With top minds shifting their focus to AI and hard technology, has the "Wild West" era of cryptocurrency truly come to an end?
Written by: Sanqing, Foresight News
On February 5th, Kyle Samani, co-founder of Multicoin Capital and a once-prominent Solana evangelist, posted a startling comment on social media platform X in response to a user: "Cryptocurrency isn't nearly as interesting as many people (including myself) once imagined. I used to believe in the vision of Web3, I believed in dApps. Now I don't." He went on to make an even more brutal assertion: "Blockchains are essentially asset ledgers. They will reshape finance, but that's about it. DePIN is another area worth watching. Cryptocurrency will continue to improve, but aside from on-chain privacy/confidentiality, all the truly interesting questions have already been answered."
The tweet was quickly deleted shortly after it was posted, leaving the community in a state of shock and speculation. Was this a sign of utter disillusionment from an industry leader after the bear market? Just as this controversy was unfolding, Kyle Samani officially announced his departure. In his announcement, he showed no sign of negativity, instead describing the moment as bittersweet, and reiterated his unwavering confidence in cryptocurrencies, especially Solana, as "stronger than ever." He announced his departure from the day-to-day management of Multicoin Capital to explore new areas such as artificial intelligence, robotics, and longevity science, while continuing to serve as chairman of SOL's treasury company, Forward Industries.
This apparent contradiction—a demystification of the grand narrative of Web3 on one hand, and a firm bullish stance on financial infrastructure on the other—reveales the transformation Kyle Samani and the entire crypto venture capital community are undergoing. This is not merely a personal career choice, but a microcosm of the shift that the crypto VC industry will experience in late 2025 and early 2026.
A Brief History of Multicoin: From the Myth of 391x to a Phoenix Rising from the Ashes
To understand Kyle's departure, we need to look back at the tumultuous history of Multicoin Capital. In 2017, Kyle Samani and Tushar Jain co-founded the fund, establishing a "thesis-driven" investment style. They rejected scattershot investing, instead focusing on heavy investments based on a deep understanding of the technical architecture.
This approach yielded significant returns for Multicoin between 2018 and 2021. The most classic battle was the debate over the "modular" versus "monolithic" approach. While the market largely embraced Ethereum's sharding scaling strategy, Kyle Samani proposed the "Integrated Chains" theory, arguing that only a high-throughput, low-latency architecture like Solana could realize "Internet Capital Markets." This differentiated investment decision not only generated substantial returns but also solidified Multicoin's position in the crypto venture capital arena.
However, an aggressive approach is a double-edged sword. The FTX crash in 2022 dealt a devastating blow to Multicoin. At that time, about 10% of Multicoin's assets were directly tied to the FTX exchange, and a large number of its holdings were deeply integrated with the Solana ecosystem, while the price of SOL plummeted from over $200 to a low of about $8.
According to a later letter to investors, the Multicoin fund suffered a maximum drop of 91.4% in 2022. Wall Street and the crypto community were filled with ridicule towards them, and rumors about Multicoin's impending bankruptcy were rampant on Twitter. Kyle and Tushar issued a "self-criticism" to their LPs, admitting their investment mistakes, but they continued to fight against despair, stubbornly holding onto their positions amidst the industry's bearish sentiment towards Solana.
Entering 2025, Multicoin gradually emerged from the impact of the FTX incident. The company spearheaded a $1.65 billion PIPE funding round for Forward Industries, building a publicly traded treasury centered around Solana. Six months before Kyle's departure, Multicoin hired Brian Strugats, former head of trading at FalconX, to optimize its execution strategies.
This personnel change also indicates that Multicoin's focus is shifting from simply "hunting unicorns" to more professional asset management and liquidity execution. As the company's business stabilizes and its institutional nature becomes increasingly prominent, Kyle's departure, as a pioneer who likes to "go from 0 to 1," seems quite logical.
Kyle Samani's Personal Path: From Crypto Believer to Tech Explorer
Kyle Samani's career trajectory is a classic example of an evolution from a "crypto fundamentalist" to a "frontier technology explorer." Early in his career, he was named to Forbes' "30 Under 30" list and is known for his programming background in healthcare IT and his insightful commentary on the blockchain technology stack.
For eight years, he was Solana's most steadfast advocate. However, as the industry matured, Kyle's interests began to shift. In Multicoin's "Frontier Ideas for 2025," Kyle devoted considerable attention to "DePIN bots" and "zero-employee companies." For him, mere financial speculation had lost its appeal; the real excitement lay in the fusion of the physical world and digital logic.
This shift doesn't mean "running away." In fact, Kyle's commitment to Solana continues in another form. As Chairman of Forward Industries (NASDAQ: FWDI), he is implementing the SOL treasury strategy, with Forward Industries holding approximately 6.98 million SOL as of January 2025. Furthermore, he stated that when he redeems his shares in the Multicoin Fund on March 31, 2026, he will choose to redeem them physically as FWDI shares and warrants, thereby further increasing his personal exposure to Solana.
A more accurate interpretation of that quickly deleted tweet is that Kyle is weary of the narratives surrounding Web3 and dApps, which are filled with worthless cryptocurrencies and false prosperity, but his belief in the underlying logic of blockchain as an "asset ledger" reshaping global finance remains unwavering. He also expressed continued optimism about DePIN (Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Network) and on-chain privacy technologies led by Zama, as these areas truly combine cryptography with real-world hard technology.
Beyond Multicoin: A Wave of Changes Among Crypto VC Partners
Kyle Samani's departure is not an isolated incident. From the end of 2025 to the beginning of 2026, the high-level changes at top crypto venture capital firms have been remarkably frequent, forming a clear "transfer wave".
Around the same time Kyle announced his departure, Arianna Simpson, general partner of a16z Crypto, also announced her departure. A proponent of Web3 games and consumer applications, she had led investments in star projects such as Sky Mavis (Axie Infinity), Dapper Labs, and Irreverent Labs. However, this investor, who once defined the "Play-to-Earn" paradigm, now plans to launch a new fund that will no longer be limited to Web3, but will expand its investment scope to all technology verticals, including AI.
Kofi Ampadu, also from a16z, left after the company suspended the TxO (Talent x Opportunity) project he was in charge of. TxO was a fund at a16z dedicated to supporting founders from non-traditional backgrounds (such as ethnic minorities), and had incubated creator economy projects such as Fanhouse. Kofi's departure signifies that the crypto VC industry is scaling back ecosystem exploration businesses that offer "non-purely financial returns" during this downturn.
Paradigm, another company known for its tech geeks, suffered an even more severe loss of talent, and those who left were the veterans who defined the organization's "character".
Charlie Noyes (DeFi prodigy), Paradigm's first employee, joined the organization at the age of 19. He was an early seed investor in Uniswap and Tagomi (later acquired by Coinbase) and spearheaded the massive funding round for the high-performance public chain Monad; Nick Martitsch (Head of GTM), as Head of Market Development, helped technically advanced projects like Uniswap, Optimism, and Flashbots make the crucial leap from code to market; Gina Moon (General Counsel) was a key figure behind the scenes in Kalshi's CFTC lawsuit victory in the prediction market and Uniswap's handling of regulatory pressure.
The flow of these top talents shows a high degree of consistency: either they establish new funds with a broader investment scope, or they devote themselves to new growth areas such as AI and biotechnology. This indicates that after several cycles of transformation, the talent structure of the crypto industry is undergoing a profound restructuring. The early batch of geniuses who flocked in because of the "intellectual challenge" are now seeking the next, even more challenging frontiers.
Why has the business of crypto venture capital changed?
This wave of partner departures reflects three structural changes that the crypto venture capital industry is facing.
First, there's the issue of diminishing marginal returns. As Kyle tweeted, "All the really interesting questions already have answers."
Between 2017 and 2021, the crypto industry was in a period of rapid, unregulated growth, where innovative mechanisms (such as AMMs and Lending Pools) often generated significant excess returns. However, by 2026, the infrastructure will be largely mature, and the remaining work will focus more on engineering implementation and regulatory compliance than on theoretical innovation from scratch. For tech-savvy investors like Kyle, who are passionate about solving difficult problems, the intellectual challenge of the crypto industry is decreasing.
Secondly, there is a shift in the macro-technology narrative. In 2025-2026, groundbreaking advancements in artificial intelligence and robotics are drawing away capital and attention that originally belonged to the crypto space.
In his latest investment outlook, Kyle Samani highlighted "DePIN robots" and "zero-employee companies," believing that the combination of AI agents and blockchain is the next big trend. Compared to simple asset transactions, using cryptography as a payment and verification layer in the AI economy (such as zkTLS) is seen as a more promising growth area.
Finally, there is the normalization of industry pressure.
Despite the implementation of favorable regulations such as the GENIUS Act, and Kyle's resignation tweet explicitly stating his belief that the Clarity Act would unleash a wave of new entrants, crypto VCs still face immense pressure regarding LP returns and regulatory compliance costs. Institutions like Paradigm have faced considerable criticism for missing out on early-stage high-growth projects (such as Ethena and Pump.fun). As the market increasingly becomes dominated by retail investors and memes, the traditional VC "grand narrative" approach is losing its effectiveness.
The Future and Industry Implications of Multicoin
Kyle Samani's departure marks the end of an era for Multicoin Capital, but it does not signify its decline.
Under the leadership of Tushar Jain and the new partners, Multicoin is moving towards a more robust institutionalization. Its management team stated in an open letter that Kyle's management responsibilities have been smoothly transferred, and the company's investment strategy remains unchanged. In fact, Multicoin continues its active expansion, from the addition of Brian Strugats to its significant investment in Forward Industries, demonstrating the institution's ambitions in financial infrastructure and the Solana ecosystem.
For the industry, the collective departure of early key figures like Kyle Samani reveals a somewhat disheartening fact: the most exciting "from 0 to 1" technological exploration phase in the crypto space has come to an end. As Kyle stated, "All the interesting questions have been answered."
In 2017, designing an AMM or consensus mechanism required genius-level imagination; but by 2026, it has become an engineering problem focused on compliance and capital efficiency. The current crypto industry is like laying railways—important yet tedious. Therefore, many are turning to new frontiers like AI and biotechnology, which are still in the "Wild West" stage.
Kyle's mention of the Clarity Act in his resignation tweet is an ironic commentary. He believed it would bring a "tidal wave of new entrants," yet he chose to leave at this moment.
This precisely illustrates the cost of clear regulation: it eliminates the exorbitant profits and incentives found in gray areas. Future crypto venture capital will no longer be a battle of "vision" and "narrative," but rather a competition of "compliance," "auditing," "custody," and "ETF access." When blockchain returns to its essence as an "asset ledger," as Kyle described it, it will no longer need evangelists, but only bankers.
As Kyle himself stated, while he no longer believes in the utopian vision of Web3, he is more convinced than ever that cryptography will reshape the foundations of finance. For a veteran who has fought in this industry for many years, this is perhaps the most honest confession and the most dignified farewell.
