Nansen CEO: CZ missed chance to own SBF's $100 billion venture portfolio

Nansen’s CEO, Alex Svanevik, has pointed out that Binance founder Changpeng Zhao (CZ) would have become one of the most valuable venture portfolios in tech history by now if his company had completed the acquisition of FTX in November 2022.

A Forbes analysis released back in May showed that Sam Bankman-Fried’s personal and FTX-linked investments, including an 8% stake in Anthropic, 5% of Cursor, and exposure to SpaceX, would today be worth north of $100 billion. 

What exactly did CZ walk away from?

Prior to the FTX collapse, the portfolio Bankman-Fried built 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 FTX purchase, those investments would have moved to Binance’s balance sheet. 

But instead, they ended up in bankruptcy court, where the FTX estate sold them off to pay back creditors. The Cursor stake was sold back to the founders for just $200,000 in 2023, but after SpaceX bought Cursor at a $60 billion valuation, that stake would now be worth about $3 billion.

FTX invested about $500 million in Anthropic. Today, the AI company’s valuation has soared past $600 billion, and some estimates put it near $900 billion. That single stake could be worth over $70 billion today. 

Bankman-Fried had accumulated about $60 million in SOL when it was around $8, with a peak value of around $21 billion. 

Nansen CEO Alex Svanevik posted the portfolio breakdown to X on June 19, calling the decision “a rare miss by CZ in hindsight.”

Rory O’Driscoll, a 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 memoir, “Freedom of Money,” published in April 2026, explains that Bankman-Fried called him in November 2022 and asked for billions of dollars “nonchalantly, as if he were asking for a bologna sandwich.” 

Zhao said he signed a non-binding letter of intent (LOI) but never planned to actually go through with the deal because he had no interest in owning FTX, or in helping SBF. He said the LOI was “purely a formality” so his team could look at FTX’s numbers and see if they could help protect customers. 

The deal fell apart within 72 hours, and Binance publicly withdrew from the acquisition on November 9, 2022, citing “mishandled customer funds and alleged U.S. agency investigations.”

Zhao also wrote that when Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison publicly offered to buy back Binance’s FTT token holdings at $22 each, she made a “fatal error.”

By showing the market where the price floor was, professional traders started shorting the token and drove it below that level. FTT fell from $22 to $5 in three days, and about $6 billion in withdrawals drained from FTX. 

Zhao mentioned in a February 2026 appearance on the All-In Podcast that Bankman-Fried had been lobbying against Binance in Washington, D.C. Despite this, he maintains that his decision to sell Binance’s FTT holdings was not a planned attack.

Ironically, Binance’s own FTT holdings, once worth $580 million, became “basically worthless” after the collapse, Zhao wrote.

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