Author: Sanqing, Foresight News

On February 5, Kyle Samani, co-founder of Multicoin Capital, once the most radical Solana evangelist, wrote a staggering comment in reply to a user on social media dApps. Now I don’t believe it.” He went on to make a more brutal assertion, “Blockchains are essentially asset ledgers. They will reshape finance, but that’s about it. DePIN is another area to watch. Cryptocurrencies will continue to get better, but except for on-chain privacy/confidentiality, all the really interesting questions have already been answered.”

This tweet was quickly deleted shortly after it was sent, leaving the community with huge consternation and speculation. Is this the complete disappointment of an industry leader after the bear market? While this controversy was brewing, Kyle Samani officially announced his resignation. He betrayed no trace of negativity in his announcement, instead describing the moment as bittersweet and reiterating that his faith in cryptocurrencies, and Solana in particular, is "stronger than ever." He announced that he will step down from the day-to-day management of Multicoin Capital to explore new areas such as artificial intelligence, robotics and longevity science, while also continuing to serve as chairman of SOL’s treasury company Forward Industries.

This apparent contradiction, between a disenchantment with the grand narrative of Web3 and an unwavering bullishness on financial infrastructure, is revealing of the transformation Kyle Samani and the entire crypto venture community are undergoing. This is not only a personal career choice, but also a microcosm of the transition tide that the crypto VC industry will usher in in late 2025 and early 2026.

A brief history of Multicoin: from 391x myth to rebirth

To understand Kyle’s departure, one needs to look back at the ups and downs of Multicoin Capital’s history. In 2017, Kyle Samani and Tushar Jain co-founded this fund and established a "thesis-driven" investment style. They refuse to cast a wide net for investment, but instead make heavy positions based on a deep understanding of the technical architecture.

This style has delivered significant returns for Multicoin in 2018-2021. The most classic battle is the battle between "modularization" and "monolithization". When the market was generally superstitious about Ethereum's sharding expansion route, Kyle Samani proposed the "Integrated Chains" theory, arguing that only a high-throughput, low-latency architecture like Solana can realize "Internet Capital Markets". This differentiated investment decision not only brought high returns, but also established Multicoin’s position in the field of crypto venture capital.

However, aggressive style is a double-edged sword. The collapse of FTX in 2022 dealt a devastating blow to Multicoin. At that time, about 10% of Multicoin’s assets were directly stranded on the FTX exchange, and a large number of positions were deeply tied to the Solana ecosystem, while the price of SOL plummeted from more than 200 US dollars to a minimum of about 8 US dollars.

According to a subsequent letter to investors, the Multicoin Fund fell as much as 91.4% in 2022. Wall Street and the crypto community were full of ridicule of them, and rumors about Multicoin’s imminent bankruptcy were flying on the Twitter platform. Kyle and Tushar issued a "sinful edict" to LP and admitted their investment mistakes, but they still fought against despair and held on to their positions in the face of the industry's bet against Solana.

As we enter 2025, Multicoin has gradually emerged from the impact of the FTX incident. The company led Forward Industries' $1.65 billion PIPE financing, building a public company treasury with Solana at its core. Six months before Kyle left, Multicoin hired former FalconX trading director Brian Strugats to be responsible for optimizing execution strategies.

This personnel change also shows that Multicoin’s focus is shifting from simply “hunting unicorns” to more professional asset management and liquidity execution. When the company's business stabilized and the institutionalization became increasingly strong, as a pioneer who likes "from 0 to 1", it was natural for Kyle to choose to leave.

Kyle Samani’s personal path: from crypto believer to technology explorer

Kyle Samani's career trajectory is a typical example of the evolution from "encryption fundamentalist" to "cutting edge technology explorer". In his early years, he was named to Forbes' "30 Under 30" list and is known for his programming background in the medical IT field and his sharp comments on the blockchain technology stack.

For eight years, he was Solana's staunchest standard-bearer. However, as the industry matured, Kyle's interests began to shift. In the "Frontier Ideas for 2025" released by Multicoin, Kyle's writing has been heavily tilted towards "DePIN Robots" and "Zero-Employee Companies". For him, pure financial speculation has lost its appeal, and the real excitement lies in the combination of the physical world and digital logic.

This change does not mean "running away". In fact, Kyle's commitment to Solana lives on in another form. As the chairman of Forward Industries (NASDAQ: FWDI), he is implementing the SOL treasury strategy. As of January 2025, Forward Industries holds approximately 6.98 million SOL. In addition, he stated that when he redeems his shares in the Multicoin Fund on March 31, 2026, he will elect to redeem them in kind into shares and warrants of FWDI, thereby further increasing his personal exposure to Solana.

As for the tweet that was deleted instantly, a more accurate interpretation is: Kyle is tired of the Web3 and dApp narratives that are full of air coins and false prosperity, but he has never wavered in the underlying logic of blockchain as an "asset ledger" to reshape global finance. And he said he is still optimistic about DePIN (decentralized physical infrastructure network) and on-chain privacy technology led by Zama, because these areas truly combine encryption technology with real-world hard technology.

More than Multicoin: The “transition wave” of crypto VC partners

Kyle Samani’s departure is not an isolated incident. From the end of 2025 to the beginning of 2026, the top management changes of top crypto venture capital institutions have been eye-catchingly frequent, forming an obvious "tide of transition."

At the same time as Kyle announced his resignation, a16z Crypto’s general partner Arianna Simpson also announced her resignation. As a supporter of Web3 games and consumer applications, she has led investments in star projects such as Sky Mavis (Axie Infinity), Dapper Labs and Irreverent Labs. However, the investor who once single-handedly defined the “Play-to-Earn” track now plans to establish a new fund that will no longer be limited to Web3, but will expand its investment scope to all technology verticals, including AI.

Kofi Ampadu, also from a16z, also chose to leave after the company suspended the TxO (Talent x Opportunity) project he was responsible for. TxO was once a16z’s ecological fund dedicated to supporting founders from non-traditional backgrounds (such as minorities), and it had incubated creator economy projects such as Fanhouse. Kofi’s departure signifies that the crypto VC industry is shrinking from those “non-pure financial return” ecological exploration businesses in the cold winter.

Paradigm, another company known for its technology geeks, has suffered a more serious loss of talent, and the losses are all veterans who define the "temperament" of the organization.

Charlie Noyes (DeFi wunderkind) is Paradigm’s #1 employee, having joined the agency at the age of 19. He was the earliest seed round investor in Uniswap and Tagomi (later acquired by Coinbase), and also led the huge financing of the high-performance public chain Monad; Nick Martitsch (Director of GTM) as the head of market development, he has helped technical hard-core projects such as Uniswap, Optimism and Flashbots complete the key leap from code to market; Gina Moon (General Counsel) is the prediction market Kalshi won the CFTC lawsuit and Uniswap The key figure behind the scenes dealing with regulatory pressure.

The flow direction of these top talents is highly consistent: either to create new funds with a wider investment range, or to devote themselves to new growth poles such as AI and biotechnology. This shows that after several cycles of baptism, the talent structure of the encryption industry is undergoing a profound reconstruction. The early batch of geniuses who came in because of the "intellectual challenge" are looking for the next more challenging frontier.

Why has the crypto VC business changed?

Behind this wave of partner departures, it reflects the three structural changes that the crypto venture capital industry is facing.

The first is diminishing marginal effects. As Kyle tweeted, "All the really interesting questions already have answers."

In 2017-2021, the encryption industry is in a period of wild growth, and an innovative mechanism design (such as AMM, Lending Pool) can often generate significant excess returns. But by 2026, the infrastructure has basically matured, and the remaining work is more about engineering implementation and regulatory compliance than theoretical innovation from 0 to 1. For technical investors like Kyle who are passionate about solving difficult problems, the intellectual challenge of the crypto industry is declining.

The second is the shift in the macro-tech narrative. In 2025-2026, breakthrough developments in artificial intelligence and robotics are sucking away capital and attention that originally belonged to the encryption field.

In his latest investment outlook, Kyle Samani focused on "DePIN robots" and "Zero-Employee Companies", believing that the combination of AI Agent and blockchain is the next trend. Compared with pure asset transactions, using encryption technology as the payment and verification layer of the AI ​​economy (such as zkTLS) is seen as a more potential growth point.

Finally, there is the normalization of industry pressure.

Although regulatory benefits such as the GENIUS Act have begun to take effect, and Kyle also made it clear in his resignation tweet that he believes the Clarity Act will usher in a wave of new entrants, crypto VCs still need to face huge LP return pressure and regulatory compliance costs. Institutions such as Paradigm have been criticized for missing out on early-stage high-growth projects such as Ethena and Pump.fun. As the market is increasingly dominated by retail investors and memes, traditional VC’s “grand narrative” approach is becoming ineffective.

Multicoin’s future and industry inspiration

Kyle Samani’s departure marks the end of an era for Multicoin Capital, but it does not mean decline.

Under the leadership of Tushar Jain and new partners, Multicoin is developing towards a more stable institutional direction. Its management team made it clear in an open letter that Kyle's management responsibilities have been smoothly transferred and the company's investment strategy remains unchanged. In fact, Multicoin is still actively planning, from the addition of Brian Strugats to the heavy investment in Forward Industries, which shows the organization’s ambitions in financial infrastructure and Solana ecology.

For the industry, the collective turnaround of early core figures such as Kyle Samani revealed a fact that made the industry feel slightly disappointed. The most exciting "from 0 to 1" technology exploration period in the encryption field has ended. As Kyle says, "All the interesting questions have answers."

In 2017, designing an AMM or consensus mechanism required genius-like imagination; but in 2026, this has become an engineering problem of compliance and capital efficiency. The current crypto industry is like laying railroads, important but boring. Therefore, they have turned to new frontiers such as AI and biotechnology, which are still in the "Wild West" stage.

The Clarity Act that Kyle mentioned in his departure tweet was an ironic footnote. On the one hand, he believed that this would bring "a flood of new entrants," but on the other hand, he chose to leave at this moment.

This exactly illustrates the cost of regulatory clarity, which eliminates the huge profits and incentives in the vague area. Crypto venture capital in the future will no longer be about “vision” and “narrative”, but about competition in “compliance”, “auditing”, “custody” and “ETF channels”. When the blockchain returns to the essence of "asset ledger" in Kyle's words, it will no longer need evangelists, but only bankers.

As Kyle himself said, although he no longer believes in the utopian Web3 vision, he is more convinced than ever that encryption technology will reshape the bottom layer of finance. For a "veteran" who has been fighting in this industry for many years, this may be the most honest confession and the most dignified goodbye.