About Kyle Samani
Kyle Samani, managing partner at Multicoin Capital, spoke at the All-In Summit in November 2025 about the future of internet capital markets. He argued that a new regulatory framework will allow non-security crypto assets, tokenized securities, and traditional securities to trade on a single user interface. Samani predicted that regulated financial "super apps" like Robinhood, Coinbase, and SoFi will offer services such as staking, lending, and access to decentralized finance (DeFi) without needing multiple state or federal licenses. He stated that "US securities markets are coming on chain" and that "internet capital markets are going to absorb every function of capital formation, trading, settlement, and risk," comparing the shift to how software "ate the world." In June 2026, Samani appeared at the All-In Liquidity Summit as chairman of Forward Industries, which he described as the world's largest Solana digital asset treasury company. He noted that the crypto market was in a bear market and encouraged investors to "turn over stones" for undervalued opportunities. Samani also pitched a company called Geonet, which he described as operating at the intersection of crypto and AI. He stated that he makes money by "holding things you believe in through volatility" and advised holding "high quality names" in both crypto and AI.
Transcript (164 segments)
H
Host0:04
Kyle, welcome to Hot Takes, the show where we eat spicy foods and hear your take.
K
Kyle Samani0:09
I am kind of terrified. I don't think I know what I signed up for, but let's do it.
H
Host0:13
How it works, we start with one wing and they get progressively hotter as do the questions.
K
Kyle Samani0:17
Okay.
H
Host0:18
Whoever sweats first loses.
K
Kyle Samani0:20
Over sweat. Physically sweats.
H
Host0:21
Yeah, that's the goal here.
K
Kyle Samani0:22
Okay. So, it's like going to glisten on camera a little.
H
Host0:24
Yeah.
K
Kyle Samani0:25
All right. So, this is like the the kitty stuff. It's the first...
H
Host0:28
The baseline. Baseline. Okay, people know you on the internet for the thesises.
K
Kyle Samani0:37
That's this is baseline.
H
Host0:38
This is baseline.
K
Kyle Samani0:40
This is going to be rough.
H
Host0:40
Are we in trouble?
K
Kyle Samani0:42
I mean, I'll survive.
H
Host0:44
People obviously know you from your investments, your points of view, your thesis. What's something about your personal life or your personality that doesn't make it onto crypto Twitter?
K
Kyle Samani0:54
I have a little dog at home.
H
Host0:55
Nice.
K
Kyle Samani0:56
And I love my dog. And a lot of times I'm on podcast interviews, my dog is right next to me. Her bed is elevated. So it's basically like kind of right here.
H
Host1:04
Yeah.
K
Kyle Samani1:05
And my dog sleeps in the bed with me and my wife every night. That was not a hot take.
H
Host1:09
Hot wing, not a hot take.
K
Kyle Samani1:10
Hey, listen. We got to start somewhere.
H
Host1:14
So this is going to be hotter than the last one. That's right. I've seen you argue that L2s create fragility back to Ethereum L1 and in some ways extract value from the L1. You've been vocal about this, but I'd love to get your views on whether L2s are truly taking security away from Ethereum layer ones.
K
Kyle Samani1:33
I don't think L2s are taking security away from the L1. I think they're parasitic to ETH, the underlying asset. I think I coined that phrase a few years ago.
H
Host1:43
Nice.
K
Kyle Samani1:44
But I mean, the basic idea is that all of the sequencing revenues are going to the L2 sequencers.
H
Host1:49
Sure.
K
Kyle Samani1:50
And I mean, the data has been out there for a few years now, right? You look at Base, Arbitrum, Optimism, whatever. Something like 95 to 98% of the L2 revenue is being kept by the L2 sequencer and only a few percentages going back to the L1.
H
Host2:03
Sure. Is there a path for them to fix this? Is it Ethereum that needs to kind of put their foot down or is this ossified to the point that it can't be fixed?
K
Kyle Samani2:13
I don't think it can be fixed because the fundamental problem is that the Ethereum Foundation starting five or six years ago said everyone else please leave L1 and go do stuff on L2.
H
Host2:25
Sure.
K
Kyle Samani2:26
And in doing so, prior to that happening, 100% of DeFi was on ETH L1.
H
Host2:33
Sure.
K
Kyle Samani2:33
And it was very hard to make things happen not on ETH L1. But now they've told people go do stuff elsewhere. And obviously now lots of stuff happens elsewhere.
H
Host2:43
Yeah.
K
Kyle Samani2:44
And I don't know how you can force users to come back to L1 especially if L1 is not better in any way. Block times on L1 are still slower than all the L2s.
H
Host2:52
Sure.
K
Kyle Samani2:53
Throughput is slower on the L1 than the L2. So it's like you can't just tell people to come back and expect them to come back.
H
Host3:00
Sure.
K
Kyle Samani3:00
You actually have to provide a better product experience. But even still, the current game plan is still for the L2s to provide a better product experience than the L1. So it's not going to work.
H
Host3:10
I guess the counterargument I've heard is at enough scale, right, with enough users, there could be still value leakage, if you want to call it that, up to the L1. But my real question for you here is like fractured liquidity among L2s. Is that a big enough problem that folks are talking about?
K
Kyle Samani3:25
It is a problem. It's not like the end of the world problem.
H
Host3:30
Sure.
K
Kyle Samani3:31
But it's definitely sub-optimal. It certainly is a thing where it's like kind of a tragedy of the commons thing where like look Coinbase made Base and Binance has BNB chain and Robin Hood I guess has Robin Hood chain now and all these people want to control the system but in them all doing so the aggregate user experience is net worse for all end users.
H
Host3:51
Sure.
K
Kyle Samani3:52
Because of that, that's kind of the fundamental tension at hand. The other interesting part of this is you create inherently much more political drama in this L2 system because Binance is intrinsically political and Coinbase is intrinsically political.
H
Host4:07
Sure.
K
Kyle Samani4:08
And Solana is objectively much less political than those two things because it is this truly just standalone L1 thing.
H
Host4:15
Sure.
K
Kyle Samani4:16
It is permissionless. It is open source. The Solana Foundation doesn't have any native applications on the L1.
H
Host4:23
Sure.
K
Kyle Samani4:23
It's all built by third parties and that makes it much more palatable for the WorldPays of the world, the Fiservs of the world, the PayPals of the world, the Paxoses of the world, the Square/Cashes, all these people as they want to engage with crypto. It's like Coinbase is telling the world they want to compete with almost every major traditional Wall Street firm.
H
Host4:46
Sure.
K
Kyle Samani4:46
And Robin Hood is kind of implying signaling similar things. And so it's like do any of those firms want to deploy their businesses on Base or Robin Hood chain? It's like obviously no. If you look at Checkout.com, Adyen, Square, like all those guys are not going to deploy on Tempo.
H
Host5:03
Sure.
K
Kyle Samani5:03
Like full stop. And so Solana, by I think the biggest problem with the L2s is not that they fragment liquidity. It's that they are intrinsically political and then all of the response to all of the competitors of those intrinsically political sponsors actually drives people to Solana.
H
Host5:22
Is there an opportunity for the ETH L1 to ever make the revenue back from the L2s?
K
Kyle Samani5:27
I don't think so because their product experience is objectively worse. Block times are slower.
H
Host5:32
Sure.
K
Kyle Samani5:33
The aggregate throughput is slower.
H
Host5:34
Sure.
K
Kyle Samani5:35
There's no functionality that the L1 offers that the L2s don't.
H
Host5:38
Yeah.
K
Kyle Samani5:39
So why would the people come back?
H
Host5:41
It's a tough situation. You want to get spicier?
K
Kyle Samani5:44
Let's get spicier.
H
Host5:44
Let's do it.
K
Kyle Samani5:46
All right. Wing three. We are increasing in heat.
H
Host5:50
No sweat yet. Little perspiring. It got a little bit hotter, but...
K
Kyle Samani5:54
Glisten a little.
H
Host5:55
That's it, man. You look good. You want to get started?
K
Kyle Samani5:57
Let's do it.
H
Host6:01
All right. So, how many wings are you eating today? There you like 70 wings.
K
Kyle Samani6:04
No, I'm on a wing only diet. That's how I stay trim.
H
Host6:08
Straight protein, bro. We talk about resilience, Kyle. About networks that are resilient from outside attacks, right? From threats but also just from like a service standpoint. Can they stay up and can they avoid outage? Solana demonstrated that pretty well this year, right? You saw this kind of flash crash in October. There was an AWS outage. There was a Cloudflare outage. My question to you is on the network level, right? Thinking about the network that Zero provides, do you see an opportunity for more resiliency within Solana if there is a dedicated network sort of powering validators?
K
Kyle Samani6:45
The addition of DoubleZero doesn't make the system more brittle. It's by definition another lane. The public internet has many lanes and then you're obviously adding new private lanes via Zero.
H
Host6:56
So kind of by definitionally like you're getting more net resilience in the system, right? Just by unlocking more pipes.
K
Kyle Samani7:01
Like when you look at Solana's performance in that flash crash or right Cloudflare, I know our last questions were around L2s, but it's really the only other comparison, right? You saw Solana up functioning, transactions landing and the rest of the field essentially not in performant offline.
H
Host7:17
Obviously a celebration from your side, you called it earlier but how do are there any other threat vectors that these other chains have that maybe Solana has perfected?
K
Kyle Samani7:28
Yeah, I don't think about the threat vectors so much as a technical issue anymore. I think about it more of just like a focus issue. The reality of these systems is that they move assets around.
H
Host7:43
Yeah.
K
Kyle Samani7:43
That can be a simple payment. It can be a spot trade, it can be a perpetual, it can be a dated future, it could be an option, whatever. But you're literally just updating ledger entries of who owns what.
H
Host7:55
Sure.
K
Kyle Samani7:56
And that is a general purpose technology. Obviously we can see all these different financial applications that you can construct with the general purpose thing. Solana today is not quite there on perps, but I'm close enough to the roadmap to know that they're going to get there.
H
Host8:11
Sure.
K
Kyle Samani8:13
In the pretty near future. What I think my biggest concern for Solana is like, you know, you get the Tempo guys are hyperfocused on payments. The Hyperliquid guys are hyperfocused on perps.
H
Host8:23
Sure.
K
Kyle Samani8:24
Those are the two probably teams that are just super focused on their thing.
H
Host8:30
Yeah.
K
Kyle Samani8:31
And Solana is very general purpose in those two use cases, but then obviously you just have all these DePIN people and these tokenized securities people and all this other stuff.
H
Host8:42
Sure.
K
Kyle Samani8:42
And that inherently kind of dilutes message to some extent. And then obviously just the go to market motions of the organization as a whole are just always going to be a little less focused than if you only had one vertical.
H
Host8:55
Fair. And so, you know, when I think today about like what's the case 6 years from now in which Solana really doesn't live up to expectations...
K
Kyle Samani9:04
I think it's mostly just like a go to market kind of like human coordination execution issue.
H
Host9:09
I'm not worried at this point at a technical level really at all.
K
Kyle Samani9:12
Interesting. I mean, that's kind of the space you want to be in, right? If the tech is so solid and the only issue is the humans executing it behind it, it means you built something that's working.
H
Host9:20
I mean, my problem in all my life is people, not software. Software listens. People do not.
K
Kyle Samani9:25
Yeah. How about software people? Are they problems for you?
H
Host9:27
Not yet. Well, they're not sovereign yet, but I guess the AI agent army is not too far away.
K
Kyle Samani9:33
I'm guessing this is going to be a step up.
H
Host9:35
Yeah, I would imagine.
K
Kyle Samani9:36
I'm afraid I'm going to start crying after this one. We'll see.
H
Host9:38
That's okay. All right. Number four. You co-wrote the internet capital markets paper. You're one of the authors behind it. Sure. You're a big evangelist of this, right?
K
Kyle Samani9:49
Tech Lily and deserve credit for the term.
H
Host9:52
Sure. They did get mad at me for not giving them credit in the blog post. Well, credit given here. When we think about what's required for that, right? I see a world in which validators across multiple geographies across the globe are sort of simultaneously taking in information to produce blocks. My question to you is, is your vision of internet capital markets possible with today's version of the public internet?
K
Kyle Samani10:18
With today's version of public internet, I mean I'm not a network... Oh, wow. That's much hotter.
H
Host10:24
All right. Woo. You might be a network expert by the end of this week.
K
Kyle Samani10:30
Holy cow.
H
Host10:30
Yeah. Damn.
K
Kyle Samani10:32
I'll go back in.
H
Host10:35
I mean, look, I think probably the system can be okay.
K
Kyle Samani10:40
Sure.
H
Host10:40
But I don't think it can be great.
K
Kyle Samani10:42
Okay.
H
Host10:42
And if we're gonna actually rival NY and NASDAQ and CME, we need to be great.
K
Kyle Samani10:49
And yeah, dude. Wow. Wow. There's something hotter than this. Holy [ __ ]. You want to take five?
H
Host10:59
No. Are you going to drink this milk? I'll have it. All right. We're sharing milk, folks.
K
Kyle Samani11:07
Whoa. I got hit on this one. All right. I need a second. Oh, [ __ ]. No, I think I just need to crawl up in a ball and cry on the floor.
H
Host11:22
[ __ ] a.
K
Kyle Samani11:29
Holy [ __ ]. I'm [ __ ].
H
Host11:31
That was too much. What do we need to do to actually build NASDAQ on chain?
K
Kyle Samani11:39
We need MCL and ACE and Zero.
H
Host11:42
Yeah.
K
Kyle Samani11:42
And Alpenglow.
H
Host11:44
We get all those, we're there. Now, even if we get all those, how do you feel about convincing NASDAQ participants to conducting their business onchain? As I cry and ask you this question...
K
Kyle Samani11:55
You know, I used to worry about that question. I kind of just think Chair Atkins is just going to force everyone over.
H
Host12:00
Interesting.
K
Kyle Samani12:01
I mean, he went on TV like a week ago and he said, 'We're going to be trading all US securities markets on chain within two years.'
H
Host12:08
I wasn't expecting him to say that.
K
Kyle Samani12:10
Yeah, that's what he said. So, I'm kind of hoping big dog's coming down from the top.
H
Host12:13
I'm crying just hearing you say that.
K
Kyle Samani12:16
Dude, it's tears to my eyes. It's beautiful.
H
Host12:18
Easy question to end. Hard wing.
K
Kyle Samani12:23
Wing four was brutal. I'm still crying. Let's just do wing five and we'll get started.
H
Host12:30
Better, worse.
K
Kyle Samani12:31
I'm afraid it's about to hit.
H
Host12:32
I feel like our mouths might just be numb.
K
Kyle Samani12:34
It's about to hit really bad.
H
Host12:36
All right. Well, I'll get you with this. The easiest source of structured alpha is changing your time horizon. What is your longest time horizon view?
K
Kyle Samani12:49
My longest time horizon view is that in a world of AI going to AGI and maybe ASI...
H
Host12:59
Sure.
K
Kyle Samani13:00
A lot of white collar work goes away. But the one thing that will never go away is the need for financial markets and the desire for speculation.
H
Host13:10
Sure.
K
Kyle Samani13:10
And so on a 20-year time horizon, I can look at the entire S&P 500 and say this company may or may not exist in 20 years.
H
Host13:19
Sure.
K
Kyle Samani13:20
But irrespective of that, the S&P 500 will always trade somewhere.
H
Host13:24
Yes.
K
Kyle Samani13:25
And I expect that's going to be on Solana. And so my longest time horizon view is that the only thing that I know that will outlast the job displacement from AI is crypto.
H
Host13:34
And all of those workers should start working in crypto.
K
Kyle Samani13:37
Well, they'll just, you know, they're just going to be trading. And they're going to have their UBI from their Worldcoin. And they'll be using their UBI to trade shitcoins.
H
Host13:44
All settled on Solana.
K
Kyle Samani13:45
All settling on Solana. I love it.
H
Host13:46
In real time.
K
Kyle Samani13:47
Like just like that. Powered by Zero under the hood.
H
Host13:50
Obviously.
K
Kyle Samani13:50
I would like to hope so. Do you have a hot take for the folks out there?
H
Host13:55
Wait, what's the name of the sauce? Number five or number four? Four was the hottest.
K
Kyle Samani14:00
Reaper.
H
Host14:01
Reaper. My hot take for the audience is make sure to have put some Reaper sauce on your dinner.
K
Kyle Samani14:06
Yep. Every interview going forward. Please have Reaper sauce.
H
Host14:09
Reaper sauce. Holy cow. Kyle, welcome to the program. Thanks for doing it.
K
Kyle Samani14:12
Dude. Thanks for having us.