Multicoin Capital

About

Multicoin Capital is a thesis-driven investment firm founded in May 2017 by Kyle Samani and Tushar Jain in Austin, Texas ¹. The firm manages both a hedge fund and venture funds, investing in cryptocurrencies, tokens, and blockchain companies across public and private markets ¹. The firm invests on behalf of institutional investors, family offices, foundations, and endowments ².

Multicoin has raised three venture funds: Venture Fund I (2018 vintage) ³, Venture Fund II ($100M, closed November 2020, announced May 2021) ^{4 5}, and Venture Fund III ($430M, announced July 2022) ⁶. The firm’s assets under management reached nearly $600M in 2024, representing 56% annual growth from 2023 ⁷. Venture Fund III invests $1M–$50M in early-stage companies ².

The hedge fund posted extraordinary returns from inception through 2021, returning 20,287% ⁸. However, the firm suffered a 91.4% loss in its hedge fund in 2022, driven by the FTX collapse and broad crypto market downturn ⁹. Multicoin had approximately 10% of hedge fund assets stuck on FTX and significant exposure to SOL, FTT, and SRM tokens ⁹. Despite this, the fund rebounded with a 100.9% gain in January 2023 alone ⁹, and by 2024 AUM had recovered to nearly $600M ⁷.

In February 2026, co-founder Kyle Samani stepped down from his managing director role to pursue interests in AI, longevity, and robotics ¹⁰. Day-to-day operations continue under Tushar Jain and Brian Smith ¹⁰. In March 2026, Spencer Applebaum and Shayon Sengupta were promoted to General Partner and Co-Heads of Venture ¹¹.

Both co-founders previously founded health tech startups before entering crypto. Samani co-founded Pristine, a Google Glass healthcare software company ¹². Jain founded ePatientFinder, a health IT startup later acquired by Elligo Health Research ¹.

Stated Thesis

Multicoin Capital publicly describes itself as a “thesis-driven investment firm that invests in cryptocurrencies, tokens, and blockchain companies reshaping trillion-dollar markets” ².

The firm organizes its investment focus around several published mega-theses ^{1 4}:

• Open Finance / DeFi: Backing DeFi primitives, mainstreaming DeFi adoption, and DeFi applications particularly on Solana ⁴.
• Web3 Infrastructure: Infrastructure for applications where users control the system rather than centralized platforms ¹³.
• DePIN (Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Networks): Multicoin co-authored the widely cited “Proof of Physical Work” thesis, arguing that crypto-incentivized networks can build real-world infrastructure “10–100x faster” than traditional approaches ¹⁴. The firm claims to have been “the first major investor into this thesis” ¹⁴.
• Internet Capital Markets: The firm argues Solana can power global financial infrastructure by outperforming traditional finance on latency while reducing fees by 90–99% ¹⁵.
• Stablecoins and Payments: Payments infrastructure and real-world asset tokenization ¹.

The firm emphasizes concentrated, high-conviction positions. Kyle Samani stated that the firm sometimes puts “30–50%+ of a fund into a single asset like Solana” ¹³. Tushar Jain has described their approach to risk: “If your venture fund doesn’t have any zeros in it, then you’re not taking enough risk” ¹⁶.

Inferred Thesis

Based on 152 verified investments tracked by CryptoRank ¹⁷ and cross-referenced with DropsTab ¹⁸:

Sector distribution (from CryptoRank’s breakdown of 152 investments) ¹⁷: - Blockchain services/infrastructure: 39 investments (25.7%) - DeFi: 35 investments (22.9%) - Chain/Layer 1 infrastructure: 19 investments (12.5%) - Social/consumer: 18 investments (11.8%) - NFTs: 7 investments (4.9%) - CeFi: 6 investments (4.2%) - GameFi: 5 investments (3.5%) - Stablecoins & currency: 3 investments (2.1%) - Other categories: remaining ~13%

Stage distribution (from Tracxn data on 111 investments) ¹⁹: - Seed: 56 investments (50.5%), average round size $6.46M - Series A: 41 investments (36.9%), average round size $19.3M - Series C+: 5 investments (4.5%), average round size $75.6M - Remaining: strategic rounds and token sales

Solana ecosystem concentration: The most notable pattern is Multicoin’s deep concentration in the Solana ecosystem. The firm led Solana’s $20M Series A in 2019 ²⁰ after participating in the 2018 seed round ²¹, and has since built a portfolio heavily tilted toward Solana-based projects including Drift, Jito, Hivemapper, Audius, Metaplex, and many others ^{11 18}.

DePIN as a defining category: Multicoin has emerged as the largest dedicated DePIN investor, backing Helium (decentralized wireless) ²², Hivemapper (decentralized mapping) ²³, Render Network (decentralized GPU rendering) ²⁴, io.net (decentralized compute), Geodnet, and Gradient Network ¹⁸.

Geographic focus: Primarily US-based companies, with secondary investments in Singapore and the United Kingdom ¹⁹.

Notable gaps vs. stated thesis: Despite listing AI as a focus area on their website ¹, relatively few pure AI investments appear in the portfolio—most AI-adjacent investments are crypto-AI hybrids like Inference and CrunchDAO ¹⁸. The firm’s actual portfolio is far more DeFi- and infrastructure-heavy than its stated thesis suggests, with social/consumer apps representing only ~12% of investments.

Co-investor patterns: Frequent co-investors include a16z Crypto, Solana Foundation, Alameda Research (pre-collapse), Coinbase Ventures, Pantera Capital, and Jump Crypto ^{18 20 24}.

Portfolio

Based on 152 total investments tracked by CryptoRank ¹⁷, the following represents a selection of notable investments. This table captures approximately 25 of the most significant deals; Multicoin does not publicly list all hedge fund holdings ².

Notable exits include Tagomi (acquired) and Solscan (acquired) ³. The portfolio has produced 11 unicorns including Aptos, StarkWare, and Helium ¹⁹.

In Their Own Words

“As evidenced by our first and second venture funds, some of the best opportunities arise in bear markets. Valuations are more reasonable; founders are more focused, long-term and motivated; and real users explore projects they are genuinely passionate about.” — Tushar Jain, co-founder and managing partner, TechCrunch, July 2022 ⁶

“If your venture fund doesn’t have any zeros in it, then you’re not taking enough risk.” — Tushar Jain, The Block, October 2024 ¹⁶

“I still fundamentally believe in the core principles that underlie the industry.” — Tushar Jain, The Block, October 2024 ¹⁶

“This is the most cyclical industry possibly in the history of capitalism.” — Tushar Jain, The Block, October 2024 ¹⁶

“Solana is the only chain that scales at Layer 1 while preserving architectural composability.” — Kyle Samani, CoinDesk, July 2019 ²⁰

“I’m more confident than ever that crypto is going to fundamentally rewire the circuitry of finance.” — Kyle Samani, farewell statement, CoinDesk, February 2026 ¹⁰

“We were the first major investor into this thesis, and, in the time since, we’ve seen a cambrian explosion of DePIN networks across a wide range of categories, such as energy, logistics, mapping, telecom, and more.” — Multicoin Capital blog post on DePIN, September 2023 ¹⁴

“The best way to capture alpha is to create it.” — Multicoin Capital, Venture Fund II announcement, May 2021 ⁴

What Founders Say

Anatoly Yakovenko, co-founder and CEO of Solana Labs, acknowledged Multicoin as one of the few investors who remained committed through multiple fundraising rounds during the crypto winter: “Except for the few amazing folks, like Foundation, like Slow Ventures, like Multicoin, that actually backed us and stuck with us through every raise.” — Acquired podcast, 2024 ²⁹

No additional independently sourced founder testimonials found beyond the Solana founder’s statement. The firm hosts an annual Multicoin Summit featuring portfolio founders ³⁰, but independently verifiable founder quotes about their experience with Multicoin as an investor were not located.

Sources