SBF: Half is a complete scammer, half is a genius investor.

February 2026, Anthropic completed a $30 billion Series G funding round, with post-money valuation surpassing $380 billion. On the day the news broke, one person was in federal prison, theoretically one of the biggest beneficiaries of this investment.

His name is Sam Bankman-Fried. In April 2022, he took 86% of Anthropic’s entire funding round with $500 million, acquiring about 8% equity. At today’s valuation, that 8% is worth over $30 billion, a 60-fold return.

But that $500 million came from deposits of FTX customers, and he himself was sentenced to 25 years in federal prison in March 2024, with an earliest release date in 2049, when he will be 57.

Jane Street: Top Quant Trader

SBF majored in Physics with a minor in Mathematics at MIT. After graduating in 2014, he joined Jane Street, a top quantitative trading firm on Wall Street, engaging in international ETF arbitrage trading.

He was quickly regarded as one of the best traders of his class, earning $300,000 in his first year, $600,000 in his second, and by the end of his third year, the company was preparing a $1 million bonus for him. Management believed his annual salary could reach $15 million within ten years.

Around the 2016 US election, SBF was tasked with building an internal election prediction system at Jane Street, tracking voting data by state. The system often called out state results a few minutes before CNN, once boosting Trump’s chances from 5% to 60%.

Based on this system, Jane Street invested billions shorting the S&P 500, but the market moved in the opposite direction, resulting in a loss of about $300 million that day—one of its largest single losses ever. SBF’s prediction system’s accuracy was recognized rather than blamed.

Three years later, he left Jane Street.

His judgment was straightforward: by 2017, the cryptocurrency market’s daily trading volume exceeded $1 billion, yet traditional financial institutions barely participated. It was a structurally inefficient market, and for quantitative trading, inefficiency itself was an opportunity.

So he decided to enter this space.

Japan Arbitrage: The First Big Win

In 2017, SBF discovered that Bitcoin traded at $10,000 in the US but could be exchanged for an equivalent of $11,500 in Japanese yen. A 10% price difference, enough to run a round-trip trade every business day.

Executing this arbitrage required multiple conditions: opening accounts on Japanese exchanges, obtaining large-scale trading qualifications, and transferring millions of dollars from Japan daily. Just passing through Japanese banks could block 99% of people.

So SBF named his company “Alameda Research.” Alameda is a city in California, and Research sounds like an academic institution, used to pass Japanese banking audits.

Through Takashi Hidaka, a middleman with twenty years of experience working with Japanese banks, SBF built a channel system for opening accounts at rural Japanese banks and bypassing the vigilance of big banks.

At its peak, this system transferred $25 million worth of Bitcoin and yen daily. Before the arbitrage window closed, Alameda earned roughly $10 million to $30 million.

Solana: Tweets Bought at $3

SBF’s bet on Solana was never based on “this chain has the best technology,” but on his practical judgment as FTX founder: Ethereum was too slow, gas fees too high, and DeFi and derivatives needed a Layer 1 capable of handling high-frequency, large-volume transactions.

He started accumulating SOL when it was only $0.2, continuing to buy in the $2–$3 range.

Alameda eventually bought over 58 million SOL directly from the Solana Foundation and Solana Labs, with FTX and related entities holding over 60 million at peak, accounting for more than 10% of Solana’s total supply.

On January 9, 2021, crypto influencer @coinmamba publicly shorted Solana on Twitter, claiming the chain had no future.

SBF responded directly: “I’ll buy all your SOL at $3 right now. Sell as much as you want. When you’re done, get lost.”

This tweet later became one of the most quoted legendary moments in crypto history. When it was posted in January 2021, SOL was at $3, and later soared to $260, an over 80-fold increase.

After FTX collapsed in November 2022, @coinmamba reposted the tweet, mocking SBF, completing the full circle.

In February 2024, while waiting for sentencing at Brooklyn Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC Brooklyn), SBF repeatedly gave crypto investment advice to guards, with Solana still his top recommendation, jokingly called the “wealth code” he was sending from prison.

Robinhood: The Most Ambitious Entry Point

In May 2022, FTX was at its peak, valued at $32 billion.

SBF, through a shell company registered in Antigua called Emergent Fidelity Technologies, spent $648 million to acquire 7.6% of Robinhood, about 56.2 million shares, at an average price of $11.52.

All funds came from Alameda Research’s loans, issued in four tranches: $316.7 million and $35.18 million on April 30, and $175 million and $19.45 million on May 15.

On the day the news broke, Robinhood’s stock surged by 36% after hours, eventually stabilizing at about a 25% increase. The market took SBF’s name as a directional signal.

But a detail most reports overlooked: he filed a Schedule 13D, not 13G.

The difference is that 13G indicates passive ownership, while 13D means he explicitly reserved the right to push for changes in the company. He never denied the possibility of acquiring the entire Robinhood.

Robinhood had tens of millions of retail users in the US. If he could seamlessly integrate FTX’s crypto trading, derivatives system, and leverage tools, it would be the largest retail crypto gateway in the US.

When FTX collapsed, this $648 million Robinhood stake was one of his most liquid assets. He tried to use it to bail out the company, but ownership quickly became a four-party dispute: BlockFi claimed SBF had already pledged it to himself; FTX’s bankruptcy team argued it was company assets; SBF claimed it was personal property to pay legal fees; DOJ ultimately intervened and seized it.

In September 2023, Robinhood repurchased its shares from U.S. marshals at a low price of $605.7 million. Based on the current stock price of about $72.50 in March 2026, the stake’s theoretical value exceeds $4.1 billion, about 6.3 times the original investment.

Anthropic: The Greatest Bet at the Peak

In April 2022, seven months before FTX’s collapse, ChatGPT had not yet been released, and AI was far from entering the public eye as it does today. Anthropic was still considered a relatively marginal startup by most investors.

SBF, through Alameda Research, invested about $500 million in Anthropic’s Series B, covering roughly 86% of the round and acquiring about 8% equity. Co-investors included Alameda CEO Caroline Ellison, FTX engineering director Nishad Singh, and Jane Street’s James McClave—all funds almost entirely controlled by SBF and his direct capital pools.

To understand this investment, one must first understand a circle called “Effective Altruism” (EA). EA’s core belief is that charity should be based on calculation, not feelings, and every dollar should flow toward the mathematically “maximizing good” outcome.

Within EA’s most radical branch, the top existential risk is not nuclear war or pandemics, but uncontrolled artificial intelligence.

SBF and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei are core members of this circle. Early investors in Anthropic are almost all from the EA community: Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz, Skype co-founder Jaan Tallinn, and SBF—three of the biggest funders in EA history, all early investors in Anthropic.

So this was not a decision based on investment insight, but a flow of funds within the circle: EA money flowing into the most critical issues defined by EA.

Dario later said in an interview that he had already noticed enough red flags at the time. His approach was extremely calm: take the money, but SBF received non-voting shares and couldn’t sit on the board.

In March 2024, FTX’s bankruptcy team sold this stake for $1.3 billion. The largest buyer was Mubadala, the Abu Dhabi sovereign fund, investing about $500 million—exactly equal to SBF’s original investment. The second-largest was Jane Street, SBF’s former employer, with quant research head Craig Falls personally investing $20 million.

During the trial, SBF’s defense team attempted to present this investment as “foresight,” but prosecutors argued that the source of the funds was itself a core issue, unrelated to the investment outcome. Ultimately, this part was not included in effective defense.

In February 2026, Anthropic completed its Series G funding, with a post-money valuation of about $380 billion. The bankruptcy estate recovered $1.3 billion, and those shares are now worth over $300 billion in theory. This remains the largest unrealized paper loss in the entire FTX bankruptcy case.

Building and Collapsing the Entire Financial System

Solana is the blockchain layer, Anthropic is the AI intelligence layer, Robinhood is the user entry point layer. Together, they form a complete “chain + AI + entry” parallel financial system framework, which was basically formed by May 2022 but collapsed within half a year.

Anthropic liquidated and recovered $1.34 billion, Robinhood was bought back at a low price of $605.7 million, and Solana holdings were gradually liquidated during bankruptcy proceedings, with all proceeds flowing into creditor payout pools.

While embezzling customer funds, SBF made one of the most visionary bets in AI investment history. This was his genius side, but also the root of the disaster. He was always someone extremely skilled at constructing “believable stories”—for regulators, investors, the public, and even himself. The “profit as a means, charity as the goal” logic of EA, in his hands, was pushed to criminal extremes.