# Multicoin Capital Website

> We are a thesis-driven investment firm specializing in cryptocurrencies and blockchain companies, offering insights, policies, and portfolio updates.

## Pages
- [Homepage](https://multicoin.capital): We make long-term, high-conviction investments in category-defining crypto companies and protocols across public and private markets on behalf of sophisticated families, foundations, endowments, and institutional investors.
- [Policy](https://multicoin.capital/policy): Multicoin Capital's leadership and legal team engage in policy initiatives aimed at advancing a pro-crypto environment in the United States and abroad. Crypto is a technology that introduces novel regulatory and policy questions that require a deep understanding of distributed technologies, open source protocols, securities, commodities and commercial law, finance and geopolitics.
- [Press](https://multicoin.capital/press/): For media inquiries, please email John Robert Reed with your full name, the publication you're writing for, and a brief description of the story that you're working on.
- [About](https://multicoin.capital/about): Multicoin Capital is a thesis-driven investment firm that invests in cryptocurrencies, tokens, and blockchain companies reshaping trillion-dollar markets. We manage a hedge fund and several venture funds, investing in both public and private markets.
- [Blog](https://multicoin.capital/blog): Insights - MCC Writing
- [Portfolio](https://multicoin.capital/portfolio/): In addition to managing a portfolio of liquid assets, we invest in early-stage private equity and token deals. We often invest in a Seed or Series A, and work with founders and their teams over multiple rounds of investment across private and public markets.
- [Contact](https://multicoin.capital/contact/): If you're interested in investing in our funds, please fill out the form below and we'll get back to you promptly.
- [Search](https://multicoin.capital/search/): Search through Multicoin Capital's insights, posts, and podcasts.

## Posts
- [Investing for the Long Haul ](https://multicoin.capital/2026/03/24/investing-for-the-long-haul.txt): Three years ago, we announced that Spencer Applebaum and Shayon Sengupta had been promoted to Investment Partner. At the time, we noted that both had already become core members of our investment team through their work sourcing and winning competitive deals, identifying new opportunities across the crypto ecosystem, and supporting our founders. 
- [RWAs Are Just Built Different](https://multicoin.capital/2026/03/19/rwas-are-just-built-different.txt): For most of DeFi’s history, activity remained mostly self-referential and endogenous to the crypto ecosystem. People traded crypto for crypto, borrowed crypto using other crypto as collateral, and built derivatives based on crypto prices. Even the biggest onchain markets, like spot DEXs, lending platforms, and perpetuals, all focused on a small group of native tokens. This wasn’t a deliberate design, but rather a limitation because early DeFi could only use assets that were already onchain.
- [Internet Labor Markets](https://multicoin.capital/2026/03/10/internet-labor-markets.txt): There are only two ways to onboard to crypto: you buy in or you earn in. A buyer explicitly swaps fiat/traditional assets into crypto assets or onto crypto rails. An earner gets paid for work, receiving cryptoassets. Over the past decade, people largely followed the first route. In the next decade, we believe that the majority will be through the second.
- [Adverse Selection Rules Everything Around Me](https://multicoin.capital/2026/02/17/adverse-selection-rules-everything-around-me.txt): Onchain liquidity has mostly evolved by focusing on one thing at a time. Early on, the main goal was simply to have a counterparty for takers without (a) having to post bids in a central limit order book (CLOB) on Ethereum (where that's not feasible), and (b) relying on an offchain matching engine (e.g., 0x). Uniswap’s big breakthrough in 2018 was making onchain liquidity open to everyone via automated market maker (AMM) liquidity pools.
- [ACE Is The Place With The Helpful Value Capture](https://multicoin.capital/2026/02/10/ace-is-the-place-with-the-helpful-value-capture.txt): When Anatoly first pitched us Solana (originally called Loom), his deck was called “Blockchain at NASDAQ Speed.” Public blockchains have evolved a lot since then, but at their core, they’re still ledgers for the world’s financial assets. In traditional finance, trading is fragmented because assets are kept on separate systems. Stocks, options, futures, FX, commodities, payments, and credit each have their own ledgers and ways of clearing, holding, and settling.
- [Multicoin Capital’s Investment Thesis](https://multicoin.capital/2026/02/06/multicoin-capitals-investment-thesis.txt): Multicoin Capital launched on October 1, 2017. We started the firm with the view that crypto would eventually reshape global markets. Our logo, a phoenix, represents a new financial system rising from the ashes of the old one. When we began, permissionless finance was hardly a known concept. Eight years later, it’s becoming a reality.
- [Recapping Crypto’s Most Consequential Year](https://multicoin.capital/2025/12/12/recapping-cryptos-most-consequential-year.txt): When we look back in a not-so-distant future, I believe we’ll remember 2025 as one of the most consequential years in the history of crypto. The sheer number and magnitude of de-risking events this year have been truly unprecedented. From the passage of the historic GENIUS Act—arguably the most important piece of financial legislation since Dodd-Frank—to the definitive end of Chokepoint 2.0, this year has marked a decisive turning point.
- [Specialized Stablecoin Fintechs ](https://multicoin.capital/2025/12/10/specialized-stablecoin-fintechs.txt): Over the last two decades, fintech has changed how people access financial products, but not how money actually moves. Innovation focused on cleaner interfaces, smoother onboarding, and better distribution, while the core financial infrastructure remained largely unchanged. For most of this period, the stack was being resold, but not rebuilt.
- [Ethena: Synthetic Dollars Challenge Stablecoin Duopoly](https://multicoin.capital/2025/11/13/ethena-synthetic-dollars-challenge-stablecoins-duopoly.txt): Today, we’re proud to announce that our liquid fund invested in ENA, the native token for Ethena Protocol, the issuer of USDe, the leading synthetic dollar. In our blogpost, The Endgame for Stablecoins, we stated how stablecoins are the largest addressable markets in crypto and how yield is the final frontier. While we were directionally right on yield-bearing stablecoins, we underestimated the market size for synthetic dollars.
- [Building The Attention Economy ](https://multicoin.capital/2025/10/23/building-the-attention-economy.txt): At the risk of being overly succinct, there are broadly two types of assets: 1) Cash Flow Assets — primarily equities and bonds. These assets generate cash flows that investors assign value to. 2) Supply & Demand Assets — mostly applies to commodities and forex. Prices fluctuate based on supply and demand. Recently, crypto has instigated a new type of asset—one valued on attention. Today, “Attention Assets” are primarily user-generated assets (UGAs), like NFTs, creator coins, and memecoins.
- [IBRL](https://multicoin.capital/2025/10/02/double-zero-ibrl.txt): Today, DoubleZero (DZ) launched onto mainnet-beta. Multicoin Capital co-led a $28M investment round in DoubleZero earlier this year. Blockchains are globally distributed systems. The core L1 teams have collectively invested $1B+ over the last decade optimizing networking protocols, consensus, execution, and storage.
- [Creating The World’s Leading Solana Treasury Company ](https://multicoin.capital/2025/09/11/creating-the-worlds-leading-solana-treasury-company.txt): Today I’m excited to announce that Multicoin Capital, Jump Crypto (the largest trading firm in crypto), and Galaxy (the largest financial conglomerate in crypto) have successfully led a $1.65B PIPE into Forward Industries, Inc. (NASDAQ: FORD), which will use the net proceeds to initiate a Solana treasury company strategy. Each sponsor committed over $100M in USD.
- [Welcoming Brian Strugats To Multicoin Capital ](https://multicoin.capital/2025/07/15/welcoming-brian-strugats-to-multicoin-capital.txt): Today, we are thrilled to welcome Brian Strugats to Multicoin Capital as our new Head Trader. Brian will be responsible for providing best execution for the fund, managing our counterparty relationships, providing actionable market context to the investment team, and enhancing our trading capabilities.
- [New Modalities for Issuance and Trading](https://multicoin.capital/2025/06/26/new-modalities-for-issuance-and-trading.txt): It is effectively impossible for a regular person to create a new tradeable asset on traditional financial rails. Crypto trivializes this. Today, anyone in the world can create new assets on Solana in a few seconds for ~$0 cost. Consequently, there has been an explosion in user-generated assets (UGAs).
- [Jito (JTO) Asset Report](https://multicoin.capital/2025/03/04/jito-asset-report.txt): Over the past three years, Multicoin Capital has acquired a significant position in JTO, the native token of the Jito Network, across our hedge fund and venture funds. An executive summary of our 45 page asset report is presented below. You may download the complete report and analysis, including our valuation model and price target, by clicking the "Read Full Report" button.
- [Where Are All The Robots?](https://multicoin.capital/2025/02/25/where-are-all-the-robots.txt): Today, we are excited to announce that Multicoin led an $8M strategic acquisition of GEOD, the native token of the Geodnet Network, from the Geodnet Foundation. Geodnet is a precise positioning network that leverages DePIN economics to power mission-critical localization services for drones, autonomous vehicles, and the tens of millions of robots that will likely proliferate the Earth over coming years.
- [Inverting The Human-Agent Relationship](https://multicoin.capital/2025/01/30/inverting-the-human-agent-relationship.txt): In 1997, IBM’s Deep Blue defeated then-World Champion Garry Kasparov in a chess match, and it became clear that computer chess engines would soon surpass humans. Interestingly, a well-prepared human working together with a computer—an arrangement often called a "centaur"—could outperform the strongest engines of that era.
- [The Solana Thesis: Internet Capital Markets](https://multicoin.capital/2025/01/22/the-solana-thesis-internet-capital-markets.txt): Multicoin Capital has been investing in Solana’s native asset, SOL, and the broader Solana ecosystem since Solana’s seed round in May 2018. We have previously published four theses about Solana in that time. The first two were published about nine months before mainnet produced its first block in March 2020. As the Solana network has evolved, so has our frame of reference on how to think about the Solana network, and SOL the asset.
- [Some Things Never Change, Even In 2025](https://multicoin.capital/2025/01/09/some-things-never-change-even-in-2025.txt): One of the best quotes from Jeff Bezos is: “What's going to change in the next 10 years?' And that is a very interesting question; it's a very common one. I almost never get the question: 'What's not going to change in the next 10 years?' Earlier this week, we published a stereotypical VC post about new areas that our investment team is looking forward to seeing in 2025.
- [Frontier Ideas For 2025](https://multicoin.capital/2025/01/07/frontier-ideas-for-2025.txt): 2025 is poised to be a pivotal year for the industry. The emergence of the first pro-crypto regulatory framework, combined with the technical maturity of Layer 1 blockchains, DeFi protocols, DePIN networks, and stablecoins, is creating fertile ground for the next wave of frontier innovations. Staying true to our tradition, we’re sharing the ideas and opportunities that excite us most for the year ahead.
- [Highlights From The 2024 Multicoin Summit](https://multicoin.capital/2024/12/13/highlights-from-the-2024-multicoin-summit.txt): Last month, we hosted the Multicoin Summit in New York City. This annual gathering allows us to spotlight the most important trends of the year and share our insights on what to expect in the years ahead. To help unpack these ideas, we assembled an outstanding lineup of speakers, including founders and CEOs from Drift, Hivemapper, Baxus, Jito, Pyth, dFlow, Solana, Visa, and Double Zero.
- [P2P Pipes](https://multicoin.capital/2024/09/16/p2p-pipes.txt): The first large scale P2P application on the Internet was Napster (email/SMTP was designed to be P2P and self-hosted, but in practice ended up federated). The spiritual successor to Napster was the BitTorrent protocol, which at peak, represented ~25-35% of all internet traffic in the mid-2000s. Both were permissionless: anyone could host any file.
- [The Great Energy Coordination Problem](https://multicoin.capital/2024/09/12/the-great-energy-coordination-problem.txt): Today, we are proud to announce a $12M round in Fuse. Fuse is a core contributor to Project Zero, a renewable energy DePIN designed to solve the great energy coordination problem. Fuse is a full-stack renewable energy company built by Alan Chang and Charles Orr, who were both early employees at Revolut. Alan and Charles were pivotal to the early growth of Revolut, and set their sights on solving the energy crisis in 2022.
- [Drift ($DRIFT) Analysis and Valuation](https://multicoin.capital/2024/09/10/drift-analysis-and-valuation.txt): Multicoin has accumulated a large position across our funds—both liquid and venture—in DRIFT, the native token of Drift, a derivatives decentralized exchange (derivatives DEX) on Solana. We built the position over the last few years via private and public markets. An executive summary of our 25 page report is presented below.
- [All Markets Are Not Created Equal: 7 Factors To Consider When Evaluating Blockchain-Enabled Collectibles Marketplaces (BECMs)](https://multicoin.capital/2024/08/22/blockchain-enabled-collectibles-marketplaces.txt): Collecting is big business. Today, over one-third of Americans self-identify as collectors, and, as of 2024, the market size for collectibles is now nearly $500 billion dollars. Collectibles are a booming industry—and blockchains are coming for them. A growing subset of the world’s collectors are actually traders whose sole intent is to buy and sell billions of dollars worth of collectibles—from rare whiskeys to luxury watches to handbags—with the goal of flipping them and making a profit.
- [The Endgame for Stablecoins](https://multicoin.capital/2024/06/06/the-endgame-for-stablecoins.txt): Today, we’re proud to announce our investment in Mountain Protocol, the issuer of USDM, a permissionless, yield-bearing stablecoin backed entirely by US Treasuries. We led the Series A round, which also included Castle Island Ventures, Coinbase Ventures and others. Stablecoins are among the largest addressable markets in crypto.
- [The Dawn of Bitcoin Programmability](https://multicoin.capital/2024/05/09/the-dawn-of-bitcoin-programmability.txt): Today, we are proud to announce our investment in Arch, a Bitcoin-native application platform that unlocks bridgeless decentralized finance (DeFi) on the world's most valuable blockchain. We led the investment with participation from OKX Ventures, Big Brain Holdings, Portal Ventures, CMS Holdings, Tangent and others.
- [Unbundling Sotheby’s ](https://multicoin.capital/2024/05/03/unbundling-sothebys.txt): DeFi’s arch of innovation, historically speaking, has been focused on introducing new financial primitives, like AMMs and perpetuals, that give users new ways to trade cryptoassets. As of today, the land grab for obvious primitives has mostly ended, leaving only smaller exotic primitives to explore. The next wave of innovation will focus on using DeFi rails to fix broken markets.
- [Enter The Wormhole ](https://multicoin.capital/2024/04/03/enter-the-wormhole.txt): Crypto is going multichain and needs a secure but flexible interoperability platform to connect the industry. Wormhole is one of the leading solutions in the market with a full-stack interoperability platform. Today I’m excited to announce that we co-led a $225M round in Wormhole. This round closed late last year; we are formally announcing our investment today to coincide with the launch of W token, which goes live today.
- [Publisher-Exchanges: Consumer Applications and the Attention Theory of Value  ](https://multicoin.capital/2024/03/12/publisher-exchanges-consumer-applications-and-the-attention-theory-of-value.txt): “The price is the news” is an often used adage in crypto circles any time there is heightened engagement and awareness around a network following fast price action. It has become clear to me that the inverse of this statement is perhaps more profoundly true: “The news is the price.” In my contribution to What Multicoin is Excited About For 2024, I described a marked shift in how markets price assets that I labeled the “Attention Theory of Value.”
- [The Holy Grail of Cryptography](https://multicoin.capital/2024/03/07/the-holy-grail-of-cryptography.txt): In some sense, every server-side security vulnerability or exploit over the last 30 years shares the same root cause: some sensitive piece of data was left unencrypted (or an attacker gained access to a decryption key). When presented in this frame, the solution is fairly obvious: don’t ever decrypt data, and ensure no decryption key is ever stored on any server.
- [Building The Internet of GPUs](https://multicoin.capital/2024/03/05/building-the-internet-of-gpus.txt): We are excited to announce our investment in io.net, the leading distributed compute marketplace for AI workloads. We led the seed and participated in the Series A Round. In total, io.net has raised $30M from Multicoin, Hack VC, 6th Man Ventures, Modular Capital, and a syndicate of deeply connected angel investors to make on-demand, production-ready compute markets a reality.
- [The Foundational DeFi Primitive of Filecoin](https://multicoin.capital/2024/02/06/the-foundational-defi-primitive-of-filecoin.txt): The Filecoin Virtual Machine (FVM) launched on March 14, 2023 (pi day). There is nothing else in crypto quite like the FVM. It allows developers to bind payments and DeFi to real world primitives on the Filecoin network, starting with storage. Over time, we expect the FVM to also allow for direct programmability of bandwidth and compute resources as well.
- [What Multicoin Is Excited About For 2024](https://multicoin.capital/2024/01/16/what-multicoin-is-excited-about-for-2024.txt): At the end of every year we come together and discuss some of the biggest changes we’re expecting in the year ahead. For the first time, we’re publishing these ideas. Please feel free to reach out to any of us to discuss these ideas further.
- [Oracles and the New Frontier for Application-Owned Orderflow Auctions](https://multicoin.capital/2023/12/14/oracles-and-the-new-frontier-for-application-owned-orderflow-auctions.txt): Today, we are excited to announce our investment in Pyth Network, the leading first-party oracle in crypto. The implicit premise behind legacy oracles in crypto has been that all data—including financial data—is freely available and accessible to on-chain contracts. Accordingly, oracles simply need to incentivize supply-side network contributors to scrape and aggregate this data, come to consensus on it, and bring it on-chain.
- [Build With Squads](https://multicoin.capital/2023/10/16/build-with-squads.txt): Today, we are proud to announce our investment in Squads Labs, a core contributor to the Squads Protocol, the leading multisig solution on Solana. Their latest $5.7M round brings Squad’s total funding to date to $12.5M. We first invested in Squads in late 2021, and since then they have grown to become a powerhouse in the Solana ecosystem and, we believe, a best-in-class multisig solution on Solana for institutional traders, crypto-prosumers, and builders.
- [Discussions from the 2023 Multicoin Summit](https://multicoin.capital/2023/10/06/discussions-from-the-2023-multicoin-summit.txt): On September 27-28, we held our annual summit in Austin, Texas, which brings together some of the brightest and most influential minds in crypto to explore the latest trends and issues shaping the industry. This event is primarily for our Limited Partners, so thank you, again, to all of you who came down to see us this year. We appreciate your continued support.
- [The Dawn of On-Chain FHE](https://multicoin.capital/2023/09/26/the-dawn-of-on-chain-fhe.txt): The two most challenging technical problems in crypto have been clear for a decade: scaling and confidentiality. Most of the discourse in the industry is around scaling; meanwhile, a handful of teams continue to quietly build a variety of advanced cryptographic techniques to enable confidentiality. Today, I’m excited to announce that Multicoin has led a $7.5M investment into Fhenix, which is pioneering a fundamentally new approach to on-chain confidentiality.
- [Exploring The Design Space Of DePIN Networks ](https://multicoin.capital/2023/09/21/exploring-the-design-space-of-deping-networks.txt): In April 2022, we published our thesis on Proof of Physical Work (PoPW) networks (now, more colloquially referred to as “Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Networks,” or “DePIN” for short). In that essay, we wrote: “[PoPW networks] incentivize people to do verifiable work that builds real-world infrastructure. Relative to traditional forms of capital formation for building physical infrastructure, these permissionless and credibly-neutral protocols:"
- [Exploring Long-Term Staking in PoS Networks](https://multicoin.capital/2023/08/24/exploring-long-term-staking-in-pos-networks.txt): Today, nearly every proof-of-stake (PoS) network offers rewards through protocol staking and inflation; however, none have yet to offer a killer feature: long-term staking. Term structures[1] allow investors to strategically lock up capital for distinct periods of time in exchange for generally greater returns on investment. In finance, term rates make up a yield curve, which is an essential ingredient into well-functioning financial markets.
- [The Hidden Costs of Modular Systems](https://multicoin.capital/2023/08/15/the-hidden-costs-of-modular-systems.txt): Over the past two years, the scaling debate has narrowed and fixated on the central question of modularity vs integration. (Note that discourse in crypto often conflates “monolithic” and “integrated” systems. There is a rich history of debate in technology over the last 40 years about integrated vs. modular systems at every layer of the stack. The crypto incarnation of this dialogue should be framed through the same lens; this is far from a new debate).
- [The Convergence of Crypto and AI: Four Key Intersections](https://multicoin.capital/2023/06/02/the-convergence-of-crypto-and-ai-four-key-intersections.txt): The worlds of cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence (AI) have been evolving in parallel, with each domain pushing the boundaries of technology and innovation. As we continue to make strides in both fields, it is becoming increasingly clear that their futures are inextricably linked. In this post, we will explore four important intersections at the crossroads of crypto and AI.
- [From UGC to UGP: Consumer Brands & Co-Creation](https://multicoin.capital/2023/05/11/from-ugc-to-ugp-consumer-brands-and-co-creation.txt): Many have argued how co-creation will ultimately lead to the democratization of the creator class, re-imagine fandom, and turn fans into creators; however, this discussion stops short of the implications of co-creation on brands, which could be larger than the impact on co-creators themselves. In the past, brands created products and, more generally, culture, and proliferated this top-down via centralized, top-down media (Toby Shorin).
- [Web3-Native SQL](https://multicoin.capital/2023/04/20/web3-native-sql.txt): In the first wave of crypto innovation after Bitcoin, many developers forked the Bitcoin codebase to try to build other decentralized infrastructure and applications beyond digital gold. Some of the earliest forks included attempts at building decentralized databases that could be used for general purpose application development. In the wave of crypto innovation that followed Ethereum’s launch, teams began building BFT database engines.
- [Multiplayer Mode](https://multicoin.capital/2023/04/06/multiplayer-mode.txt): Today, we are proud to announce our investment in Lore, the first co-ownership platform for web3 collectives. We led a $4M round alongside North Island Ventures, Seed Club Ventures, Balaji Srinivasan, Zeneca, Mischief Ventures, Sfermion, CMT Digital, Patricio Worthalter, Spice Capital, Sublime Ventures, and others.
- [Our Investment in Seed Club Ventures, a Venture DAO](https://multicoin.capital/2023/03/21/our-investment-in-seed-club-ventures-a-venture-dao.txt): Today, we are proud to announce our investment in Seed Club Ventures (SCV), a $25M venture DAO that invests in internet-native organizations, alongside Delphi Digital, Dragonfly Capital, Collab+Currency, SV Angel, Distributed Global, and others. SCV will be exclusively focused on early stage teams building communities, infrastructure and applications that leverage Web3 primitives to accelerate financial and human capital coordination to achieve their missions.
- [New Investment Partners at Multicoin](https://multicoin.capital/2023/03/09/new-investment-partners-at-multicoin.txt): Today I’d like to announce that two of our longest standing members of our investment team, Spencer Applebaum (LinkedIn, Twitter) and Shayon Sengupta (LinkedIn, Twitter), have been promoted to Investment Partner. Both of them have done great work in finding lucrative trades in public markets, and in sourcing and winning competitive deals in private markets. But most importantly, both have also worked closely with many of our founders over the past several years to help them succeed.
- [Onboarding The Next Billion Users To Crypto Rails ](https://multicoin.capital/2023/02/21/onboarding-the-next-billion-users-to-crypto-rails.txt): Today, we’re announcing we co-led TipLink’s $6M seed round with Sequoia. Our colleagues from Circle Ventures, Solana Ventures, Paxos, Asymmetric, Big Brain Ventures, Karatage and Monke Ventures also participated in the round. Nick Grossman wrote a thesis we’re fond of called The Butter Thesis which he defines as interactions and experiences that are super smooth—rich, easy, delicious.
- [Full Stack, Decentralized Security](https://multicoin.capital/2023/01/31/full-stack-decentralized-security.txt): The design space of cyber security is vast. There are an infinite number of attack vectors across chips and instruction sets, operating systems, runtimes, and applications. And naturally, there are many large cybersecurity companies. When I first got into Ethereum in 2016, the only real cybersecurity companies were smart contract auditors. Human audits have been and always will be paramount. However, human audits are not enough.
- [The Web3 Growth Stack](https://multicoin.capital/2023/01/11/the-web3-growth-stack.txt): We’ve become increasingly interested in a category of innovation that we’re internally calling the Web3 Growth Stack—i.e., the tools that product managers and marketers use to acquire, engage and retain customers using Web3 technologies. In Web2, the growth stack consists of a plethora of tools, platforms, and analytics systems designed to help product and marketing leaders augment growth.
- [Unlocking Payments Over Crypto Rails](https://multicoin.capital/2022/12/08/unlocking-payments-over-crypto-rails.txt): Since the advent of Bitcoin, people have been talking about the inevitability of crypto-based payments. And yet, 13 years since the launch of Bitcoin, payments over crypto rails have not yet entered mainstream consciousness. Why have crypto payments struggled? And why is that changing now?
- [Watch Videos From The 2022 Multicoin Summit ](https://multicoin.capital/2022/12/06/watch-videos-from-the-2022-multicoin-summit.txt): This year we celebrated our fifth anniversary as a firm. Over that time, we’ve watched carefully as the industry has evolved and built step-function improvements to scaling, indexing, data modeling, wallets, and more. Core infrastructure has occupied the minds of builders for years; however, that’s now starting to change. New consumer applications—like games, social media, creator platforms, consumer loyalty, and more—are starting to appear.
- [Value Flows in the MEV Ecosystem](https://multicoin.capital/2022/10/31/value-flows-in-the-mev-ecosystem.txt): Miner Extractable Value (MEV) is fundamental to permissionless distributed systems and cannot be eliminated. The market structure for MEV is dynamic and complex, but the actors that profit from them in proof-of-work (PoW) networks—such as Ethereum 1.0—have exclusively been miners and searchers.
- [Mercury: Reimagining the Collegiate Fan Experience](https://multicoin.capital/2022/10/20/mercury-reimagining-the-collegiate-fan-experience.txt): Today I’m excited to announce that Multicoin Capital has led a $7.5M seed investment in Mercury with participation from North Island Ventures, Crosslink Capital, Brevan Howard Digital, and several others. The convergence of sports and crypto is one of the most exciting, fast-growing areas of the market with strong, early successes in companies like Sorare and NBA Top Shot. Both have onboarded countless new users into crypto.
- [Announcing Venture Fund III ](https://multicoin.capital/2022/07/12/announcing-venture-fund-iii.txt): Today we are excited to announce our latest venture fund, Venture Fund III, a $430M fund that invests $500K-$25M in early-stage opportunities all the way up to $100M+ for later-stage projects when combined with our evergreen liquid fund.
- [Beyond Verticalization of NFT Marketplaces](https://multicoin.capital/2022/06/22/beyond-verticalization-of-nft-marketplaces.txt): Why is the UX of OpenSea and Magic Eden generally the same (discovery on homepage, basic set of linear filters on the left side of collection pages, same search presentation, etc.)? Or, framed another way, why doesn’t the front page of OpenSea or Magic Eden have an activity feed (like Fractal or Hawku), or a livestream (like Twitch), or the results of a recent game tournament that heavily leverages NFTs?
- [Our Investment in Delphia](https://multicoin.capital/2022/06/08/our-investment-in-delphia.txt): Today I’m excited to announce that Multicoin Capital has led a $60M Series A in Delphia alongside Ribbit Capital, FTX Ventures, Valor Equity Partners, FJ Labs, Lattice Ventures, Cumberland, Road Capital, and M13.
- [The Ball Multicoin Bitwise Metaverse Index](https://multicoin.capital/2022/06/07/the-ball-multicoin-bitwise-metaverse-index.txt): Over the last 6 months, as the term “metaverse” has become more popular in mainstream lexicon, we have come to the realization that many of our investments across various sectors—Web3 infrastructure, DeFi, asset ledgers, data networks, etc.—are good candidates to provide foundational infrastructure to power many credibly-neutral metaverses.
- [Proof of Physical Work](https://multicoin.capital/2022/04/05/proof-of-physical-work.txt): One of the most powerful features of crypto-economic protocols is their ability to create incentive structures that allow anyone in the world to permissionlessly contribute to a set of shared objectives. These incentive structures can be finely tuned to facilitate large-scale coordination to achieve specific goals. This represents a step-function improvement in capital formation.
- [Fractal: The Web3 Amusement Park](https://multicoin.capital/2022/04/01/fractal-the-web3-amusement-park.txt): Today I’m excited to announce that Multicoin Capital has co-led a $35M investment in Fractal with Paradigm, with participation from a16z crypto, Solana Ventures, Animoca, Coinbase, Play Ventures, Position Ventures, Do Kwon, and Tim Ferriss.
- [Building Bridges](https://multicoin.capital/2022/03/30/building-bridges.txt): 18 months ago, Ethereum was the only Layer 1 asset ledger that mattered. Today, there are over a dozen major asset ledgers across Layer 1— Ethereum, Solana, Luna, Polygon, Celo, Flow, Avalanche, Near, Fantom, BNB Chain—and Layer 2—Optimism, Arbitrum, StarkEx, StarkNet. We live in a multi-polar world. We will never go back to a uni-polar world. And that means that bridging is going to be extremely important.
- [Move Move Move](https://multicoin.capital/2022/03/15/move-move-move.txt): Broadly speaking, there are two ways to think about scaling blockchains: break them into smaller pieces and try to connect them, or optimize and scale a single shard. Rollups and sharding are the prime examples of breaking blockchains into smaller pieces. These approaches create several second-order problems:
- [Dialect: The Smart Messaging Standard ](https://multicoin.capital/2022/03/02/dialect-the-smart-messaging-standard.txt): Today I’m excited to announce that we are co-leading a $4.1M seed investment into Dialect with our friends at Jump Crypto, with participation from Solana Ventures, Tiger Global, Joe McCann and several other prominent angels.
- [Rebundling The Audio Value Chain](https://multicoin.capital/2022/02/25/rebundling-the-audio-value-chain.txt): Until the advent of Napster, the record label bundle consisted of three things: Risk-sharing — Record labels were VCs that invested in artists. The substantial majority of those investments were not profitable. A small minority were profitable, and produced the vast majority of returns. Record labels actually funded the development of the vast majority of music, even though the vast majority of music was unprofitable. Artists traded most of their economic upside for near term income certainty.
- [The Composable Web3 Data Network](https://multicoin.capital/2022/02/16/the-composable-web3-data-network.txt): A few months ago at the 2021 Multicoin Summit, I gave a keynote presentation highlighting composability as the most important development in crypto in 2022. Although that presentation specifically focused on composability of financial assets on the Solana blockchain, financial composability is not the only form of composability. There’s an even larger opportunity for composability: data composability.
- [Composable Web3 Compute](https://multicoin.capital/2022/02/16/composable-web3-compute.txt): Today we are excited to announce our latest investment in the compute category: Fluence, in which we recently led a $9 million round alongside Alameda Ventures, Tiger Global, Protocol Labs, Arweave Capital, Polymorphic Capital, OP Crypto, Signum Capital and UOB Venture Management.
- [Investing in Web3 Credentialing  ](https://multicoin.capital/2022/01/25/investing-in-web3-credentialing.txt): Today I’m excited to announce that we are co-leading a $10M strategic round in Project Galaxy with Dragonfly Capital. This is our second investment in the project. We are extremely excited to back the team, and to support their vision of creating a universal Web3 credentialing network across many public chains.
- [The Composable NFT Standard](https://multicoin.capital/2022/01/18/the-composable-nft-standard.txt): Today we’re excited to announce that Multicoin Capital has co-led a $43M strategic investment in Metaplex alongside our friends at Jump Crypto, with participation from Solana Ventures, Alameda Research, Samsung Next, Sino Global Capital, Animoca, Cultur3 Capital, Blue Pool—in addition to 90 other supporters.
- [The Front Page of Solana](https://multicoin.capital/2021/12/22/the-front-page-of-solana.txt): Today, I am excited to announce that Multicoin Capital has co-led a $4M seed round with Electric Capital in Solscan alongside our friends at Jump Capital, Sequoia Capital, Alameda Research, Solana Ventures,, Signum Capital, and CoinGecko.
- [Rendering the Metaverse ](https://multicoin.capital/2021/12/21/rendering-the-metaverse.txt): Over the last year, Fortnite has pushed the boundaries for large scale synchronous online virtual worlds via concerts (Travis Scott and Ariana Grande on Fortnite). In hindsight, these concerts will be looked back on as the first mainstream precursors to the full blown Metaverse (shout out to The Sims and Second Life for trying this before the world was ready).
- [Conversations From The 2021 Multicoin Summit [VIDEOS]](https://multicoin.capital/2021/12/17/conversations-from-the-2021-multicoin-summit.txt): The 2021 Multicoin Summit was our biggest yet. For those who attended, it was fantastic to see all of you in real life again after two years of quarantine. For those who couldn’t make it, we prepared the following videos below to help you experience the summit from afar.
- [Exploring the Opportunity for DeFi Interest Rate Markets](https://multicoin.capital/2021/10/06/exploring-the-opportunity-for-defi-interest-rate-markets.txt): Interest rates are a critical input in the construction and valuation of any financial asset. Every equation in finance has interest rates in it, either explicitly or implicitly. Mortgages, student loans, business loans, government borrowings, and even equities and commodities are impacted by interest rates.
- [Welcoming Greg Xethalis to Multicoin Capital](https://multicoin.capital/2021/09/30/welcoming-greg-xethalis-to-multicoin-capital.txt): We launched our hedge fund four years ago on October 1st, 2017 with a primary mission to accelerate the adoption of self-sovereign software. Since then, we have also launched two venture funds, a number of SPVs, and built out a global team of 14 people. Meanwhile, the crypto market has matured tremendously. When we first launched, there were no institutional custodians, no execution firms, almost no way to short. Most of the major exchanges didn’t even offer corporate accounts!
- [DeFi Protocols Don’t Capture Value, DeFi DAOs Manage Risk](https://multicoin.capital/2021/09/16/daos-manage-risk.txt): This essay is a spiritual successor to On Value Capture at Layers 1 and 2. It also builds on some ideas from On Forking DeFi Protocols. In those essays, we explored potential value capture mechanisms for both Layer 1 (e.g. BTC, ETH, and SOL) and what we at the time called Layer 2 tokens. In retrospect, this was a misnomer; at the time we were referring to application layer tokens—e.g. MKR, UNI, and AAVE—as opposed to Layer 2s such as Starkware, Matter, Aztec, Optimism, and Arbitrum.
- [Tokenizing MEV](https://multicoin.capital/2021/09/08/tokenizing-mev.txt): Today, I am excited to announce that Multicoin Capital has led a $17.4M round in Eden Network, alongside participation from Jump Capital, Alameda Research, Wintermute, GSR, Defiance Capital, and Andre Cronje, the founder of Yearn.Finance.
- [Solving the Stablecoin Trilemma](https://multicoin.capital/2021/09/02/solving-the-stablecoin-trilemma.txt): Today I’m excited to announce that Multicoin Capital has led a $3M seed round in UXD Protocol with participation from Alameda Research, Defiance Capital, CMS Holdings, Solana Foundation, Mercurial Finance, Solana founders Anatoly Yakovenko and Raj Gokal, and Saber founder Dylan Macalinao.
- [The Future of Finance is Real-Time Reporting](https://multicoin.capital/2021/08/12/dune-series-a.txt): Today, we’re excited to announce that Multicoin Capital invested in Dune Analytics’ $8M Series A led by our friends at Union Square Ventures. Redpoint Ventures and Dragonfly Capital also participated. As avid users of Dune, we revel in the opportunity to double down in this fundraise after participating in Dune’s seed round last year. It’s not often that we have the opportunity to invest in something that we use everyday.
- [Scaling Reads and Writes](https://multicoin.capital/2021/07/30/scaling-reads-and-writes.txt): A blockchain is a database with unique trust-minimization properties. Like all databases, there are two kinds of operations: reads and writes. Most of the discourse to date around scaling blockchains is about writes. This is often measured as transactions per second (TPS). For example, Ethereum supports 15-30 TPS, Binance Smart Chain supports up to 160 TPS, and Solana supports up to 50,000 TPS. Investors have invested billions of dollars to scale blockchain writes.
- [Networked Cash Flows](https://multicoin.capital/2021/07/13/networked-cash-flows.txt): DeFi is the most useful application of blockchains. We spend a meaningful percentage of our time thinking about DeFi, and learning from the best DeFi entrepreneurs who are building the future of finance. But when most people think about blockchains, they think about value transfer. Why? Because it’s just easier to understand. Superfluid, a new protocol we just invested in, represents the biggest step forwards in value transfer since the advent of Bitcoin.
- [Technical Scalability Creates Social Scalability](https://multicoin.capital/2021/05/25/technical-scalability-creates-social-scalability.txt): This essay assumes familiarity with Nick Szabo’s essay on Social Scalability, Vitalik Buterin’s essay on Weak Subjectivity, and Haseeb Qureshi’s essay on Why Decentralization Isn’t As Important As You Think. This essay is not a rebuttal of Szabo’s essay.
- [Announcing Venture Fund II](https://multicoin.capital/2021/05/04/announcing-venture-fund-ii.txt): Building on the success of our first venture fund, we’re proud to announce that Multicoin Capital has raised a new $100M venture fund to back entrepreneurs building companies (equity), and protocols (tokens) in and around the crypto space. We have been investing out of this vehicle for several months already.
- [Our Investment in REALY](https://multicoin.capital/2021/04/16/our-investment-in-realy.txt): Today, I’m excited to announce our investment in REALY, a platform that trades the legitimacy of streetwear and other real world collectibles. Our friends at Alameda Research and SNZ Capital also participated in the round.
- [The Helium Flywheel](https://multicoin.capital/2021/03/17/the-helium-flywheel.txt): Helium is a new crypto economic protocol that underpins a new business model deploying and managing wireless networks at about 100x lower cost than traditional top-down telecom business models. The first wireless technology supported by Helium is LoRaWAN, a popular technology for IoT devices. Multicoin Capital co-led the Series C round in Helium Inc in 2019 along with USV.
- [THORChain Analysis](https://multicoin.capital/2021/02/23/thorchain-analysis.txt): Multicoin Capital has accumulated a large position in RUNE, the native token of THORChain, a decentralized cross-chain automated market maker (AMM). RUNE represents one of our largest public positions.
- [The Perpetual Protocol](https://multicoin.capital/2021/01/15/the-perpetual-protocol.txt): There’s a long running joke that all financial innovation can be boiled down to two things: figuring out ways to take on more leverage, and (un)bundling risk to more efficiently price assets for investors. The first major financial innovation was the separation of debt and equity back in the 1400s. This innovation unbundled risk, creating two classes of risk holders: debt (lower risk, lower returns), and equity (higher risk, higher returns).
- [Our Investment in Swivel Finance](https://multicoin.capital/2020/12/10/our-investment-in-swivel-finance.txt): Today I’m excited to announce that Multicoin Capital has led a $1.15 million seed round in Swivel Finance, a new decentralized protocol that enables fixed-rate lending and interest-rate derivatives. Electric Capital, CMS Holdings, Divergence Ventures, and DeFiance Capital also participated, as did several angels including Ash Egan, Stani Kulechov of Aave, Alex Pack, Imran Khan, Qiao Wang, and Thomas Klocanas.
- [The DeFi Stack](https://multicoin.capital/2020/11/24/the-defi-stack.txt): Open Finance is one of Multicoin’s three Crypto Mega Theses, wherein Open Finance is a superset of DeFi. Over the past 12 months, there has been an explosion of activity in DeFi on Ethereum: there is $13.6 billion in capital participating in DeFi, up more than 20x over the last year.
- [Our Investment in OXIO](https://multicoin.capital/2020/11/17/our-investment-in-oxio.txt): I’m excited to announce Multicoin Capital’s investment in OXIO. We led OXIO’s $3.5M seed round last year, and now the company is emerging from stealth following a $12M Series A financing led by two of the top VCs in Latin America, monashees and Atlantico Capital.
- [Watch Fireside Chats with Solana, Helium, Ribbit Capital from the Fall 2020 Multicoin Summit ](https://multicoin.capital/2020/11/03/fall-2020-multicoin-summit.txt): With another successful summit in the books, I’m delighted to share three of our most popular fireside chats from our fall summit. This year, we held our first virtual event, the first of hopefully many more to come. It was a great format that afforded us the opportunity to reach more people around the world and go deeper than we ever have before.
- [Kyle Samani Joins Howard Lindzon On Panic With Friends to Talk the Past, Present and Future of Crypto](https://multicoin.capital/2020/10/18/panic-with-friends.txt): Listen to Howard Lindzon, a prolific blogger, investor, and entrepreneur, chat with Kyle Samani on his new show, Panic with Friends, about the past and present of crypto, decentralization, Web3, blockchains and thier predictions for the future of crypto.
- [Epicenter #361: Kyle Samani, Sebastien Couture & Brian Fabian Crain](https://multicoin.capital/2020/10/16/epicenter-kyle-samani.txt): Epicenter originally had Multicoin on the show in February of 2018 when we were still reasonably new and we were in the height of the ICO bubble. Kyle Samani, Co-founder and Managing Partner, joins them back on the show to share not only how Multicoin has changed since then, but also the cryptoasset industry as a whole.
- [Kyle Samani featured On The Brink hosted by Castle Island ](https://multicoin.capital/2020/10/12/kyle-samani-on-the-brink.txt): Kyle Samani, cofounder and managing partner at Multicoin, joins the Nic Carter and the team at Castle Island to talk his current views on Bitcoin, Ethereum, and to give an update on web3 and how Multicoin is approaching the opportunity.
- [Trade-offs in the Derivatives DEX Space](https://multicoin.capital/2020/09/08/trade-offs-in-the-derivatives-dex-space.txt): One of the greatest innovations of modern financial markets is that traders can gain financial exposure to an asset without having to physically settle that asset—aka synthetic exposure. This dramatically expands the universe of traders who can trade in a given market, especially for harder to deliver assets. This is desirable because increasing traders and capital in a given market can help reduce volatility and increase liquidity.
- [Listen to Tushar Jain & Arman Dezfuli-Arjomandi on The Hotspot ](https://multicoin.capital/2020/08/21/the-hotspot.txt): Tushar Jain and Arman Dezfuli-Arjomandi, the host of The Hotspot, a new podcast series that discusses the fast-growing Helium network, explore the state of the network, the Decentralized Wireless Alliance, and future applications for Helium as it continues to expand world wide.
- [Exploring The Design Space of Liquidity Mining](https://multicoin.capital/2020/08/13/exploring-the-design-space-of-liquidity-mining.txt): Decentralized Finance (DeFi) has recently seen an explosion of activity and public interest. The primary driving factor has been the discovery of “liquidity mining” as a mechanism to bootstrap liquidity. Broadly defined, liquidity mining occurs when users of a DeFi protocol are compensated in that protocol’s native token for interacting with the protocol.
- [Open Audio](https://multicoin.capital/2020/07/30/open-audio.txt): The first Internet-enabled application I can remember enjoying was Napster. It was 1999, and I was downloading songs at a blazing fast 2.96 KB / second. On good days, it would tick up to 3.13 KB / second. Music has been—by far—the most censored content on the Western internet over the last 20 years. The waves of censorship have played out time and time again across venues.
- [Huobi Token ($HT) Analysis and Valuation](https://multicoin.capital/2020/07/16/huobi-token-analysis-and-valuation.txt): Exchange tokens are currently the most interesting sector in crypto because they sit at the intersection of where there is demand today and where there will be opportunities tomorrow. We have previously expressed a [thesis](https://multicoin.capital/2019/10/29/exchanges-are-open-finance/ "Exchanges are Open Finance") that exchange tokens are the best way to get exposure to open finance and that there is tremendous growth potential.
- [DeFi's Invisible Asymptotes](https://multicoin.capital/2020/06/04/defis-invisible-asymptotes.txt): With the growth of the decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem over the last 24 months, I’ve been thinking about protocol-level defensibility and market size. I wrote about the former recently. This essay focuses on the latter. My biggest concern for Ethereum’s current DeFi economy is that it is subject to one or possibly a few invisible asymptotes, as I’ll explain below.
- [Fear, Uncertainty & Doubt in 2020 with Galaxy Digital on Heard Around the Block](https://multicoin.capital/2020/05/18/fear-uncertainty-and-doubt-in-2020.txt): The past two months have been unprecedented ones for all of us. Given the significant moves in digital assets' price and volume levels, many have openly wondered if Bitcoin in particular has lived up to its purpose.
- [Ben Sparango and Tony Sheng talk The Trust Spectrum on the Chain Reaction Podcast](https://multicoin.capital/2020/05/13/ben-sparango-and-tony-sheng-talk-the-trust-spectrum-on-the-chain-reaction-podcast.txt): In this episode, Tom Shaughnessy talks with Ben Sparango and Tony Sheng of Multicoin capital to discuss their latest report on The Trust Spectrum. We will keep this short, as the episode covers everything - enjoy and share!
- [Is Crypto the Next Cleantech? Tushar Jain talks with Galaxy Digital Trading on Heard Around the BLOCK](https://multicoin.capital/2020/05/12/is-crypto-the-next-cleantech-with-galaxy-digital.txt): As with many new fields, crypto and blockchain technologies have doubters, and certainly some with reasoned points of views. One line of criticism is that no matter how big crypto gets, it may end up like cleantech-- full of innovation, but perhaps not able to generate a predictable return for investors.
- [Ethereal Virtual Summit 2020: Fireside Chat with SKALE Labs](https://multicoin.capital/2020/05/12/ethereal-virtual-summit-2020-fireside-chat-with-skale-labs.txt): The two-day Ethereal Virtual Summit agenda features 100+ ecosystem leaders and can't-miss talks on the most exciting trends in the blockchain space, from decentralized finance to Ethereum 2.0. This interview features Jack O'Holleran (SKALE Labs) and Stan Kladko (SKALE Labs) Interviewed by Tushar Jain (Multicoin Capital).
- [Digital Asset Strategy Summit (DASS): How does COVID-19 impact Bitcoin and the digital gold thesis?](https://multicoin.capital/2020/05/07/how-does-covid-19-impact-bitcoin-and-the-digital-gold-thesis.txt): Kyle Samani and Don Friedman, founder of the Joint Venture Group, discuss COVID-19 and impact Bitcoin and the digital gold thesis at the Digital Asset Strategy Summit (DASS). What kind of businesses are doing well in this time of crisis, and what kinds of new distressed opportunities are there in the crypto space?
- [Lightning 2020: A Toolkit for Heretical Web3 Developers](https://multicoin.capital/2020/05/05/lightning-2020-a-toolkit-for-heretical-web3-developers.txt): Many developers and investors interested in building Web3 gave up on building on top of Bitcoin years ago, assuming that its limited throughput, high latency, and conservative programmability made such development impossible. Indeed, this is precisely what led to the birth of Ethereum, and a plethora of Web3 platforms (e.g. Arweave, Cosmos, Polkadot, Solana, Near) that developers are leveraging today.
- [The Stacks Podcast with Kyle Samani & Muneeb Ali (Blockstack PBC)](https://multicoin.capital/2020/05/04/the-stacks-podcast-with-kyle-samani-and-muneeb-ali.txt): Kyle Samani, the Managing Partner of Multicoin, and Muneeb Ali, the Co-Founder of Blockstack, join the The Stacks Podcast to discuss research, investment theses, and debate the biggest trends in the industry.
- [On Forking DeFi Protocols](https://multicoin.capital/2020/04/16/on-forking-defi-protocols.txt): As a suite of new layer 1 blockchains are launching, I’ve been thinking about Ethereum’s network effects, and the defensibility of the DeFi protocols built on top of Ethereum. A couple of years ago, I wrote about the network effects of non-sovereign layer 1 monies like Bitcoin and Ethereum.
- [Our Investment in dForce: The DeFi Super-Network ](https://multicoin.capital/2020/04/14/our-investment-in-dforce-the-defi-super-network.txt): Today I’m excited to announce that Multicoin Capital led a $1.5M round in dForce, the world’s first unified network for open finance protocols. Coinvestors include our friends at China Merchant Bank International (CMBI) and Huobi Capital.
- [Unchained Podcast Audio Essay: The Most Forkable DeFi Protocols on Ethereum](https://multicoin.capital/2020/04/07/unchained-the-most-forkable-defi-protocols-on-ethereum.txt): As a suite of new layer 1 blockchains are launching, I’ve been thinking about Ethereum’s network effects, and the defensibility of the DeFi protocols built on top of Ethereum.
- [SXSW 2020 Session | Cryptoassets: Venturing into the Unknown](https://multicoin.capital/2020/04/06/sxsw-2020-session-cryptoassets-venturing-into-the-unknown.txt): Believers in the crypto space often parallel it to the early days of the internet. Both started within small technology circles and moved on to a more mainstream audience with their first “killer app”; email in the case of the internet and bitcoin in the case of crypto. While the internet transformed the way we create and receive information, the crypto space is promising to transform the way we create and receive value.
- [Kyle Samani and Aantoly Yakovenko discuss "Black Thursday" on the Solana Podcast ](https://multicoin.capital/2020/03/26/kyle-samani-and-aantoly-yakovenko-discuss-black-thursday-on-the-solana-podcast.txt): In this episode, Kyle and Anatoly talk about the effects of COVID-19 on the cryptocurrency market, Black Thursday, and how they each see the next few months playing out in both the crypto and traditional markets.
- [Trust Spectrum](https://multicoin.capital/2020/03/24/trust-spectrum.txt): Most people talk about financial services in crypto—trading, saving, lending, etc.—as either “decentralized” or “centralized.” Crypto advocates tend to characterize the former as less risky because users don’t have to trust a counterparty to custody their assets, removing the risks of losing their funds through a hack, impropriety, seizure from governments, and other forms of human error or malice.
- [Unchained Podcast: Teetering on the Edge: How Black Thursday Exposed the Flaws in the Crypto Markets - Ep.164](https://multicoin.capital/2020/03/23/unchained-podcast-how-black-thursday-exposed-the-flaws-in-the-crypto-markets.txt): Laura Shin and Kyle Samani dissects Black Thursday, March 12, the day the crypto markets plunged twice amid the wider sell-off in the markets due to the coronavirus on the Unchained Podcast.
- [March 12: The Day Crypto Market Structure Broke (Part 2)](https://multicoin.capital/2020/03/20/march-12-the-day-crypto-market-structure-broke-part-2.txt): Note: A few days ago I published a postmortem detailing how the crypto market structure broke on March 12. This post, Part 2, will explore the potential solutions to some of the systemic problems outlined in Part 1. To recap, one of the core structural problems is that current blockchains—both Bitcoin and Ethereum—simply do not support enough transaction throughput to facilitate global trading across many venues in volatile environments.
- [March 12: The Day Crypto Market Structure Broke (Part 1) ](https://multicoin.capital/2020/03/17/march-12-the-day-crypto-market-structure-broke.txt): There were two large downward moves in the crypto markets on March 12th, about 13 hours apart. The first was early in the morning, and the second in the evening (in the US). The first move down—a ~25% move—was fast and relatively orderly given the size of the move; however, during the second leg down, the market structure broke.
- [Blockcrunch: DeFi is a Ticking Time Bomb with Ben Sparango and Christian Keroles](https://multicoin.capital/2020/02/25/blockcrunch-defi-is-a-ticking-time-bomb-with-ben-sparango-and-christian-keroles.txt): In this very special episode, Ben Sparango (@bennybitcons) from Multicoin Capital and Christian Keroles (@CK_SNARKS) debate the most common critiques for DeFi: DeFi can't scale beyond speculation, DeFi can't bank the unbanked, Composability is a ticking time bomb, The "skeumorphism" of DeFi.
- [Infinite Scale ](https://multicoin.capital/2020/02/06/infinite-scale.txt): Today, the vast majority of economic activity is conducted via corporations. Corporations were invented in the 1400s, with the first versions manifesting as joint-stock companies. Capital structures, limited liability, and other parameters have evolved since then, but the fundamental premise of the corporation as the conduit to facilitate economic activity remains largely unchanged.
- [A Conversation with Tom Shaughnessy on The Evolution Of the Web3 Stack](https://multicoin.capital/2020/01/21/a-conversation-with-tom-shaughnessy-on-the-evolution-of-the-web3-stack.txt): Host Tom Shaughnessy talks to Kyle Samani, Founder and Managing Partner of Multicoin Capital. Kyle discusses his predictions for the middle layer and full-stack development, attracting developers to the crypto space, how competition in the industry will develop, and a complete discussion on the Web3 Stack.
- [Laura Shin and Kyle Samani discuss How 2020 Will Be the Year of Small Success Stories](https://multicoin.capital/2020/01/03/laura-shin-and-kyle-samani-discuss-how-2020-will-be-the-year-of-small-success-stories.txt): Kyle Samani, managing partner of Multicoin Capital looks ahead to 2020 based on how the space changed from 2018 to 2019. He talks about how the space has matured and become more heterogeneous, when developers choose to build on platforms other than Ethereum and when they stick with it, and how the uncertainties about Ethereum 2.0 are affecting developers' choices.
- [Fall 2019 Multicoin Summit Recap (VIDEOS) ](https://multicoin.capital/2019/12/19/fall-2019-multicoin-summit-recap.txt): Our summits are deliberately thematic. Our most recent summit centered around three major discussions: the institutional mindset with regard to crypto, the implications of exchange and neo-bank innovation, and tangible evidence of growth during the doldrum. You can see videos from the November 2019 Summit here, and videos from our prior summits on our Youtube page.
- [Chorus One and Kyle Samani Discuss the Crypto Mega Theses](https://multicoin.capital/2019/12/16/chorus-one-and-kyle-samani-discuss-the-crypto-mega-theses.txt): The interview goes into the role of centralized exchanges and implications for the ecosystem, starting with taking a look at Binance’s approach that Multicoin has dubbed “blitzscaling”. Brendan and Kyle further explore networked liquidity and the DeFi ecosystem discussing who might dominate in the space of protocols, aggregators and robo-advisors if non-crypto players with better distribution channels join the space.
- [The Web3 Stack, 2019 Edition](https://multicoin.capital/2019/12/13/the-web3-stack-2019-edition.txt): A year ago, I illustrated [the Web3 stack as I understood it at the time. I have learned more, and the ecosystem has evolved since then, so I decided to update the Web3 stack. Whereas the 2018 Edition was just a flat visualization of a single instance of the Web3 stack, the 2019 Edition aims to show the Web3 stack as a set of interoperable networks. In order to do this, I organized the 2019 Edition into 4 images (plus a bonus), starting from a narrow view, and zooming out from there.
- [Welcoming Mable Jiang To Multicoin Capital](https://multicoin.capital/2019/12/05/welcoming-mable-jiang-to-multicoin-capital.txt): Since launching Multicoin Capital more than two years ago, we’ve sought to build a crypto-native, global-scale asset management firm. Over the last 12 months, we’ve been thinking hard about how exactly we should grow the firm in order to build towards that vision. We determined that the most important initiative we could undertake was to develop a meaningful presence in Asia.
- [Kyle Samani Speaks with BlockchainBrad about Crypto Investments ](https://multicoin.capital/2019/11/29/kyle-samani-speaks-with-blockchainbrad-about-crypto-investments.txt): Today BlockchainBrad speaks with Multicoin Capital's Managing Director, Kyle Samani. We talk candidly about crypto investment, their investment thesis, and we talk in detail about Arweave.
- [Blizscaling: How a Crypto Startup Rapidly Grows a Global Business](https://multicoin.capital/2019/11/28/blizscaling-how-a-crypto-startup-rapidly-grows-a-global-business.txt): Kyle Samani, Managing Director at Multicoin Capital joins Binance CFO Wei Zhou to discuss Multicoin Capital’s research on Binance as one of the fastest scaling startups in tech. Wei shares his Binance stories as well as insights on the Indian crypto marker and Binance’s recent acquisition there.
- [Live from DAS Markets 2019: Investing in Infrastructure ](https://multicoin.capital/2019/11/21/live-from-das-2019-investing-in-infrastructure.txt): Live from DAS: Markets 2019, a panel on investing in infrastructure featuring: Lucinda Shen, a writer at Fortune Magazine as moderator, with Kyle Samani, Co-Founder & Managing Partner, Multicoin Capital, David Pakman, Partner, Venrock Associates, and Travis Kling, Founder & Chief Investment Officer, Ikigai Asset Management.
- [The Bear Case for Privacy Cryptocurrencies](https://multicoin.capital/2019/11/10/the-bear-case-for-privacy-cryptocurrencies.txt): Privacy is a fundamental right and crucial for the world of crypto - so why are some investors betting against privacy coins? Multicoin Capital's lead analyst Ryan Gentry joins me in discussing: Why privacy is a feature, not a product; Bearish thesis for Monero & ZCash; How Bitcoin & Ethereum can achieve privacy; and Lightning Network & privacy.
- [Binance is Blitzscaling ](https://multicoin.capital/2019/11/07/binance-is-blitzscaling.txt): Earlier this year we published an analysis on Binance and Binance Coin ($BNB), which was the culmination of several months of research and diligence. Since then, we’ve carefully watched as the company has continued to grow at an astonishing pace. To the casual observer, it’s easiest to explain Binance’s rapid growth using Reid Hoffman’s words in Blitzscaling.
- [Investing In the Permaweb](https://multicoin.capital/2019/11/05/investing-in-the-permaweb.txt): Today I’m excited to announce our investment in Arweave, a new protocol and blockchain pioneering an entirely new idea: permanent data storage. Arweave is the foundation of the Permaweb, a critical piece of infrastructure in the Web3 stack. We invested alongside our friends at a16z crypto and Union Square Ventures.
- [Exchanges Are Open Finance](https://multicoin.capital/2019/10/29/exchanges-are-open-finance.txt): The largest profit centers of crypto—the exchanges—are generally under analyzed from a strategic lens, especially given their systemic importance to the space as a whole. This is especially true given that the public can invest in the success of the exchanges through each exchange’s respective token (with the exceptions of the US-based exchanges, BitMEX, and Deribit).
- [Welcoming Tony Sheng and The Next Steps For Multicoin Capital](https://multicoin.capital/2019/10/01/welcoming-tony-sheng.txt): Today I’m excited to announce that Tony Sheng has joined Multicoin Capital as a Principal on the investment team. With deep experience as a product leader at companies like Google, AltspaceVR (acquired by Microsoft), and Decentraland, he brings a unique, user-focused perspective to the firm and the ecosystem as a whole. He’ll be based in Los Angeles, and will be working on new deals and helping our existing portfolio companies.
- [Privacy Is a Feature, Not a Product](https://multicoin.capital/2019/09/24/privacy-is-a-feature.txt): Privacy is a feature of valuable cryptocurrencies, not a product offering in and of itself. Users should not have to take balance sheet risk (e.g. by selling some BTC or ETH for ZEC) on less valuable and less secure cryptocurrencies in order to achieve financial privacy. This essay will argue that general platforms like Bitcoin and Ethereum already offer sufficient privacy guarantees for most users to never need niche privacy-focused blockchains.
- [The World Computer Should Be Logically Centralized](https://multicoin.capital/2019/07/30/the-world-computer-should-be-logically-centralized.txt): Vitalik conceived Ethereum as the world computer: a single, composable, open, permissionless state machine that could run trust-minimized code. And while Ethereum was a breakthrough on many fronts—P2P layer, deterministic state machines, composable smart contracts and more—it was lacking in many others.
- [Unbundling Vectors of Centralization in Web3](https://multicoin.capital/2019/07/25/unbundling-vectors-of-centralization-in-web3.txt): A year ago I illustrated the Web3 stack as I understood it at the time. More recently, I published Multicoin’s crypto mega theses, detailing the investment thesis for Web3. As I highlighted, one of the key implications of Web3 is that data ownership and application logic will be unbundled.
- [The Separation of Time and State](https://multicoin.capital/2019/07/16/the-separation-of-time-and-state.txt): Numerous smart contract platforms (e.g. Ethereum 2.0, Polkadot, Dfinity, Near Protocol, Algorand, Kadena, Spacemesh, and Solana) are launching in the next year or two. Each team is pursuing a unique scaling strategy. Most of these approaches, however, do not address one of the fundamental problems with distributed computing systems in Byzantine environments: the clock problem.
- [Our Investment in Torus ](https://multicoin.capital/2019/07/09/our-investment-in-torus.txt): Today I’m excited to announce that Multicoin Capital has led a $2M seed round in Torus with, including participation from Binance Labs, Coinbase Ventures, Accomplice, Sixth Horizon, and Terminal.
- [Our Investment in dfuse ](https://multicoin.capital/2019/06/26/our-investment-in-dfuse.txt): I’m excited to announce that Multicoin Capital has co-led a $3.5M investment in dfuse with Intel Capital, including participation from Diagram Ventures.
- [Our Investment in Helium](https://multicoin.capital/2019/06/12/helium-series-c.txt): I’m extremely excited to announce that Multicoin Capital co-led a $15M financing in Helium with our friends at Union Square Ventures. The Helium vision is the most ambitious we have seen in the blockchain space since the advent of smart contracts on Ethereum: Helium represents a fundamentally new approach—one with a radically reduced cost structure—to deploying and managing wireless networks at scale.
- [The Unbundling Of Ethereum](https://multicoin.capital/2019/05/24/the-unbundling-of-ethereum.txt): Today, Ethereum is the leading smart contract platform. While the trust-minimization properties of Ethereum are compelling, many developers are realizing that Ethereum simply cannot support the applications they want to build. Because of this, developers are choosing to build on other chains at an increasing pace. What applications are being unbundled from Ethereum, what applications are increasingly bundling around Ethereum, and what are the long-term implications for ETH’s monetary premium?
- [Inside the Room at the Spring 2019 Multicoin Summit (Videos) ](https://multicoin.capital/2019/05/14/spring-2019-multicoin-summit-videos.txt): The Multicoin Summit is an invite-only event that brings together some of the brightest minds in crypto to discuss the most important trends and topics shaping the industry. Though our events are primarily for our LPs and industry partners, we strive to make the ideas discussed as accessible as possible to you, our readers.
- [Crypto Mega Theses](https://multicoin.capital/2019/04/24/multicoin-investment-thesis.txt): Open, distributed ledgers and permissionless, censorship-resistant, trust-minimized computation are going to reshape massive sectors of the global economy. This belief led us to found Multicoin Capital in 2017, and after spending two years with entrepreneurs, business leaders, and investors in this space, we’ve developed more conviction in this thesis than ever before.
- [On Value Capture at Layers 1 and 2](https://multicoin.capital/2019/03/14/on-value-capture-at-layers-1-and-2.txt): Among the crypto development and investor communities, the most popular term is “protocol,” and for good reason. Everyone is building a protocol (and presumably these protocols offer investors and employees some way to generate returns).
- [Binance Coin ($BNB) Analysis and Valuation](https://multicoin.capital/2019/02/19/binance-coin-analysis-and-valuation.txt): Binance is the crypto exchange that best exemplifies Bezos’s famous quote. The industry leading exchange charges the lowest fees in the industry as a strategy and competitive advantage.
- [Our Investment in The Graph](https://multicoin.capital/2019/01/28/our-investment-in-the-graph.txt): I’m proud to announce that Multicoin has led a $2.5M seed round in The Graph. We believe that The Graph is going to be one of the most important protocols in the Web3 stack.
- [What P2P Markets are Better Decentralized?](https://multicoin.capital/2019/01/08/12-markets-crypto-decentralization-can-actually-improve.txt): Over the last 20 years, a lot of companies have built large online marketplaces to connect buyers and sellers. Amazon, eBay, Uber, and AirBnb typically come to mind as the most obvious examples. But there are many more.
- [Questions From the Crypto Idea Maze](https://multicoin.capital/2018/12/20/questions-from-the-crypto-idea-maze.txt): As 2018 comes to a close, we’ve been thinking about some of the big questions that crypto still needs to answer.
- [Multicoin Summit Panels: Fall 2018](https://multicoin.capital/2018/12/18/multicoin-summit-panels-fall-2018.txt): Our Fall 2018 Summit brought together some of the brightest minds and biggest thinkers in crypto at New York City’s Dream Hotel. We were very fortunate to have some of our speakers travel from halfway around the world to be with us for this meeting of the minds.
- [A New Model for Token Distribution](https://multicoin.capital/2018/11/09/new-models-for-token-distribution.txt): Crypto networks are supposed to be decentralized. As Balaji Srinivasan, CTO of Coinbase, has written, decentralization can be measured in a number of dimensions.
- [Our Investment in Starkware](https://multicoin.capital/2018/10/30/our-investment-in-starkware.txt): Today we’d like to announce Multicoin Capital’s investment in StarkWare’s $30M Series A financing alongside a cast of other great investors, including: Paradigm, Sequoia, Intel Capital, DCVC, Wing, Consensys, Atomico, Coinbase Ventures, Collaborative Fund, Scalar Capital, Semantic Ventures, Pantera, and Floodgate.
- [The Evolving Role of Crypto Investors](https://multicoin.capital/2018/10/23/the-evolving-role-of-crypto-investors.txt): The best way to capture alpha as an investor is to create it. Private equity firms have practiced this for decades: groups like TPG acquire businesses and devote significant management resources to improving the business prior to selling.
- [$100 Trillion](https://multicoin.capital/2018/10/09/100-trillion.txt): On October 5, 2018, Yale, the iconic long-term investor that other endowments look to for guidance, made a historic investment in two funds dedicated to crypto, signaling to many that institutional floodgates are officially open.
- [Our Investment in Skale](https://multicoin.capital/2018/10/04/our-investment-in-skale.txt): Today I’m extremely excited to announce that we led a $9.65M investment round in SKALE.
- [Announcing Aurora EOS](https://multicoin.capital/2018/09/18/announcing-aurora-eos.txt): Today I’m very excited to unveil a secret project that some people inside of Multicoin have been working on for a few months: Aurora EOS.
- [Debunking Market Narratives: Litecoin ($LTC) Edition](https://multicoin.capital/2018/09/14/debunking-market-narratives-litecoin-ltc-edition.txt): Narratives are an immensely powerful tool, so much so, that experts generally attribute civilization’s rapid development to humans’ ability to efficiently tell stories. Due to their impact on human behavior, narratives can significantly affect our perception of value. In the current crypto market climate, reality is often overlooked in favor of narrative propagation. As such, it is important to evaluate the accuracy of popular beliefs, and separate the signal from the noise.
- [Token Curated Registries: Features and Tradeoffs](https://multicoin.capital/2018/09/05/tcrs-features-and-tradeoffs.txt): Token Curated Registries (TCRs) are an idea that gained a fair amount of traction within the cryptocurrency community throughout late 2017 and early 2018. While the idea has yet to be implemented at any meaningful scale, there are a few TCRs live on the Ethereum mainnet and over a dozen projects are considering building TCRs in some form.
- [Aggregation Theory, Thin Protocols, and Recentralization: Augur Edition](https://multicoin.capital/2018/08/08/aggregation-theory-thin-protocols-and-recentralization-augur-edition.txt): Joel Monegro of PlaceholderVC wrote Fat Protocols in 2016. Based on the data at the time – specifically that Union Square Ventures would have generated higher returns by simply buying and holding Bitcoin rather than investing in each of Coinbase’s funding rounds – the fat protocols theory made sense.
- [The Web3 Stack](https://multicoin.capital/2018/07/10/the-web3-stack.txt): I have yet to see an actual illustration of the Web3 stack. So this is an attempt. Given how expansive the Web3 ecosystem is, this diagram is almost certainly incomplete, and likely has a few inaccuracies.
- [Podcast: Tushar and Kyle on Invest Like the Best Podcast With Patrick O'Shaughnessy](https://multicoin.capital/2018/06/19/podcast-tushar-and-kyle-on-invest-like-the-best-podcast-with-patrick-oshaughnessy.txt): Kyle and I recently joined Patrick O’Shaughnessy on the Invest Like the Best podcast. Patrick is a great interviewer who approaches this space with a skeptical investor’s mindset.
- [Multicoin Summit: the State of Dapp Development](https://multicoin.capital/2018/06/08/multicoin-summit-the-state-of-dapp-development.txt): At the Multicoin Summit, we had the good fortune of bringing together entrepreneurs who’re building both dapp infrastructure and actual dapps to discuss the state of dapp development.
- [Multicoin Summit: Challenges and Opportunities for the Tokenization of Securities](https://multicoin.capital/2018/05/31/multicoin-summit-challenges-and-opportunities.txt): A few weeks ago, we held the first Multicoin Summit. We brought together some of the deepest thinkers in crypto – both investors and entrepreneurs – to discuss many of the most challenging questions in the space.
- [Podcast: Tushar and Dhruv Discuss ASIC Mining, Chia, and Mining Decentralization](https://multicoin.capital/2018/05/30/podcast-tushar-and-dhruv-discuss-asic-mining-chia-and-mining-decentralization.txt): I recently chatted with Dhruv Bansal, Co-Founder and CSO of Unchained Capital, on Conversations with Multicoin Capital. Dhruv is one of the brightest minds in crypto and had tremendous insights.
- [On the Network Effects of Stores of Value](https://multicoin.capital/2018/05/09/on-the-network-effects-of-stores-of-value.txt): This post is a spiritual successor to The Smart Contract Network Effect Fallacy. Bitcoin has a network effect. Many crypto evangelists assert that the network effect of Bitcoin is so strong that hyperbitcoinization is inevitable.
- [Podcast: Kyle and Tushar on Unchained With Laura Shin](https://multicoin.capital/2018/05/08/podcast-kyle-and-tushar-on-unchained.txt): Kyle and I recently joined Laura Shin on the Unchained podcast. This is one of our favorite crypto podcasts. Here’s the link.
- [Why Decentralization Matters: A Response](https://multicoin.capital/2018/05/06/why-decentralization-matters-a-response.txt): Spencer Bogart from Blockchain Capital wrote an excellent piece earlier this week titled “The Long Game in Crypto: Why Decentralization Matters” as a response to our EOS report.
- [Good Artists Copy. Great Artists Steal.](https://multicoin.capital/2018/04/25/good-artists-copy-great-artists-steal.txt): Cryptocurrencies and blockchains are not yet mature. Like computers from the 80s and 90s, although they technically work, they’re fragile in practice. As such, most of their users are technical, and tend to focus on technical challenges rather than go-to-market challenges.
- [EOS ($EOS) Analysis and Valuation](https://multicoin.capital/2018/04/24/eos-analysis-and-valuation.txt): EOS is a blockchain and smart contract platform with a focus on speed, scalability, and user experience. EOS uses delegated proof of stake (DPoS) and a “token ownership as bandwidth” model to achieve high throughput and zero transaction fees.
- [Opportunities for Blockchain Based Social Apps](https://multicoin.capital/2018/04/09/opportunities-for-blockchain-based-social-apps.txt): There are a few commonly cited arguments on why it makes sense to build social media platforms on top of blockchains, and how these benefits will enable upstart social media protocols to displace incumbents.
- [Paths to $100T](https://multicoin.capital/2018/03/15/paths-to-100t.txt): There are three fundamental hypotheses that attempt to answer the question, “What path will the super mega winner(s) in crypto take?” In this post, I’ll detail each of these hypotheses. Note that all three hypotheses achieve the same result: massive stores of value. The primary difference between these hypotheses is the path by which these state-free monies get there.
- [David Sacks: Why we Invested in Multicoin](https://multicoin.capital/2018/03/12/why-we-invested-in-multicoin.txt): Multicoin Capital recently announced an impressive list of new investors, of which we are excited to be a part. Crypto is a unique asset class that requires an investor to combine the skills of a venture capitalist and a hedge fund. Like a VC, you have to evaluate team, technology, market size, competitive dynamics, and go-to-market.
- [Delegated Proof of Stake: Features and Tradeoffs](https://multicoin.capital/2018/03/02/delegated-proof-stake-features-tradeoffs.txt): Distributed ledgers don’t easily scale. That fact has become readily apparent in the last few years as Bitcoin, Ethereum, and others have faced serious challenges as they attempt to increase the speed and throughput of their platforms.
- [Models for Scaling Trustless Computation](https://multicoin.capital/2018/02/23/models-scaling-trustless-computation.txt): Each of the major smart contract platforms is making a unique set of trade-offs. These trade-offs are not simply the presence or absence of specific features, but rather represent fundamentally different views of what trustless computation means.
- [Podcast: Kyle and Tushar on Epicenter](https://multicoin.capital/2018/02/21/podcast-kyle-tushar-epicenter.txt): Kyle and I recently joined Meher Roy and Brian Crain on the Epicenter podcast. It’s one of our favorite crypto podcasts. Here’s the link.
- [New Models for Utility Tokens](https://multicoin.capital/2018/02/13/new-models-utility-tokens.txt): There are three types of cryptoassets: stores of value, security tokens, and utility tokens. General-purpose stores of value should be valued using the equation of exchange because these currencies are independent monetary bases. Examples include Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Zcash, Dash, Monero, and Decred.
- [The Opportunity for Interoperable Chains of Chains](https://multicoin.capital/2018/01/27/opportunity-interoperable-chains-chains.txt): Today, blockchain interoperability is virtually non-existent. If you want to move value across chains, you must do so by moving tokens into a centralized exchange, trade on the exchange’s in-house ledger and then withdraw the new asset on a new chain. This process is slow, expensive and involves substantial counterparty risk.
- [Iota ($MIOTA) Analysis](https://multicoin.capital/2018/01/23/iota-miota-analysis.txt): IOTA is a digital currency project that aims to be the backbone of the internet of things (IoT). It is touted as having a “post-blockchain” architecture. While IOTA shares some similarities with many blockchain projects, its design does not include blocks or a single, linear chain.
- [An Overview of Stablecoins](https://multicoin.capital/2018/01/17/an-overview-of-stablecoins.txt): Stablecoins have been one of my major areas of interest since I got involved in crypto. I first learned of Bitcoin when I was studying abroad in Argentina in 2014. At the time, Argentina was in the midst of a currency crisis that had resulted in widespread inflation, and Argentinian citizens were still reeling from a 2001 market crash that ended with the government freezing bank accounts for a year.
- [Podcast: Kyle on the Flippening With Clay Collins](https://multicoin.capital/2018/01/07/podcast-kyle-flippening-clay-collins.txt): Clay Collins, CEO of Nomics Finance, recently asked me to join him in wide ranging conversation on his new podcast, The Flippening.
- [The Bear Case for XRP: Bitcoin Futures Edition](https://multicoin.capital/2017/12/20/bear-case-xrp-bitcoin-futures-edition.txt): In August, we published an analysis of XRP, the native token of the Ripple network. We presented a bearish view of XRP tokens. A quick summary: Ripple, Inc. – the company that builds and maintains the Ripple network – has built a blockchain-based system that banks use to issue IOUs and settle debts. XRP has two uses: to pay fees on the Ripple network, and as a “bridge currency” for value transfers between any two institutions that don’t have a trusted relationship.
- [0x ($ZRX) Analysis and Valuation](https://multicoin.capital/2017/12/14/0x-zrx-analysis-valuation.txt): 0x is a protocol for decentralized exchange (DEX) of ERC20 tokens. ZRX is the native token of the protocol. At its core, 0x is a system of smart contracts that can be used by anyone—it is open-source and completely free to use.
- [Understanding Token Velocity](https://multicoin.capital/2017/12/08/understanding-token-velocity.txt): Basically, all token pitches include a line that goes something like this: “There is a fixed supply of tokens. As demand for the token increases, so must the price.” This logic fails to take into account the velocity problem. In this post, I’ll explain the velocity problem by providing an in-depth example. Then I’ll examine mechanisms that reduce velocity.
- [Understanding Token Velocity](https://multicoin.capital/2017/12/08/understanding-token-velocity.txt): Basically, all token pitches include a line that goes something like this: “There is a fixed supply of tokens. As demand for the token increases, so must the price.”
- [Vinny Lingham Joins Multicoin Capital as General Partner ](https://multicoin.capital/2017/12/05/vinny-lingham-joins-multicoin-capital-general-partner.txt): We are extremely excited to welcome Vinny Lingham (Twitter, Linkedin) to Multicoin Capital as General Partner. Vinny is the CEO of Civic, a solution for identity verification on blockchain.
- [Crypto Franchising: Out with the New, In with the Old](https://multicoin.capital/2017/10/24/crypto-franchising-new-old.txt): Franchising is a widely understood model for retail food businesses. Many of the oldest and most successful retail food businesses in the world are franchises: McDonald’s, Subway, etc...
- [Crypto Acquisitions: All Theory, No Practice ](https://multicoin.capital/2017/10/16/crypto-acquisitions-theory-no-practice.txt): Many have asked “how would a merger or acquisition work in crypto?” Although a merger could work in theory, in practice it’s not possible...
- [Blockchains as a Foundation for a New Social Order](https://multicoin.capital/2017/10/06/blockchains-new-social-order.txt): Cryptographically bound peer-to-peer networks (henceforth called “crypto” for short) are going to be one of the defining technologies of our lifetimes. They enable fundamentally new forms of social organization.
- [The State of Decentralized Storage ](https://multicoin.capital/2017/09/27/state-decentralized-storage.txt): Society is transitioning from the industrial age to the information age, and data is becoming the world’s most valuable resource...
- [Bitcoin is Better than Digital Gold ](https://multicoin.capital/2017/09/21/bitcoin-better-digital-gold.txt): A common phrase used to explain Bitcoin is “Bitcoin is digital gold.” This statement implies a few things...
- [Brian Smith Joins Multicoin Capital as COO/CFO](https://multicoin.capital/2017/09/12/brian-smith-joins-multicoin-capital-coocfo.txt): I first met Brian Smith about two years ago during my tenure at Pristine. I was recruiting him to lead and build Pristine’s finance organization. It was the best interview I’ve had with any candidate for any role, ever.
- [Factom ($FCT) Analysis and Valuation](https://multicoin.capital/2017/09/07/factom-fct-analysis-valuation.txt): Factom is a blockchain protocol built to leverage the security and immutability of Bitcoin (and other) blockchains for the purpose of recording data
- [Understanding Crypto Regulation](https://multicoin.capital/2017/09/05/understanding-crypto-regulations.txt): In light of the recent actions by the US Securities and Exchange Commission and People’s Bank of China, we’re receiving a lot of questions about regulation. In this post, we’ll provide some frameworks...
- [Ripple ($XRP) Analysis](https://multicoin.capital/2017/08/31/xrp2017.txt): Ripple is a blockchain protocol for inter-bank settlements. Unlike many other blockchains, Ripple is designed to work with existing institutions to facilitate the ability to quickly transact any asset globally.
- [The Smart Contract Network Effect Fallacy ](https://multicoin.capital/2017/08/28/network-effect-fallacy.txt): Ethereum is unquestionably the market leading smart contract platform. It’s the oldest and most mature.
- [Augur ($REP) Analysis and Valuation](https://multicoin.capital/2017/08/24/rep2017.txt): Augur is a decentralized prediction market built on top of the Ethereum blockchain. Its native token, REP, is a utility token that allows REP holders to perform work for the Augur network in exchange for a percentage of the network fees.
- [Venture Capital Economics with Public Market Liquidity ](https://multicoin.capital/2017/08/15/venture-capital-economics-with-public-market-liquidity.txt): Traditional venture capital firms typically invest in the equity of young, fast-growing, technology startups.
- [Announcing Multicoin Capital](https://multicoin.capital/2017/08/09/announcing-multicoin-capital.txt): Today, Tushar Jain and I are excited to announce the next chapter of our careers: Multicoin Capital.