One of the biggest Solana maximalists right now is Kyle Samani, Managing Partner at leading crypto venture capital firm Multicoin Capital.
Introduction
One of the biggest Solana maximalists right now is Kyle Samani, Managing Partner at leading crypto venture capital firm Multicoin Capital. Kyle is a former engineer with NYU financial and management degrees, so he’s uniquely qualified to understand blockchain technology at both a business and technical level.
As anyone who follows his writings or social media talks will know, Kyle is a massive Solana bull who has never been one to shy away from giving his educated take on the biggest issues in crypto, particularly when they relate to Bitcoin and Ethereum. His dismissiveness of the top two chains is making even hardcore ETH maxis take stock of whether The Flippening will rather be SOL-ETH than ETH-BTC.
Anyone who was at Breakpoint this year would probably bet the house on the former. While Vitalik was singing, the Solana clan was gathering, and the uptick in activity from Breakpoint Amsterdam to Breakpoint Singapore felt exponential.
Its location at Suntec Convention Center was literally meters away from the F1 Singapore track, and the message was crystal clear: Solana is moving, and it’s fast. While last year represented a pitstop after a devastating 2022, this year showed the chain doing laps around its competitors in many important metrics.
We caught Kyle at Breakpoint in September 2024 and got our own hot take on ETH vs SOL, Solana ETFs, and why he believes the future is Solana.
Can you run us through your Token2049 keynote?
Kyle: At Token2049 I gave a presentation called "Why SOL Will Flip ETH." I walked through the history of Ethereum because that's an important context to understand where Ethereum is at now.
I really outlined just how miserably slow they've been. Ethereum is nine years old, and this thing is still broken. People are being way too generous, providing way too long of a leash. I talked about how there's no more value accrual to ETH assets.
Then I contrasted that with Solana—they have a North Star, they're focused, they're accruing assets, their system's working and scaling and eclipsing Ethereum. That's the gist.
What's your focus at Solana Breakpoint?
Kyle: Here at Breakpoint, no presentation. I’ve just been in the trenches working with portfolio companies on all kinds of issues and opportunities, meeting some new entrepreneurs, and potentially looking for some new investments.
You’ve never liked Bitcoin but were early into Ethereum. Why?
Kyle: I was previously in healthcare launching and successfully sold a $5M startup called Pristine, but I got into crypto in March of 2016, starting with Ethereum. I never cared for Bitcoin—still don't care for Bitcoin. I think it's very stupid.
Multicoin Capital’s thesis holds that crypto will create the largest one-time shift in wealth in the history of the internet.
What drew me to Ethereum was realizing early that you can program it to do anything financial in nature. That struck me as a very important innovation. But by the end of 2017, Ethereum was having all kinds of gas problems. ICOs were going crazy, gas was spiking all the time, the system was becoming unusable.
It was obvious—like, hey guys, we need a scaling plan. Ethereum was two and a half years old. I thought that was more than enough time to debate different plans, pick one, and say, "Okay, everyone, this is the game plan."
I went to DevCon in Cancun, in November 2017. I was pumped for Vitalik's keynote and showed up an hour early. And he didn't even talk about the future. He just gave an overview of Ethereum's history. I left that presentation incredibly jaded. Ethereum was the center of 2017, ETH was up 100x year-to-date. I thought it was going to be the future of finance. And here are these guys, they don't even seem to acknowledge they have a problem to solve. It was incomprehensible.
That was our moment of, "These guys do not know what they're doing."
What was your Solana "purple pill" moment?
Kyle: Right after DevCon, we immediately started looking at alternatives to Ethereum. Solana provided a 10x improvement over Ethereum in transaction speed and cost. That's what mattered when gas fees on Ethereum were spiking like crazy in 2020 and 2021.
People were pissed off, so they looked for alternatives. Solana clearly emerged from that process. Today, there just isn't an equivalent opportunity. Gas fees on Solana are effectively zero. Transactions are confirming faster than ever.
How is Solana maintaining its edge against new tech like Sui and Move chains?
Solana's getting closer to the limits of physics. We're not there yet, but we're much closer than Ethereum ever was. Even if Aptos and Sui and others are close to Solana, they're not 10x better. There's so much inertia in getting these networks off the ground, as Ethereum can tell you.
These upstart networks haven't provided a value proposition that's obviously 10x better. I'm not saying they can't, but based on what I can see, they don't have a compelling answer yet.
With Ethereum ETFs now here, what does this mean for a potential Solana ETF?
Kyle: An ETF doesn't magically create the opportunity for a Solana ETF. Solana's more complicated. ETF doesn't do much for Solana, honestly. We're close to the issue at Multicoin, tracking it, doing what we can to make a Solana ETF happen. It's going to take a while. It's a pretty difficult process, but we're on it.
What's Multicoin looking at now, and what are you excited about for the near future?
Kyle: We're spending the most time on DeFi and stablecoins. We've announced several DeFi investments recently, like Fuse and Pipe. In the stablecoin world, we're looking at teams with unique insights on bringing stablecoins to 6 billion people who don't have access to U.S. dollars. Anyone building in that space, we're definitely interested.
As for teams we're really excited about, Drift is one. We just wrote a valuation report for Drift on our website, a very thorough overview. We've known the Drift team for years, led multiple rounds of private financing. We've been buying their token on the open market for months. We think Drift is super well-positioned.
Last question—for Solana newcomers, what are the first three steps to get up to speed?
Kyle: Here’s a really great way to get started (CMC disclaimer: not financial advice).
Step 1: Get a Phantom wallet or Backpack wallet.
Step 2: Sign up for Helium Mobile—fantastic service. Save money on your cell phone bill, start earning some HNT and mobile tokens.
Step 3: And then from there, stake your SOL using Jito.
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