Key Takeaways
- Binance is using a 1 billion-share estimate to work out the AI company Anthropic’s implied valuation. At press time, ANTHROPIC stands over $2 trillion.
- Anthropic warned back in May that unauthorized SPV stock transfers are void and could basically end up being worthless to investors trading or holding these assets.
- Binance could adjust ANTHROPIC/USDT if the share count in Anthropic’s S-1 comes in 3% or more above or below its current estimate.
On Sept. 9, Defillama’s pre-IPO dashboard showed Binance’s ANTHROPIC/USDT contract testing $2,120. Binance applies an assumed share count of 1 billion, turning that contract price into an implied company value of roughly $2.12 trillion. Similar contracts on Bitget, Kraken, BingX, Aster, and Coinbase International were trading in the same price range.
Crypto Traders Push Anthropic Above Its Last Private Valuation
That figure is more than double Anthropic’s last negotiated private-market valuation. The company raised $65 billion in a Series H round on May 28, valuing Anthropic at $965 billion after the financing round.
Late August had already been a wild ride. ANTHROPIC/USDT traded around $1,600 to $1,840 on Binance-tracked markets, implying roughly $1.6 trillion to $1.84 trillion under the same 1 billion-share assumption. A Hyperliquid market deployed by Entropy briefly printed above $2 trillion and settled near $1.97 trillion around Aug. 28.
The catch is that none of those contracts are Anthropic stock. Binance listed ANTHROPIC/USDT on June 2 as a USDT-margined perpetual contract with up to 20 times leverage. It settles in tether and uses a market price created by trading on the exchange, not a public share price.
A $2 Trillion Ticker Is Not the Same as Owning Stock
Binance says its 1 billion-share estimate is informational only and that any implied valuation is not attributable to or endorsed by the exchange. “If the Pre-IPO Perp is transitioned to a TradFi Perp, a Pre-IPO Transition Notice will be issued,” Binance explains on its web portal.
OKX uses a 10 billion-share assumption, producing a lower per-unit quote but roughly the same implied company value. These perpetuals do not put traders on Anthropic’s cap table or deliver shares at settlement. They are derivatives that let traders bet on where they think Anthropic could eventually be valued. Interestingly, the ANTHROPIC ticker can look like a stock quote even though no public stock sits behind it.
A separate product has added more confusion. Prestocks issues an ANTHROPIC token on Solana that claims economic exposure through a special-purpose vehicle, or SPV. On Sept. 9, the token traded around $961 to $973 with a market cap of about $7.1 million to $7.2 million, while the Prestocks’ dashboard showed an implied Anthropic valuation near $1.59 trillion.
Anthropic Warns Unauthorized Investment Structures May Be Worthless
Anthropic has pushed back against that structure. In May, the company said it does not permit SPVs to acquire Anthropic stock, that transfers into an SPV are void and that third parties selling exposure through tokenized securities, forward contracts or similar mechanisms may be offering investments with no value. PreStocks tokens fell roughly 34% to 45% after the warning.
On the flip side, traders do have reasons to speculate. Anthropic’s private-market valuation climbed from $380 billion in February to $965 billion in May, while its annualized revenue run-rate was disclosed near $47 billion at the Series H close and later reported around $65 billion by the end of July.
Bankers and investors have discussed a possible listing in the $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion range. Still, the contracts are tiny compared with the value they imply. Defillama lists more than a dozen Anthropic perpetual markets, while combined open interest on the largest books is only in the tens of millions of dollars.
Alongside Anthropic, OpenAI’s pre-IPO shows the OPENAI/USDT contract traded around $1,578 on Sept. 9 on Binance, and on Kraken, OpenAI pre-IPO assets swapped hands for $1,604. Prestocks shows OpenAI tokens at $1,084 and a $1.34 trillion implied market cap. Like Anthropic, OpenAI has disclosed confidentially with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that it planned to go public.
The IPO Will Test Crypto’s $2 Trillion Bet
For now, anyone reading ANTHROPIC/USDT, or any pre-IPO contract or token, as a true equity price is playing with fire. Binance says it will rescale the contract if an amended S-1 shows a share count that differs from its estimate by 3% or more.
That makes the eventual IPO the reality check. Until registered shares are actually priced, the $2.12 trillion figure is a leveraged crypto-market opinion on Anthropic’s future value, not a price the company has authorized, sold, or promised investors.
