It has been over a year since the defunct crypto exchange FTX filed for bankruptcy and over a month since its founder, Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), was convicted. However, crypto enthusiasts (including SBF possibly) cannot help but wonder how profitable the company could have been if things turned out differently.
How Much FTX’s Assets Will Be Worth Now
According to a report by Blockworks, FTX’s assets would be worth almost $9.6 billion if the crypto exchange had survived to see the resurgence in the crypto market. This projection is based on the exchange’s balance sheet, which Bankman-Fried himself drew out and was later shared by the Financial Times.
Blockwork’s projection of $9 billion means that FTX’s assets have seen close to a 40% increase from the speculated sum of $6.4 billion which is said to be how much the company’s assets were worth prior to when it filed for bankruptcy. Notably, the majority of the crypto exchange’s assets were made up of cryptocurrencies.
Serum (SRM) and Solana (SOL) specifically formed FTX’s largest crypto holdings. The crypto exchange held $2.19 billion worth of SRM and $0.98 billion worth of SOL. The bump in the value of the crypto exchange’s assets has been largely due to the resurgence in SOL’s price. SOL has seen an impressive gain of over 400% in the past year.
Bankman-Fried, who happened to be one of Solana’s primary backers from the onset, would possibly be delighted at how much SOL has recovered. However, this has in no way been thanks to him, as the Solana ecosystem has had to rebuild its image from the ground up after SOL dropped to as low as $12 following the FTX and Alameda saga last year.
Sam Bankman-Fried Got It Right With Anthropic
Sam Bankman-Fried is known to have misappropriated FTX’s funds and made several bad investment decisions. However, the founder will undoubtedly take consolation in the fact that he got it right with Anthropic. As part of its assets, the exchange has a $500 million investment in the AI startup.
This investment has since skyrocketed, considering that Anthropic’s value has risen, with the company reportedly valued as high as $30 billion. This investment could also possibly put the total value of the exchange’s assets at a higher value if the current value of the worth of FTX’s $500 million stake in the company is obtained.
Interestingly, Bankman-Fried had intended to use this fact about his investment in Anthropic as evidence in court to show that he had acted in good faith when he was the CEO of FTX. However, Judge Lewis Kaplan ultimately blocked this move by the defense.