Author: Zen, PANews

In early February 2026, Kyle Samani, considered by many to be Solana's most steadfast evangelist, announced that he would step down from the day-to-day management of Multicoin, stating that he would turn his attention to new technology fields such as AI, robotics, and life sciences, while still retaining his personal crypto investments.

What stung the industry even more was a statement he made shortly before the official announcement, which he then quickly deleted: "Cryptocurrency is not as interesting as many people (including myself) once imagined. I used to believe in the vision of Web3 and dApps, but I no longer do."

This "semi-retirement" can easily be interpreted as a verdict. When the industry's most powerful crypto investors choose to abandon the narrative of the "next-generation Internet," does it mean that the industry's vision of non-financial killer applications has already been declared bankrupt?

However, looking back at Samani's career, you'll find that it wasn't essentially a collapse of faith, but rather a risk migration driven by his inherent personality. In this "bittersweet moment," it wasn't a clear-cut exit, just as his past choices weren't necessarily wrong, but also not necessarily right.

"The best crypto venture capitalist in history" on decentralization enlightenment

When discussing the decentralized concept of blockchain, the anecdote of Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin being "forced" to quit internet addiction is always a popular story. As a teenager, Vitalik was angered when Blizzard removed his favorite warlock skills from World of Warcraft, which sparked his awareness of opposing centralized platforms. Kyle Samani, before entering the crypto industry, also had a similar experience of being "stabbed" by a centralized company.

Samani grew up in an affluent neighborhood in Austin, Texas, where his father owned an electronic health record system development company called VersaSuite. Samani began learning programming at age 11, but he wasn't interested in the uncool job. Therefore, after enrolling at New York University, Samani chose to study finance, intending to become a high-flying Wall Street professional.

At university, the assertive and energetic Samani became friends with the introverted Tushar Jain. Around that time, Bitcoin was already quietly gaining traction, and the two young men who would later co-found Multicoin Capital had no idea what the future held. Samani only knew that after two years of university study, he realized he wasn't cut out to be a banker, so he returned to studying programming.

Tushar Jain (left) and Kyle Samani (right)

After graduating in 2012, Samani and Jain both briefly worked at Samani's father's medical records company. Subsequently, they each started their own businesses in the field of medical technology. Jain founded a data company to help doctors find patients to participate in clinical trials; Samani, on the other hand, was attracted by Google's newly released Glass and co-founded a company called "Pristine" to develop software for Google Glass for surgeons.

Despite raising over $5 million in venture capital and expanding the team to nearly 30 employees, the "consumer adoption narrative" was put on hold when Google announced in 2015 that it would stop selling Google Glass to consumers, just two years after Pristine's founding. Samani realized he had to adjust his personal direction and left Pristine at the end of that year.

This entrepreneurial experience made Samani realize the "pain of platform risk." Therefore, the idea of having an open platform where such events wouldn't occur was extremely appealing to him. In March 2016, Samani stumbled upon Ethereum. This marked the beginning of a new chapter in his life, ultimately leading him into the world of cryptocurrency investment.

Samani, Ethereum, and Solana

Multicoin Capital was officially established in Austin in August 2017.

“In the early days of our startup, we were really a group of people desperately trying to make money,” Samani said. When Multicoin was raising funds, it had no brand, no track record, and no operational infrastructure. They reached out to everyone in their network—friends, family, friends of friends, and other entrepreneurial networks.

"The secret to getting through tough times is to focus on what you truly love." In an early interview with Business Insider, Samani stated that passion has been the constant thread throughout his entrepreneurial journey and the driving force behind his 15 to 20-hour workday.

In a vibrant and rapidly evolving industry cycle, Samani led Multicoin to tremendous success. According to public documents, as of May 2025, Multicoin managed assets worth $5.9 billion. Samani has become a candidate for the "GOAT" (Greatest of All Time) in the crypto venture capital world, in the eyes of many entrepreneurs and investors.

During Multicoin's rapid growth, Samani developed a distinct viewpoint and investment style. Most notably, while Ethereum was his "guide" in the blockchain field, he later became one of its most scathing and outspoken critics. He felt extremely disappointed by Ethereum's failure to solve the scaling problem after its early boom, and described Vitalik and his team as "completely clueless about what they were doing."

The DevCon developer conference in November 2017 turned Samani from a staunch Ethereum critic. He eagerly awaited Vitalik's keynote address, but the latter spent the entire speech reviewing Ethereum's history without mentioning its future. Samani felt that Ethereum was unwilling to even acknowledge its problems, and at that moment, his dream that "Ethereum will be the future of finance" shattered. He began searching for alternatives to Ethereum and quickly found an answer he approved of—the emerging high-performance public blockchain Solana.

In summary, Samani's overall strategy was "speed first," and Solana's advantages of fast transaction speed and low cost perfectly aligned with market trends. Therefore, Samani, along with Multicoin, made consecutive early investments in Solana. This significant bet propelled them to fame and marked a significant chapter in the history of crypto venture capital.

Of course, these investments also brought Samani extremely rich returns. In a December 2021 appearance on the podcast "The Wolf Of All Streets," Samani revealed that Multicoin purchased SOL tokens in three private rounds at prices of $0.04, $0.20, and $0.23, respectively.

Radical and provocative Solana flag bearers

Throughout his long investment career, Samani has been known for his outspoken and sharp opinions, and has become the most hardworking and aggressive leader of the Solana ecosystem.

In 2021, he also made a controversial statement on Twitter: "Why must safety be the top priority? To be honest, I value speed more."

A penchant for provocation and disparaging others is also a prominent characteristic of Samani. At the Token2049 conference in 2024, Samani gave a presentation titled "Why SOL Will Disrupt ETH." He relentlessly criticized Ethereum's slow progress, stating that after nine years of operation, it still had numerous problems. He also claimed that people had been too lenient with it, giving it too long a grace period. Samani went even further, asserting that Ethereum assets had no room for appreciation.

However, while Samani correctly bet on Solana and several leading brands like Binance and Helium, his judgment wasn't always accurate. For example, in 2020, Samani predicted that Zcash would be worthless in two years. Yet, this privacy-focused cryptocurrency remains one of the mainstream altcoin projects, with its price even surging to nearly $700 in the latter half of last year. Multicoin has also previously bet on seemingly doomed projects like EOS.

Furthermore, both Multicoin Capital and Solana had close ties to the bankrupt exchange FTX. With FTX's collapse, Samani's aggressive investments in Multicoin were also put in jeopardy.

In November 2022, several anonymous limited partners (LPs) reported to Axios that Multicoin cashed out a large amount of crypto assets at the end of the 2021 bull market, but instead of distributing the majority of the profits to LPs to pay taxes as is customary, the fund used the funds to continue buying Solana tokens (SOL). Logically, after a large-scale cash-out, approximately 40% should be allocated to LPs to cover taxes, but the fund did not perform this action at the time.

As a result, after the price of SOL plummeted in 2022, LPs not only failed to realize their profits in time but also incurred hefty tax bills. Sources also indicated that management seemed unconcerned about SOL's 90% drawdown. Furthermore, the revelation that approximately 15% of Multicoin's assets were locked on exchanges when FTX went bankrupt further exacerbated investor discontent.

Is it a semi-withdrawal stance, yet an abandonment of the Web3 vision?

Despite the controversial narratives and actions surrounding Samani, few would question his stature as one of the industry's leading investors. This explains the immense uproar and emotional resonance that occurred when Samani announced his semi-departure in early 2026.

In his open letter, Samani stated that he will step down from his management role at Multicoin and take a temporary break as an advisor, exploring new technology areas such as artificial intelligence, life sciences, and robotics. He also expressed that he is more convinced than ever that crypto technology will completely reshape the financial system, and emphasized that although he will be leaving the professional arena, he will continue to personally invest in crypto projects, and is particularly optimistic about the new opportunities brought about by US crypto regulations.

However, a few hours earlier, Samani posted a message that was later deleted, in which he was far less sympathetic—he criticized cryptocurrency as not being as interesting as expected and stated that he had once believed in the vision of Web3 and decentralized applications (DApps), but no longer did. This statement, which seemed to indicate a shift in public opinion, quickly sparked controversy.

In responding to some comments, Samani attempted to downplay the situation. He stated that he still holds a significant long position in SOL and cryptocurrencies and will continue to participate in the crypto market in his personal capacity and as chairman of Solana's treasury company, Forward Industries. Samani will also apply to redeem his Multicoin fund shares with Forward stock, meaning he will increase his holdings in Forward. This move demonstrates that despite "stepping back," Samani's personal financial bet on Solana has not diminished.

After the clouds disperse, the moon will shine.

Many see Samani's departure as the end of an era. When one of the best crypto investors no longer believes in the industry's future, it further fuels the current pessimistic sentiment and atmosphere.

We can go back to Pristine, Samani's first "half-finished" startup. In fact, Pristine, which leveraged Google Glass, faced challenges at the time, including the collapse of the "consumer-level popularization narrative" and uncertainty about the industry's prospects and pace. Pristine was eventually acquired and exited the company.

But what disappears is the company name and capital structure; what remains is the capability profile and commercialization path.

Pristine's product capabilities, such as "first-person video streaming" and "remote expert collaboration," were not failures, but rather were integrated into a larger platform for continued iteration. In 2017, Pristine was acquired by Upskill, a leading US AR software company; Upskill was then acquired by the German technology company TeamViewer in 2021, and its AR platform was integrated into TeamViewer's industrial-grade digital product line.

Today, with the rapid development of AI, the Google Glass era may be over, but Google announced in late 2024 that it would reinvest in AI smart glasses under the Android XR system, laying out a new commercial blueprint for the field Pristine once competed in. This platform-based return means that the imagination that was once constrained by hardware limitations may be re-emerging in a different way.

Samani's departure from Pristine's node 10 years ago is, in a way, a mirror image of the cryptocurrency industry today.

In Samani's deleted statement, he wasn't denying whether blockchain could change the narrative of finance, but rather the grand vision that Web3/consumer-grade dApps could still give rise to killer applications. The crypto industry is currently experiencing a contraction in its vision, but narrative contraction does not equate to narrative death.

The "platform risk" that led to Samani's exit a decade ago did not declare the end of the race. It merely propelled the race into a longer period of dormancy. Pristine and its technological products did not "wait for spring," but rather transformed themselves into a form capable of weathering the winter. Until stronger AI capabilities, more mature platforms, and more realistic product forms emerge, thus reopening the space for growth.

The same could be true for the crypto industry. What's being rejected today is the grand narrative of the "next-generation internet," but that doesn't mean it can never give rise to killer applications outside of finance.

It may simply need new "platform conditions" to complete its second development: clearer regulatory boundaries, stronger user-level privacy and identity infrastructure, more usable on-chain interaction paradigms, or more innovative AI+Web3 paradigms.

As Chris Dixon, founder of a16z Crypto, said, "Chaotic times pave the way for glorious times to come."

No one is a prophet who can predict everything, but the saying "after the clouds disperse, the moon shines bright" and "a new village appears after the darkest hour" often play out repeatedly.

Franklin Templeton has filed Form 8-A with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for its Solana ETF.

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