Conversations with Multicoin Capital

In this fireside chat Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures and Tushar Jain of Multicoin Capital explore the ins and outs of modern portfolio construction for allocators and fund managers alike, traversing key issues such as how to think about long-term vs. short-term conviction, thematic discovery, strategic exposure, how to pick winners, and (VCs) investing in cryptofunds, to name a few. This conversation concludes with a passionate debate about the trade offs between smart contract platforms and how decentralized governance is (or is not) working today. This is one you that don't want to miss!   

The role of crypto investors is evolving—rapidly. Blockchain technologies will create trillions of dollars of value over the next decade. But investing in tokens is fundamentally different than investing in companies. New tools, heuristics, and security measures are required to responsibly invest in this ecosystem.

It's not enough to simply be a pure custodian or asset manager any more. Crypto-native managers also bear the responsibility of ushering nascent markets to stability—by way of investment, governance, and active participation. This panel brings together managers from disparate backgrounds to share their perspective and experience.

This panel features Tushar Jain of Multicoin Capital; Ari Paul, the CIO of Blocktower Capital; Alex Felix, Managing Director and CIO at CoinFund; Josh Nussbaum, a Partner at  Compound.vc; and last but not least, Shane Molidor, the Global Head of Business Development for FBG One.

Stick with us for this panel (it was Kyle's favorite). Zero Knowledge Proofs (ZKPs) will fundamentally change human, business, and government relationships in ways that we cannot possibly understand yet. This panel features the three most important companies building ZKPs: Zcash, Coda, and Starkware.

Panel participants include Kyle Samani of Multicoin Capital; Uri Kolodny, a Co-Founder and CEO at StarkWare Industries, a company working to improve scalability and privacy in blockchains using STARK technology; Evan Shapiro, the CEO at Coda, the first cryptocurrency with a constant-sized blockchain; and Josh Swihart (the winner of the best impromptu demonstration award), a Vice President at the Zcash Company, which supports the development of the Zcash cryptocurrency — a privacy-protecting, digital currency built on strong science.

Fat Protocols sparked a revolution when it was first published in 2016. It's absolutely essential reading for everyone in the industry. This panel brings together three leading GPs in crypto to reexamine the thesis and challenge its long-term viability two years after it was first proposed.

This panel features Kyle Samani of Multicoin Capital; Joey Krug, the Co-CIO of Pantera Capital (and the co-founder of Augur, a decentralized prediction market platform); and Jesse Walden, a Partner at a16zcrypto.

Lauded as the most anticipated panel at the summit, this panel features speakers from Maker and Reserve, two of the most well known decentralized stablecoin teams, and Circle, one of the most prominent fiat-crypto stablecoins in the market.

Presenters include Nevin Freeman, the CEO and Co-Founder of Reserve, a full-stack open currency; Steve Becker, the President & COO of MakerDAO, a decentralized autonomous organization on the Ethereum blockchain that seeks to minimize the price volatility of its own token, the Dai, against the IMF's international currency basket SDR; Vishal Gupta, the Head of Business Development and Partnerships at Circle; and Kyle Samani of Multicoin Capital.

This conversation represents prominent entrepreneurs who are all building vital components of the Web3 Stack. It answers the central question: When will the Web3 stack cross the critical threshold of usability, and what are the challenges that must be overcome to get there?

This panel features Kyle Samani of Multicoin Capital; Jack O'Holleran, the CEO of Skale Labs, a company solving blockchain scalability by enabling Ethereum dApps to run high-speed, low-cost smart contracts in Layer 2; Tony Sheng, the Product Lead at the Decentraland Foundation, a group building a virtual world that will grow beyond any centralized control; and Katherine Wu, who heads up Business Development for Messari, a NYC-based crypto startup aimed at promoting transparency and smarter decision-making in the token ecosystem.

James Prestwich of Summa, Ali Yahya of Andreessen Horrowitz, and Zaki Manian of Cosmos discuss the types of trade offs that various smart contract platforms are making, and the implications of usability and dapp development.

Ryan Selkis of Messari and Kyle Samani of Multicoin Capital discuss the ways by which some crypto assets may become worth tens of trillions of dollars.

Vinny Lingham of Civic, Matt Luongo of Keep, Yaniv Tal of The Graph, and Nadav Hollander of Dharma discuss the challenges of developing dapps today, and their expectations for dapp development moving forwards.

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. 

I highly recommend this episode if you are interested in learning more about the different viewpoints in crypto investing.

We had a wide ranging conversation on topics including:

• Paths to Tens of Trillions: Store of Value or Utility Hypothesis?
• Moneyness as an emergent phenomenon
• The new design space enabled by smart contract platforms
• Network effects of peer-to-peer digital cash vs. digital gold
• The n-dimensional tradeoff space of various platforms
• Challenges of investing in open-source protocols
• Opportunities for the tokenization of securities