Anthropic issued a blunt warning to its secondary market: any stock transfer via token or SPV without board approval is void. This throws cold water on platforms where its shares have traded at an implied $1.5 trillion valuation, a figure host David Bennett notes is backed by a mere $23 million in assets.
The warning targets a booming, chaotic marketplace. Dio Casares estimates the annual value of private secondary trades now exceeds $200 billion, where fees on an Anthropic deal can hit 10% upfront plus carry. He argues this has created a gold rush for middlemen who layer SPVs on top of SPVs, prioritizing fee extraction over asset transparency.
“The market is rife with fake share certificates and gross negligence.”
- Dio Casares, Bankless
The fraud risk is systemic. Casares estimates 10-20% of proposed secondary deals involve some form of misrepresentation, including forward contracts on employee shares that can vanish if the employee is fired. Buyers often use AI tools to draft high-stakes legal agreements, leaving them exposed to total loss.
The coming reckoning will be an operational nightmare. When a company like Anthropic goes public, shares must filter through nested SPV structures, each with its own rules for distributing cash or stock. Casares predicts delays of weeks at each layer, sparking years of litigation from investors expecting immediate liquidity.
Meanwhile, the capital chasing AI is causing brutal pivots elsewhere. Bitcoin miner Bitfarms, now rebranded Keel Infrastructure, posted a $145 million net loss last quarter as it sold thousands of Bitcoin to fund its shift to high-performance computing. Bennett suggests cutting a proven revenue stream for the AI hype cycle is a risky gamble for smaller players.
