I just reread a story that nicely summarizes how luck (or lack thereof) defines everything in crypto markets. It all started in 2021 when Dario Amodei left OpenAI and founded Anthropic, an AI startup that quickly became a direct rival to ChatGPT. Here's where it gets interesting: a certain exchange founder, passionate about AI and long-term thinking, decided to make a big bet. In April 2022, his exchange led a $580 million funding round for Anthropic, putting $500 million on the table. At the time, the valuation was $2.5 billion, so he held about 13.56% of the shares, which later diluted to around 8% with new investments.

But then came the collapse. November 2022 was devastating. The exchange went bankrupt, the founder was arrested and later sentenced to 25 years. End of story? Not exactly. Jumping to 2024, the bankruptcy administrators obtained court approval to sell Anthropic's shares and reimburse creditors. They sold two-thirds to sovereign funds from Abu Dhabi and others, raising about $884 million. After everything was liquidated, they recovered somewhere between $1.3 billion and $1.4 billion.

Now comes the painful plot twist. The AI wave didn't stop; quite the opposite. Amazon, Google, and other giants began investing massively in Anthropic. The company that was valued at $2.5 billion in 2022 is now being valued at $350 billion or more. If that exchange had kept its 8% stake until now, that position would be worth around $28 billion. Think about it: the original $500 million investment would have turned into $28 billion. It would be one of the biggest success stories of the AI era.

But that’s not what happened. While he’s in prison, the shares that could have made him one of the richest men in the world were liquidated to compensate victims. It’s ironic: the most valuable asset of the bankruptcy was precisely that investment in Anthropic, but the investor himself will never see that return. The story shows how AI has become the dominant narrative and how timing, decisions, and a bit of luck determine fortune or ruin in crypto markets.