Anthropic prohibits unauthorized encrypted sharing transactions

Anthropic has updated its investor warning page, stating that any unapproved private share transfer is invalid and not recorded in the books.

5/16/20265 min read

No dispute, no restriction, invalid

The language that Anthropic uses goes far beyond the usual stop trading warnings that companies give when the secondary market trades their stocks without permission. The company does not say that unauthorized transfer transactions are "disputed", "under review" or even "limited". They say that they are invalid, which means that they do not legally exist from the moment they occur. Any sale or transfer of Anthropic shares or any interest in Anthropic shares that has not been approved by the board of directors is invalid and will not be recorded in the company's books and records.

This creates immediate problems for investors who believe that they own economic interests in Anthropic through encrypted products or special-purpose vehicle structures. Even if they have paid real money and received tokens or certificates claiming to represent Anthropic shares, the company has now declared that those instruments are worthless. The buyer does not own Anthropic shares, does not have shareholder rights and will not be recognized if Anthropic is publicly listed or repurchased. They only own the right to what the base company says does not exist.

This announcement names some specific platforms that are not allowed to operate, including Open Door Partners, Unicorns Exchange, Pachamama Capital, Lionheart Ventures, new offerings of Hiive, new offers of Forge Global, Sydecar and Upmarket. Some of these are established secondary market platforms, facilitating transactions of private company shares worth billions of dollars each year. Forge Global quickly denied being included in the list, claiming that their names were misstated and was working with Anthropic to remove the name from the warning. Hiive emphasized that all of their share transfers were approved by issuers and that they had invested heavily in compliance infrastructure.

However, Anthropic's statement does not distinguish between managed platforms and gray market operators. Any transfer without the approval of the board of directors is invalid, regardless of where it takes place or who performs it. That makes buyers on even established platforms face the same uncertainty as holders of cryptographic products based on Solana. The important question is not whether the platform is regulated, but whether Anthropic's board of directors approves that specific transfer transaction in writing, which most individual investors have no way to verify.

Token PreStocks and the illusion of a valuation of 1.5 trillion USD

The immediate market impact is very serious. Anthropic shares are crypto on PreStocks, a Solana-based platform that claims to be secured 1:1 through SPV holdings, which collapsed from about $1,400 to $900 within 24 hours of Anthropic's announcement, corresponding to a 35% to 40% drop. The OpenAI token on the same platform also suffered the same loss after OpenAI issued a similar warning with almost identical language about unauthorized transfer transactions being invalidated.

PreStocks has shown Anthropic's implied valuation of over $1.5 trillion and a market capitalization of about $1.37 trillion on its dashboard, although the platform only holds about $23 million in total assets across all of its crypto products. This unusual gap between implied valuation and factual assurance illustrates the narrative risk that these crypto markets create for private companies.

The speculative token price can create headlines about valuations that seem to reflect the legal public pricing even if the basic liquidity is minimal and the company itself has not confirmed that price.

For Anthropic, the company completed the funding round in February 2026 with a valuation of $380 billion and is said to be raising new capital of about $900 billion, the tokenization market implies a valuation of up to nearly $1.5 trillion, creating confusion about the true value of the company. Investors, journalists and competitors all refer to this tokenized market price as data points when discussing Anthropic's trajectory, although the company has no control or participation in the formation of that price.

PreStocks was launched in August 2025 with support from Republic Capital and in partnership with Jupiter and Meteora, both of which are Solana decentralized exchanges. This platform requires a KYC process to create and buy tokens and is not available to residents of the United States, Singapore, the EU and sanctioned jurisdictions. PreStocks promised to provide supporting stake verification statements for its tokens but did not publish those reports despite being active for many months. The lack of independent verification combined with the large gap between the implied valuation and the actual number of holdings raised questions even before Anthropic officially denied it.

The SPV ban and its implications for indirect risk

Anthropic's statement specifically prohibits special purpose companies (SPVs) from buying their shares, declaring that any such transfer is invalid under the company's transfer restrictions. This is directly aimed at the structure that many platforms use to provide individual investors with the opportunity to access private companies. An SPV is created to hold shares in a private company, then investors buy shares in SPV instead of buying shares directly. In theory, this structure helps avoid restrictions on the transfer of shares because the company's shares are still in the hands of SPV and cannot be transferred to individual investors.

But Anthropic has now sealed that loophole by declaring the transfer transactions to the SPVs themselves invalid. Even if the SPV claims that Anthropic's shares are purchased through legal channels such as early liquidation of the investor or the employee's secondary sale, Anthropic can still argue that those shares were transferred to SPV without the approval of the board of directors and therefore the transfer is invalid. This makes SPV investors holding shares in companies can claim ownership of Anthropic's shares that the company does not recognize as having been validly transferred.

The ban creates different levels of risk depending on how SPV initially bought shares. Some special purpose companies (SPVs) can hold shares from initial funding rounds before transfer restrictions become strict, or from company-approved secondary transactions in which the board of directors has explicitly authorized the transfer. Others may have bought shares through an unofficial secondary market, sold to employees or other mechanisms without the official approval of the board of directors. Anthropic's joint statement considers all holdings of SPV to be the same unless specifically approved, putting the burden of proving SPV's shares approved by the board of directors on the investor's shoulders.

This structure also affects how investors can make profits if Anthropic is finally publicly listed or acquired. In a traditional IPO, existing shareholders will be able to convert shares into publicly traded shares and can freely sell. But if Anthropic does not recognize some of the SPV's holdings as valid shares, those SPVs may not receive shares in the IPO or payment in a buyout. SPV investors will own interests in entities claiming to hold shares of Anthropic without bringing any economic benefits when liquidity events actually occur.

Disclaimer: The information presented in this article is the author's personal opinion in the field of cryptocurrencies. This is not financial or investment advice at all. Every investment decision should be based on careful consideration of your personal portfolio and risk tolerance. The opinion in the article does not represent the official position of the platform. We recommend that readers do their own research and consult experts before making any investment decisions.

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