The founder's vision for Solana is for it to be valued like a business, specifically a "hot dog stand." The goal is for its token's worth to be based on predictable cash flow from network fees, shifting its perception from a volatile speculative asset to a boring, stable piece of financial infrastructure.
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Solana's founder advocates holding Bitcoin not for growth—as it lacks cash flows—but as an insurance policy. It's a small (e.g., 2%) portfolio allocation that acts as a portable, censorship-resistant asset in a worst-case scenario of societal collapse.
Solana's mission is to create a global, decentralized exchange where information is priced in instantly, regardless of location. This would solve the physics problem of information latency (e.g., news traveling from Singapore to the NYSE), removing arbitrage windows that support many financial middlemen.
The crypto community often criticizes platforms like Solana for paying partners like Western Union. However, this "pay-to-play" model is a standard business development strategy used by giants like Amazon (for Alexa) and Facebook to bootstrap their ecosystems and kickstart the flywheel with marquee partners.
Kyle Samani is "intellectually short" Bitcoin because he sees it as an unproductive asset. He argues platforms like Ethereum and Solana offer the same core benefits—a fixed, code-defined supply—while also being economically productive. This makes them a superior long-term asset class from a first-principles perspective, despite his firm holding some Bitcoin financially.
Multicoin's conviction in Solana came from underwriting its founder, Anatoly Yakovenko. Unlike competitors focused on academic breakthroughs, Yakovenko prioritized shipping code and explicitly avoided trying to solve unsolved computer science problems. This pragmatic, execution-focused approach was the key differentiator that earned Multicoin's bet in the crowded Layer-1 race.
Solana's founder suggests the partisan split on crypto is less about ideology and more about age. Younger politicians grasp the technology's potential, while older incumbents see it as a disruptive threat to the established financial control systems they built.
Multicoin's Kyle Samani gave up on Ethereum in 2017 after its leadership failed to present a clear scaling plan. He perceived a culture that was "to their core culturally oblivious" to the urgent need for a solution. This perceived failure in execution and focus, at the peak of Ethereum's dominance, directly motivated his firm to aggressively seek alternatives.
After years of exploring various use cases, crypto's clearest product-market fit is as a new version of the financial system. The success of stablecoins, prediction markets, and decentralized trading platforms demonstrates that financial applications are where crypto currently has the strongest, most undeniable traction.
Solana's founder argues that while US politics affects where founders locate, it doesn't slow down real-world crypto adoption. Growth is driven by necessity in countries like Argentina and China, where traditional cross-border finance is slow and costly, making crypto a superior alternative regardless of US regulation.
Kyle Samani has completely abandoned the thesis that crypto's future lies in non-financial consumer dApps (Web3). He now believes the thesis is "just wrong." Instead, crypto's primary role in developed nations will be as invisible financial plumbing, while its main user-facing application is for international users who need access to stablecoins.