then" figures essentially reveals a stark contrast: despite extreme failures in operations and risk management, FTX's venture capital and strategic investment portfolio has shown a near-optimal risk asset allocation in hindsight. The combination of Anthropic, Solana, SpaceX, Robinhood, Bitcoin mining companies, and infrastructure projects has almost perfectly tapped into all major bull markets of the past in the "AI + public chain + US stock growth" sectors, indicating that SBF's asset selection was not without insight, but rather that "asset selection was highly successful while liabilities and governance were completely out of control."

For bankruptcy proceedings, this "hindsight could have led to wealth" counterfactual scenario highlights a structural paradox: bankruptcy law aims to liquidate quickly and protect creditors, rather than maximize long-term upside potential of risk assets. FTX sold 8% of Anthropic for about $1.3 billion in 2024, which was already a high price at the time, but as Anthropic's valuation rapidly rose to hundreds of billions, the nominal value of the same position was recalculated to a range of $30–80 billion, far exceeding the original total amount of all customer debts. This indicates that in high-volatility tech and crypto assets, traditional bankruptcy liquidation mechanisms systematically "sell during undervaluation periods," transferring future potential gains to new buyers.

From an industry structure perspective, this also explains why leading venture capital firms, sovereign funds, and large tech companies are willing to actively acquire such "bankrupt assets." They are effectively buying high-quality equity at discounted prices that should have been long locked in the balance sheets of failed institutions, stripping away the "good cards" on the asset side of failed institutions and integrating them under their own more robust capital and governance structures. The result is that potential excess returns that originally belonged to FTX users are ultimately redistributed to the acquirers and a new round of institutional capital, while creditors can only receive limited compensation based on the discounted valuation at the time of bankruptcy.

In the longer term, such cases are reshaping the market's perception of the "crypto platform + venture capital" hybrid business model. FTX has proven that even with strong asset-side timing capabilities, as long as the liability side and governance structure lack constraints, it will ultimately end in systemic failure; and in hindsight, those who truly benefit from these successful bets are often traditional institutions capable of taking over during crises and holding long-term. From a wealth distribution perspective, this signifies a typical "socialization of risk, institutionalization of upside": retail investors and ordinary users bear the direct losses of the platform collapse, while the enormous paper wealth created by the subsequent surges in AI, public chains, and unicorn valuations is primarily concentrated in the balance sheets of the re-acquiring capital and enterprises.