FTX's Early Exits Cost $7.64 Billion in Missed Gains

FTX, once a leading player in the cryptocurrency sector, has exhibited fundamental errors that have contributed to its downfall. One of the most glaring mistakes was the premature sale of its early-stage, high-potential partnership investments, which has likely cost the exchange billions in unrealized gains. The crypto community is left to ponder whether these decisions were made under pressure or were simply poor judgments.

Key outcomes of FTX's restructuring for customers include the sale of numerous investments for far less than their worth, resulting in a missed potential upside of $7.6 billion. So far, $1.2 billion has been repaid to customers, with FTX stating that the total amount to be repaid ranges from $14.7 billion to $16.5 billion.

One of the most notable missed opportunities for FTX was its early investment in Anysphere, the company behind Cursor AI. In 2022, Alameda, FTX’s trading firm, invested $200,000 into Anysphere. By April 2023, the estate of FTX sold the stake for the same amount, seemingly writing off any future potential. By 2025, Anysphere had raised $900 million and had a valuation of $9 billion. FTX’s initial $200,000 investment would now be worth an estimated $500 million, highlighting a significant missed opportunity.

Another instance of FTX’s exit strategy was its interaction with Mysten Labs and the $SUI token. In 2022, FTX invested $101 million in Mysten’s Series B funding round, obtaining both equity and around 890 million $SUI tokens. In April 2023, FTX’s estate sold off its entire position for $96.2 million, a loss of $4.8 million compared to the price it paid for the tokens. By May 2025, $SUI was trading at about $4 a token, turning FTX’s missed investment opportunity into something that could have added $3.55 billion to its estate. This decision looks even more regrettable now, especially considering the potential future value of $SUI.

The investment in Anthropic, the artificial intelligence company behind Claude AI, was perhaps the most painful loss for FTX. In 2021, FTX bought an 8% stake in the company for $500 million. By 2023, FTX’s estate was selling its stake in Anthropic for a total of $1.33 billion. A year later, Anthropic’s worth had rocketed to an astounding $61.5 billion. If FTX had held on to its 8 percent piece of that worth, it would now be sitting on an asset worth an estimated $4.92 billion—an amount that is $3.59 billion more than what FTX realized from the sale of its Anthropic stake. Anthropic’s swift ascent highlights FTX’s lost chance, particularly when you consider that Anthropic’s valuation keeps rising in lockstep with AI’s growing importance on the global tech and finance stage.

The trio of early exits—Anysphere, Sui, and Anthropic—calls to mind the many possibilities FTX could have realized had it just held on to its positions. The combined total of these three developments amounts to $7.64 billion, which, had it been realized during the period in which FTX was attempting to emerge from bankruptcy, could have done a lot to help boost creditor recoveries and significantly change the narrative regarding FTX’s image. These weren’t just normal investment screw-ups. The quick sell-offs, mainly due to how much they could have earned, beg the question: were they impulsive choices, made under pressure? Or were they strategic moves done to cover for the company’s obvious financial instability? Whatever the case, they were some of the most expensive mistakes in FTX’s short, wild history.

As FTX progresses with its restructuring, these not-so-missed opportunities offer a cautionary tale about the high-risk, high-reward crypto world. Imagining what the outcome might have been had FTX held onto these assets makes for an equally unreal and ridiculously lucrative picture of crypto history.