The day CZ missed the best investment of his life, Crypto missed AI.

In 2014, CZ, who had only been exposed to the concept of cryptocurrencies for one year, made the most daring investment of his life — he sold his apartment in Shanghai and "went all in" on approximately 1,500 BTC at a three - digit price. Twelve years have passed. If CZ had never sold those Bitcoins, this investment would have yielded hundreds of millions of dollars in profits (with a peak return of approximately $189 million).

Compared with his subsequent achievements of founding Binance and making it the industry leader, the returns from this investment are insignificant to CZ. However, from an external perspective, this idealistic "all - in" move remains one of CZ's most talked - about operations.

Surprisingly, even CZ, who is known for his firm beliefs and decisive actions, once missed an investment opportunity that could have potentially yielded a profit a hundred times greater than "selling his house to buy coins" in a highly dramatic way.

1,555 days back on the clock: That feigned acquisition

November 9, 2021, was a sleepless night for the cryptocurrency industry.

Just one day before, FTX, which was once extremely popular in the industry, suspended withdrawals due to a liquidity crisis. Panic in the community skyrocketed, and the damp smell before a storm began to permeate the market... As we all know, FTX collapsed, triggering a chain reaction, and the market plunged into a long - lasting winter that lasted for several years.

In an alternate universe, the story could have taken a different turn. In the early morning of November 9, SBF and CZ issued statements saying that FTX had reached a preliminary acquisition agreement with Binance.

SBF: Hello everyone. I have some news to announce. Things have come full circle. The first and last investors in FTX are the same group — we have reached a strategic transaction agreement (subject to due diligence) with Binance.

CZ: In the afternoon, FTX asked us for help. Currently, the exchange is severely short of liquidity. To protect users, we signed a non - binding letter of intent to acquire FTX in full to ease the liquidity crisis. We will conduct a comprehensive due diligence in the next few days.

However, the acquisition ultimately failed. Just one day later, Binance officially announced the abandonment of the acquisition, citing "the problems are beyond our control" as the reason. This became the last straw that broke the camel's back for FTX.

Did CZ genuinely consider acquiring FTX? Was the hasty acquisition farce a sincere attempt to help or just a ploy to peek at the competitor's "health bar"? This may remain a permanent mystery. From the outcome, CZ single - handedly crushed his biggest competitor at that time and solidified Binance's throne as the industry leader.

However, no one could have predicted that a seemingly insignificant "side asset" in FTX's asset pool back then has skyrocketed in value in just a few years, and its current value far exceeds the total value of the remaining assets from that uncompleted acquisition.

A once - insignificant "side asset", now the focus of AI

In April 2022 (this is the official announcement date; the transaction was actually completed in 2021), FTX made its most important investment in the AI field — it led a $580 million financing round of AI startup Anthropic with a $500 million investment, once holding a 13.56% stake, which was later diluted to 7.84% as Anthropic completed several subsequent financing rounds.

It was an era when the potential of AI had not yet exploded. Just half a year later (at the end of November 2022, the month when FTX collapsed), OpenAI's ChatGPT emerged, and the world irreversibly entered the "Age of AI Exploration". Anthropic, with its Claude series of products (especially the programming - oriented sub - product Claude Code), has repeatedly amazed the world and gradually become one of the most prominent star companies in the AI era.

As Claude continues to evolve, Anthropic's valuation has also been rising steadily. Investors are frantically waving their money, eager to board Anthropic's ship to IPO. The latest market rumor is that Anthropic is in the final stage of a new large - scale financing round, with the financing scale expected to exceed $20 billion (the original plan was to raise $10 billion, but due to overwhelming investor demand, the final financing amount is expected to double), and its valuation may reach as high as $350 billion. The transaction is expected to be completed as early as this week.

Based on the latest valuation of $350 billion, the value of FTX's stake in Anthropic back then has soared to approximately $27.44 billion, more than enough to cover the reserve shortfall that led to its bankruptcy... But history has already happened, and the outcome is set.

It's hard not to admire SBF as a rare venture capital genius (he also invested in the now - popular Cursor during its seed round, besides Anthropic). However, it's obvious that he is not a qualified business operator, especially lacking in risk control. CZ, on the other hand, is an outstanding business operator. Binance's dominance is attributed to his many correct strategic decisions. However, CZ often sees himself not as a traditional investor solely focused on investment returns. He doesn't trade cryptocurrencies and instead wants to be a builder of the industry.

A hasty ending: This should have been the best intersection of Crypto and AI

You may be curious about what happened to FTX's equity in the end.

The ending is not complicated. After FTX's bankruptcy, all of its assets, including the equity in Anthropic, were handled by FTX's bankruptcy management team. In February 2024, the court approved the bankruptcy management team to sell these equities. In March and June of the same year, the bankruptcy management team sold 29.5 million and 15 million shares for a total of $884 million and $450 million respectively, with the total sales exceeding $1.3 billion.

The buyers of these equities are mainly ATIC Third International Investment from Abu Dhabi and traditional financial institutions on Wall Street such as Jane Street and Fidelity. In other words, no cryptocurrency - related companies got a share of the pie.

Whether these equities were deliberately sold at a low price and whether there was any under - the - table deal in the name of bankruptcy liquidation no longer matters to the cryptocurrency industry.

This should have been the best intersection of Crypto and AI. In an alternate timeline, whether the equity was in SBF's or CZ's hands, if the leading companies in the cryptocurrency world had some say in the development of the most successful company in the AI world, there could have been more innovative attempts around "Crypto + AI", leading to unexpected achievements.

It's not just CZ who regrets this.

This article is from the WeChat official account “Odaily” (ID: o - daily), written by Azuma and published by 36Kr with authorization.