ftx

This story dropped quietly this week but the implications are staggering.
SpaceX's agreement to acquire AI coding startup Cursor at a $60 billion valuation has retroactively turned a routine bankruptcy asset sale by FTX's estate into one of the largest missed recoveries in crypto history.
Here's what happened. During FTX's bankruptcy proceedings in 2023 and 2024, the estate's administrators were tasked with liquidating assets to repay creditors — the more than one million customers and institutional investors who lost money in the collapse. They sold positions, investments, and stakes across dozens of companies at whatever price the market offered during the post-FTX crisis period.
Cursor — the AI coding tool that became the developer tool of the year in 2025, used by millions of software engineers globally — was among those assets. It was sold at a fraction of what it would later be worth.
On April 23, 2026, SpaceX announced it was acquiring Cursor at a $60 billion valuation. In one announcement, a routine bankruptcy liquidation line item became the single largest missed recovery in crypto history.
To put that in context: FTX's entire shortfall — the amount needed to make all creditors whole — was approximately $8 billion at the time of collapse. The value locked in Cursor alone, had the estate held it, would have covered that shortfall more than seven times over.
This isn't a criticism of the bankruptcy administrators, who were operating under legal requirements to liquidate assets promptly and at market prices. Bankruptcy law doesn't allow estates to speculate on future valuations. They had to sell.
But this story illustrates something important about how wealth destruction works in crypto collapses. It's not just the direct losses. It's the forced selling of early-stage assets at distressed prices — the opportunity costs that don't show up in the headline numbers but dwarf them in retrospect.
FTX creditors eventually received a recovery rate above 100 cents on the dollar — meaning they got their money back, thanks to aggressive asset recovery and Bitcoin's price recovery. But "getting your money back" and "getting what you would have had if you'd never trusted FTX" are very different things.
The $60 billion valuation of Cursor is a number that should be taught in every blockchain business school course on why custody risk is not theoretical. It's real, it compounds, and sometimes you only find out the true cost years later.

#FTX #SpaceX #Cursor #CryptoHistory #Bankruptcy

#SBF didn't just run a crypto exchange.
He was quietly building what might've been the most prescient investment portfolio in modern finance — until he torched it all by stealing from his own customers.
Let the numbers speak.
1. #Anthropic — The AI Crown Jewel
#FTX dropped $500M into Anthropic for an 8% stake when the AI company was worth just $2.5 billion. Early. Visionary. Perfect.
Then came the collapse.
Bankruptcy liquidators sold that same stake in two batches through early 2024 — walking away with $1.3B total. Felt like a win at the time.
Anthropic just closed its Series G at $380 billion.
That 8% stake? Worth $30 billion today.
FTX left $28.7 billion on the table. That's nearly the entire peak valuation of FTX itself — gone, because the estate had to liquidate fast.
2. #Robinhood — The Sleeper Stock
In May 2022, SBF's vehicle Emergent Fidelity Technologies quietly accumulated a 7.6% stake in Robinhood for $648M — at a time when HOOD was trading near all-time lows.
It was either genius contrarian timing or a coincidence. Either way, it was right.
The stake got swept into bankruptcy proceedings. Creditors got cents on the dollar when the position was unwound. Meanwhile, Robinhood roared back.
3. CURSOR — The $200K Miracle
This one is almost too painful to read.
Alameda Research — FTX's trading arm — invested $200,000 into a tiny AI coding startup called Anysphere during its pre-seed round in April 2022. That bought roughly 5% of the company.
When bankruptcy hit, liquidators sold it. For exactly $200K. No markup. Just... gone.
The startup built Cursor, the AI code editor now used by 67% of Fortune 500 companies, crossing $1B in annualized revenue.
Yesterday, SpaceX announced an option to acquire Cursor for $60 billion.
That $200K stake? Currently worth an estimated $3 billion.
A 15,000x return. Sold at cost.
4. $SUI — The Token Heist
FTX Ventures put $101M into Mysten Labs in August 2022 — just months before implosion — securing equity plus warrants to purchase 888 million SUI tokens for $1M extra.
In March 2023, Mysten Labs bought everything back for $96.3M — two months before SUI's mainnet launched.
At SUI's peak, those 888M tokens alone were worth over $3.5 billion. The full warrant position (1.6B tokens)? $6+ billion.
Sold for $96M.
The total?
Anthropic: $30B
Robinhood: potentially $5-10B
Cursor: $3B
SUI: $3.5–6B
That's a portfolio worth north of $40–50 billion today.
Buried under bankruptcy filings, court orders, and forced liquidations.
SBF had the eye. He genuinely saw these bets before almost anyone else.
But he funded it all with other people's money — money that wasn't his to risk.
That's not investing. That's theft with good taste.
And that's what makes this the most haunting portfolio in crypto history. #SamBankman-Fried