If FTX hadn't sold Anthropic back then, its value today might not be $1.3 billion, but tens or even hundreds of billions of dollars. Anthropic's latest prospectus reveals plans to list on Nasdaq at $70-78 per share, ticker symbol ANT, with Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley as lead underwriters. Based on the current offering plan, the IPO valuation is approximately $917 billion to $1.02 trillion. On a fully diluted basis, the highest valuation could even reach $1.4 trillion. But the most interesting story about this IPO isn't just how much wealth the AI company has created, but what FTX missed out on. In 2021-2022, Alameda Research invested approximately $500 million in Anthropic, acquiring about 7.84% of its shares. Later, FTX collapsed, and the bankrupt consortium, in order to repay creditors, had to sell these shares in two installments in 2024, recovering a total of approximately $1.34 billion. From an investment perspective, this was already a very successful transaction; $500 million became $1.34 billion, a profit of approximately 2.68 times. However, the problem was that they sold too early. If they hadn't sold them then, assuming the original 7.84% stake remained unchanged, Anthropic's valuation would have reached $1.4 trillion, and these shares would theoretically be worth approximately $109.8 billion. That's equivalent to the initial $500 million investment becoming nearly $110 billion. Of course, this is only a static assumption. After subsequent rounds of financing and dilution, the original shareholding percentage has decreased to approximately 2.5%, and based on the latest IPO valuation, the actual theoretical value is closer to over $30 billion. Even so, this is still an investment powerful enough to change the fate of FTX creditors. There's a very real investment logic at play here: Bankruptcy liquidation and long-term investment are two completely different games. What FTX needed at the time was cash liquidity, not to continue holding a pre-IPO AI company with an uncertain future. Given the circumstances at the time, selling the shares wasn't necessarily a bad decision. After all, no one could guarantee that Anthropic would grow to its current size. But looking back today, this deal was undoubtedly one of the most expensive early exits in crypto history. That's the cruelest part of investing: you not only have to decide what to buy, but also whether you can hold onto it.