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Open Audio

By Kyle Samani

| 4 minute read

The first Internet-enabled application I can remember enjoying was Napster. It was 1999, and I was downloading songs at a blazing fast 2.96 KB / second. On good days, it would tick up to 3.13 KB / second. Music has been—by far—the most censored content on the Western internet over the last 20 years. The waves of censorship have played out time and time again across venues.

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Writing

Writing

Open Audio

By Kyle Samani

July 30, 2020 | 4 minute read

The first Internet-enabled application I can remember enjoying was Napster. It was 1999, and I was downloading songs at a blazing fast 2.96 KB / second. On good days, it would tick up to 3.13 KB / second. Music has been—by far—the most censored content on the Western internet over the last 20 years. The waves of censorship have played out time and time again across venues.

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Huobi Token ($HT) Analysis and Valuation

By Mable Jiang

July 16, 2020 | 35 minute read

Exchange tokens are currently the most interesting sector in crypto because they sit at the intersection of where there is demand today and where there will be opportunities tomorrow. We have previously expressed a [thesis](https://multicoin.capital/2019/10/29/exchanges-are-open-finance/ "Exchanges are Open Finance") that exchange tokens are the best way to get exposure to open finance and that there is tremendous growth potential.

Writing

DeFi's Invisible Asymptotes

By Kyle Samani

June 4, 2020 | 9 minute read

With the growth of the decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem over the last 24 months, I’ve been thinking about protocol-level defensibility and market size. I wrote about the former recently. This essay focuses on the latter. My biggest concern for Ethereum’s current DeFi economy is that it is subject to one or possibly a few invisible asymptotes, as I’ll explain below.

Writing

Lightning 2020: A Toolkit for Heretical Web3 Developers

By Ryan Gentry

May 5, 2020 | 11 minute read

Many developers and investors interested in building Web3 gave up on building on top of Bitcoin years ago, assuming that its limited throughput, high latency, and conservative programmability made such development impossible. Indeed, this is precisely what led to the birth of Ethereum, and a plethora of Web3 platforms (e.g. Arweave, Cosmos, Polkadot, Solana, Near) that developers are leveraging today.

Writing

On Forking DeFi Protocols

By Kyle Samani

April 16, 2020 | 14 minute read

As a suite of new layer 1 blockchains are launching, I’ve been thinking about Ethereum’s network effects, and the defensibility of the DeFi protocols built on top of Ethereum. A couple of years ago, I wrote about the network effects of non-sovereign layer 1 monies like Bitcoin and Ethereum.

Writing

Our Investment in dForce: The DeFi Super-Network

By Mable Jiang

April 14, 2020 | 5 minute read

Today I’m excited to announce that Multicoin Capital led a $1.5M round in dForce, the world’s first unified network for open finance protocols. Coinvestors include our friends at China Merchant Bank International (CMBI) and Huobi Capital.

Writing

Trust Spectrum

By Tony Sheng

March 24, 2020 | 25 minute read

Most people talk about financial services in crypto—trading, saving, lending, etc.—as either “decentralized” or “centralized.” Crypto advocates tend to characterize the former as less risky because users don’t have to trust a counterparty to custody their assets, removing the risks of losing their funds through a hack, impropriety, seizure from governments, and other forms of human error or malice.

Writing

March 12: The Day Crypto Market Structure Broke (Part 2)

By Kyle Samani

March 20, 2020 | 14 minute read

Note: A few days ago I published a postmortem detailing how the crypto market structure broke on March 12. This post, Part 2, will explore the potential solutions to some of the systemic problems outlined in Part 1. To recap, one of the core structural problems is that current blockchains—both Bitcoin and Ethereum—simply do not support enough transaction throughput to facilitate global trading across many venues in volatile environments.

Writing

March 12: The Day Crypto Market Structure Broke (Part 1)

By Kyle Samani

March 17, 2020 | 11 minute read

There were two large downward moves in the crypto markets on March 12th, about 13 hours apart. The first was early in the morning, and the second in the evening (in the US). The first move down—a ~25% move—was fast and relatively orderly given the size of the move; however, during the second leg down, the market structure broke.

Writing

Infinite Scale

By Kyle Samani

February 6, 2020 | 14 minute read

Today, the vast majority of economic activity is conducted via corporations. Corporations were invented in the 1400s, with the first versions manifesting as joint-stock companies. Capital structures, limited liability, and other parameters have evolved since then, but the fundamental premise of the corporation as the conduit to facilitate economic activity remains largely unchanged.