Investors spend more than $1000 on non-existent Anthropic shares

Solana Chain tokens promise Anthropic pre-IPO investment opportunities, exceeding $1,000

In the weeks before Anthropic was expected to launch its IPO roadshow, a Solana blockchain-based token that promises to provide Anthropic's "pre-IPO" investment exposure has traded at a price exceeding $1,000. Anthropic was valued at US$380 billion in a February financing round and is moving towards a public offering that could become one of the largest technology IPOs in history, TheStreet reported.

The token is called ANTHROPIC and is issued by the tokenization platform PreStocks. According to CoinGecko, its price was $1,006.84 as of writing, a 6.9% increase in 24 hours. Although the price is above the September 2025 low of $186.84, it is still below the all-time high of $1,409.20 set on May 11, 2025. CoinMarketCap data shows that the circulating supply of the token is approximately 7,380, distributed in approximately 8,800 wallet addresses, and its market value is close to US$7.4 million.

The platform claims to be "1:1 anchored", but Anthropic's solemn statement is invalid.

PreStocks was launched in August 2025. According to DL News, the platform sells tokens that claim to provide "pre-IPO" investment exposure to private companies including Anthropic, SpaceX and OpenAI. The platform said the tokens were "backed by a 1:1 ad hoc entity (SPV) exposure to underlying company shares," which means acquiring shares or related interests through the secondary market.

However, Anthropic directly refuted the structure behind such tokens. When the company updated its investor warning page on May 11, it clearly stated: "Any sale or transfer of Anthropic shares, or any transfer of interests in Anthropic shares, that is not approved by our board of directors, is invalid and will not be recognized in our books and records."

According to Protos, the notice specifically named offending structures such as ad hoc entities, forward contracts and tokenized securities, and listed the names of unauthorized transaction intermediaries such as Forge, Hiive, Open Door Partners, Sydecar, Upmarket, Lionheart Ventures, Pachamama and Unicorns Exchange.

Cryptocurrency lawyer Gabriel Shapiro told crypto.news that Anthropic chose the strictest legal wording under the Delaware Corporation Law. He pointed out that treating such transfers as "void" rather than "revocable" deprived secondary market buyers of their equitable rights of defense. Affected by the news, the price of the token plunged 34% within hours of the announcement.

Liquidity exhaustion and redemption dilemma

Despite reports of huge paper floating profits, the liquidity problems faced by token holders remain severe. DL News once recorded a trader earning a paper gain of nearly $1.5 million by accumulating 2,593 ANTHROPIC tokens (which represented 31% of supply at the time). However, simulated sell orders conducted through major Solana exchange aggregators showed that the best exit option would only sell approximately 950 tokens with a 34% price discount, and no trading platform could absorb all positions.

On-chain data shows that at the moment when the on-chain market suggested that Anthropic's valuation exceeded US$1.3 trillion, PreStocks held approximately US$333,000 in stablecoins and approximately US$18,000 in SOL to deal with the Anthropic tokens associated with it. According to DL News, while PreStocks allows investors to apply for direct redemptions, the process involves costs, requires authentication (KYC), and depends on the platform's ability to clear underlying positions. Since its launch, the platform has promised to release third-party endorsement reports; but in April this year, a spokesperson told DL News that the report was "still in progress" and no report has been released so far.

The derivatives market is priced at more than US$2 trillion, far exceeding the current valuation

At the same time, the over-the-counter derivatives market has priced Anthropic close to US$2 trillion. Binance founder Zhao Changpeng (CZ) predicted this week that IPOs will eventually migrate completely on-chain, arguing that tokenized products can provide companies with round-the-clock liquidity, DeFi interoperability and direct access to global retail capital markets. He pointed out that the current real-world asset market has reached US$33.6 billion, of which tokenized stocks and ETFs account for approximately US$3 billion.

According to DigitalToday, Binance's ANTHROPICUSDT perpetual contract traded at 2,012.50 USDT this week, with daily trading volume reaching US$21.1 million, recovering from a level of 1,300 in July. On the Hyperliquid platform, the ANTH-USDC contract was trading at US$2,157.30, up 7.78% in 24 hours, and the open interest was worth US$22.5 million, with a daily turnover of US$15.9 million. Combining data from the two exchanges, traders are pricing Anthropic's valuation at around $2 trillion, more than five times its February financing round valuation.

Both exchanges stated that these synthetic contracts, which are purely based on price expectations, have no voting rights and have nothing to do with the issuer, and will be automatically settled based on the actual opening price on the day of listing. According to DigitalToday, in May, traders on the Hyperliquid Ventuals platform paid an annualized funding rate of as high as 8,700% to maintain long positions.

Potential risks on the IPO day

According to the exchange terms, for derivative contracts, trading will cease at the time of listing and the contracts will be settled based on the true opening price. However, for the approximately 8,800 wallet addresses holding PreStocks tokens, redemption depends on the platform's KYC process and its ability to clear SPV positions, and there are currently no third-party endorsement reports published. In addition, Protos reported that Anthropic warned that unauthorized equity transfers could violate U.S. securities laws.