Every time the market performance lags, someone inevitably writes lengthy nostalgic pieces about how much better the crypto circle would be if SBF were still around.

The logic has major flaws.

First, SBF's massive external investments back then were funded by misappropriating FTX user assets. Alameda Research misappropriated a total of $13.3 billion. It's like buying lottery tickets with stolen money—even if Anthropic's valuation later skyrocketed, it doesn't change the fact of illegal misappropriation or provide any moral justification.

Second, SBF invested in 470+ projects, totaling $5 billion, with the vast majority going to zero, including various DEXs and liquidity pools. The $500 million invested in Anthropic—if FTX hadn't collapsed, those equity stakes could be worth over $30 billion today. But does this prove he's an investment genius with remarkable foresight?

Not necessarily. More likely, SBF had access to billions of dollars in misappropriated funds at the time and was throwing money around broadly with wide casting—he simply happened to hit some projects that turned out well later. This is survivorship bias.

Third, even if SBF/FTX remained major shareholders in Anthropic, what does that have to do with crypto? Why would anyone think that AI titans represented by Anthropic would take the crypto circle to new heights? What's the logic behind this fantasy? It's pure unrequited delusion from the crypto community. Everywhere you look now there are crypto projects trying to ride the AI wave, but how many heavyweight AI projects have said they need Crypto?

Perhaps what people really miss isn't SBF, but that wild era when anyone could get rich by having someone pump the price aggressively and go all-in on shit tokens.