Nansen CEO Alex Svanevik pointed out that Binance founder Changpeng Zhao (CZ) would have become one of the most valuable venture capital portfolios in tech history if his company had completed the acquisition of FTX in November 2022.
A Forbes analysis published in May showed that Sam Bankman-Fried’s personal and FTX-related investments, including an 8% stake in Anthropic, 5% of Cursor, and exposure to SpaceX, are now worth more than $100 billion.
What exactly did CZ distance himself from?
Before the FTX collapse, the portfolio built by Bankman-Fried was surprisingly good. According to Forbes and other reports, it included an 8% stake in Anthropic, a 5% stake in Cursor, exposure to SpaceX, and other holdings like Robinhood and Solana.
In November 2022, Binance walked away from an acquisition deal with the company, and shortly after, the exchange collapsed.
If Binance had completed its purchase of FTX, these investments would have been transferred to Binance’s balance sheet.
But instead, they ended up in bankruptcy court, where the FTX estate sold them to pay off creditors. Cursor’s stake was sold back to the founders for just $200,000 in 2023, but after SpaceX purchased Cursor at a valuation of $60 billion, that stake would now be worth around $3 billion.
FTX has invested around $500 million in Anthropic. Today, the AI company’s valuation has surpassed $600 billion, and some estimates place it at nearly $900 billion. This stake alone could be worth more than $70 billion today.
Bankman-Fried had accumulated around $60 million in SOL when it was around $8, with a peak value of around $21 billion.
Alex Svanevik, CEO of Nansen published the portfolio breakdown to X on June 19, calling the decision “a rare failure by CZ in hindsight.”
Rory O’Driscoll, partner at Scale Venture Partners, said Bankman-Fried had an incredible ability to pick winning companies before the AI boom.
Why did CZ walk away from the acquisition deal with FTX?
Zhao’s Memoirs“Freedom of Money,” published in April 2026, says Bankman-Fried called him in November 2022 and asked for billions of dollars “casually, like he was asking for a bologna sandwich.”
Zhao said he signed a non-binding letter of intent (LOI), but never planned to complete the deal because he had no interest in owning FTX or helping SBF. He said the letter of intent was “purely a formality” so his team could look at FTX’s numbers and see if it could help protect customers.
The deal collapsed within 72 hours and Binance made public its withdrawal from the acquisition on November 9, 2022, citing “mismanagement of customer funds and alleged US agency investigations.”
Zhao also wrote that when Caroline Ellison, CEO of Alameda Research, publicly offered to buy back Binance shares. $TTF Having chips at $22 each, she made a “fatal mistake.”
By showing the market where the floor price was, professional traders began shorting the token and pushing it below that level. $TTF fell from $22 to $5 in three days, and around $6 billion in withdrawals were drained from FTX.
Zhao mentioned during a February 2026 appearance on the All-In podcast that Bankman-Fried had been lobbying against Binance in Washington, DC. Despite this, he maintains that his decision to sell Binance $TTF The detention was not a planned attack.
Ironically, that of Binance $TTF The holdings, once worth $580 million, became “fundamentally worthless” after the collapse, Zhao wrote.
