Podcast Summary: Trends with Friends

Episode: Internet Capital Markets: Kyle Samani on Solana, Prediction Markets, and the $FORD Play
Date: October 29, 2025
Host: Howard Lindzon with co-host Mike Parets
Guest: Kyle Samani, Managing Partner at Multicoin Capital

Episode Overview

This episode dives deep into the explosive evolution of internet capital markets, focusing on Solana’s rise, the integration of prediction markets, and the public market innovation behind the $FORD trade. Kyle Samani shares battle-hardened insights from his journey at Multicoin Capital, weaving through the ups and downs of crypto investing, institutional adoption, and the reimagining of financial rails for a "retail-first" world. Discussion ranges from Solana’s fundamentals to the social and technical integration of trading, all through a candid, forward-looking, and occasionally irreverent lens.

Key Topics & Discussion Points

1. The Early Days of Multicoin & Crypto Winter

Howard and Kyle reminisce about the founding of Multicoin Capital, the crypto bear market of 2018-2019, and the lessons learned from surviving when few believed in crypto’s future.

• [04:07] Kyle: "We were struggling to stay alive. We had to raise GP capital. No one took us seriously...If you were in crypto in that and through that winter, if you were not a bitcoin person, which I’ve never been, then you just believed that something would emerge of this, and it was unclear what."
• Humor: The story of Howard's wife nearly forcing them to sell their Multicoin IRA position, which turned millions years later.

2. Solana and the Vision of Internet Capital Markets

Exploration of Solana as a foundational blockchain and the broader shift towards “Internet capital markets.” Discussion sets the stage for why Solana is uniquely positioned for the next wave of financial innovation.

What Are "Internet Capital Markets"?

• [08:52] Kyle: "There are two vectors to understand it. The first is getting existing assets people trade—Apple, Google, Nvidia, FX, commodities—onto crypto rails. Because crypto rails are 24/7, global, permissionless, programmable—it will make financial market infrastructure better, cheaper, faster, and increase access, especially for people in emerging markets who really don’t have access to Robinhoods and brokerages that most Americans do."
• [10:06] Samani: "It is my base case that...the vast majority of people over the next 10 years who own an equity for the first time will own it in a crypto tokenized version as opposed to via Alpaca or some other hook into the DTCC."

Isolated Finance vs. Embedded Contextual Trading

• [11:34] Kyle dubs the traditional brokerage/trading UI flow “isolated finance,” calling out that it's universal across legacy and crypto brokerages.
• [14:29] New modality: "Telegram bots," trading embedded within chat—ushered "contextual trading," not just a site/app with buy/sell, but action where conversations naturally happen.
• Prediction: Trading will embed within media—“you’ll be able to trade prediction markets while reading the Wall Street Journal...shouldn’t the thing at the top be an interactive price chart, not just a screenshot?”
  — [15:14]

Notable Quote

• Kyle [13:15]: "There was never trading in human history that looked like [Telegram bots] before. Until about two years ago."
• Howard [14:29]: "Twitter was the ultimate platform...capital markets would look different today if Twitter… had a wallet."

3. Prediction Markets: Financial Literacy and the Social Layer

Kyle and Howard explore the blossoming of prediction markets (e.g., Polymarket, Kalshi), their impact on financial literacy, and the social dynamics of embedded trading.

Changing the Nature of Online Discourse

• [16:52] Howard: "One of the greatest innovations [of prediction markets] is not the actual betting, it’s the fact that it will get people off Twitter and Instagram to…look at the chart, here’s how the bet is expressed. You better get your act together..."

Embedded Trading in Social Contexts

• [18:14] Kyle: "Private group chats will become a new venue for peer-to-peer betting and copy betting. It’s the ultimate fighting, the ultimate bragging rights...before I block you, you mutant, why don’t you put $5 on this and we’ll have bragging rights."
• Howard: "I think shitposting and trading are like yin and yang." ([21:13])

Cold Start and Product Experience

• [18:05] Kyle: Emphasis on necessary polish of UX for prediction apps—swipe right/left for a binary bet (e.g., "Will the next play be run or pass"): "That product experience has to be extremely polished for that to work."

4. Institutionalization & The Infrastructure Layer

Mike Parets brings the institutional perspective, probing how market structure and professional players adapt to “siloed” prediction markets, margining, and liquidity.

• [23:53] Kyle: "All the backends are open, permissionless systems—you can hook up any backend to any frontend...you’re going to see margining systems built that margin across all these things. The future is frontends aggregating prediction and perp markets into unified experiences for power users."
• Zero as a Solana-native Prime Broker: "Allocates capital across venues, manages risk, gives better rates and more collateral efficiency—this is the prime brokerage for DeFi." ([25:19])

5. Retail-First Innovation & the Democratization of Liquidity

Discussion turns to how prediction markets and decentralized tech flipped the script: retail led, institutions followed, in contrast to option/futures markets of the ‘80s and ‘90s.

• [26:57] Kyle: "We are moving to a retail first world...prediction markets are better than options and actually a much better education tool."
• [28:26] "It allows you to express true pure play perspectives...Is Tesla going to turn on FSD by X date, yes or no? That’s so much clearer than navigating all the noise in equity options."
• Howard: "Robinhood really flipped the language… the next 10x in retail trading comes from embedding trading in these other contexts." ([29:46])

6. Solana's Unique Role

Solana is presented as the most robust, scalable, and active blockchain for enabling these retail- and API-driven innovations.

• [32:51] Kyle: "Solana is by far the most widely used blockchain in the world… highest trading volumes, highest application revenue. We think the bulk of new internet capital markets activity will be on Solana."

• Market Cap Growth Thesis

  • [33:01] "If you’re buying SOL at $100B, what’s the case for $1T? If you look at TAM availability and Solana’s ability to capture value, I think you can get to a trillion…"

• Stablecoins as the Settlement Layer:

  • [34:02] "The primary asset people want is USD...growth of stablecoins is a necessary prerequisite to facilitate all the trading we’re talking about. All of these things will settle in stablecoins on open global 24/7 permissionless systems like Solana."

7. Institutional & Retail Liquidity—Convergence and Competition

Kyle and Mike discuss how top prop shops—Jane Street, SIG, Citadel, and Jump—are already market making on prediction & sports platforms (Kalshee, Polymarket), leveling the playing field between “two guys in a garage” and institutional giants.

• [36:18] Kyle: "Sig, Citadel, Jane Street, and Jump—all these guys, they're all active on Kalshi. Tons of prop trading firms today market make across these venues. What's awesome is that those guys showing up does not preclude two guys in their garage from doing the same thing..."

8. $FORD — Public Markets, SPACs, and Crypto-Treasury Companies

Kyle explains how Multicoin, Jump, and Galaxy sponsored a $1.65B PIPE to take strategic control of Forward Industries (FORD), and why it’s NOT a SPAC.

• [45:04] "Ford Industries is a publicly traded company, NASDAQ listed. I’m now chairman after our $1.65B PIPE at a premium to market. The board approved a new line of business as a Solana treasury company—Ford owns 6.8M Solana tokens and is building DeFi strategies to earn yield for shareholders."
• [47:24] Approach isn't to actively trade SOL/USD price; rather, it's to actively deploy Solana holdings for yield on-chain.

9. AI & Crypto: The Barbell Portfolio

Kyle and Mike reflect on the barbell of AI and crypto—AI won't kill capital markets, but will disrupt everything else.

• [48:34] Kyle: "Being long the barbell of AI and crypto is the only thing I’m interested in. Prediction markets won’t be disrupted by AI; capital markets will always exist."

• [52:21] Current intersections: using LLMs to bet/price prediction markets, "people just go ask ChatGPT if markets are mispriced, and some make money doing that."

• Mike: "Fundamentally, AI means a 70-year shift in software from deterministic to probabilistic. Predictive, probabilistic activity is what trading is... peanut butter & jelly of AI and prediction markets [is coming]."

10. Perps, Leverage, and The Next Evolution of Trading Interfaces

Discourse on why perps (perpetual swaps) will supersede options as leverage tools for retail—and how options, as designed for max loss, led to excessive and dangerous leverage.

• [54:10] Kyle: "Options as an instrument suck. They’re very hard to understand... the only reason zero-day options are popular is because perps don’t exist. Perps will become a thing in US equity markets soon—just direct levered exposure, which is more intuitive to most people than complex options strategies."
• [54:29] Explains "perps": simple, direct leverage; “If the price goes up 1%, I make 8%. If it goes down 1%, I lose 8%."
• On Risk: "We think more about cross correlation...the big thing we missed in 2022 was not anticipating a large-scale fraud (FTX) and correlated effects on our portfolio." ([57:15])

Notable Quotes & Timestamps

• Howard [16:52]: "The greatest innovation of the prediction market is not just the actual betting, it’s the fact that it gets people off arguing on Twitter to...profit and make change if you believe the numbers are wrong."
• Kyle [21:13]: "I think shitposting and trading are like yin and yang."
• Kyle [26:57]: "Prediction markets are better than options and actually a much better education tool."
• Kyle [32:51]: "Solana is by far the most widely used blockchain in the world...trading volumes, application revenue, it’s number one."
• Howard [29:46]: "The next 10x in retail trading comes from embedding trading in these other contexts. APIs. What Twitter could have done 15 years ago."

Timestamps for Core Segments

| Timestamp | Segment | |-----------|----------------------------| | 00:00–06:46 | Multicoin’s Origins, Crypto Winters | | 08:02–14:29 | Solana, Vision for Internet Capital Markets | | 14:29–22:00 | Embedded Trading, Past Missed Opportunities | | 22:00–25:19 | Market Structure, Institutionalization | | 26:57–29:46 | Retail Innovation, Prediction vs Options | | 32:51–34:41 | Solana’s Role & Stablecoin Integration | | 36:18–37:24 | Institutional & Retail Market Makers, Level Playing Field | | 45:04–47:24 | The $FORD Trade — Not a SPAC, but a Crypto Treasury Company | | 48:34–53:21 | AI & Crypto Barbell, AI in Prediction Markets | | 54:10–56:45 | Perps, Leverage, Options vs. Perp Evolution | | 57:15–58:40 | Risk Management After 2022 |

Tone & Style

The tone is candid, occasionally irreverent, but sharply insightful and full of “insider” war stories, market history, and a mischievous sense of possibility. The hosts and Kyle freely mix personal anecdotes, strategic discussion, and bold speculation.

Takeaways

• The next wave of financial innovation is about embedding trading and markets into contexts—media, social, group chats—where people already interact.
• Solana is the leading contender to power retail-first, scalable, permissionless global trading and prediction markets.
• Prediction markets are poised to fundamentally change public discourse, onboarding and literacy for markets, and offer purer ways to express views than options or legacy products.
• Institutional liquidity is quickly converging with crypto-native and retail innovation, enabled by open protocols and permissionless systems.
• The “barbell” investment thesis: Long both AI and crypto; capital markets will be one of the last things for AI to disrupt.
• Risk management and cross-correlation learning from history (2022’s drawdown).
• AI is already being used to game prediction markets and will drive a blending of probabilistic/expert systems and financial markets.
• $FORD represents a new playbook for public market crypto exposure.

References & Further Reading

1. Kyle’s presentation at the All In Summit on Internet Capital Markets (recommended by guest)
2. Multicoin Blog: Solana Thesis—Internet Capital Markets
3. Multicoin Blog: New Modalities for Issuance and Trading
4. Trends With Friends and Howard Lindzon newsletters

This summary skips sponsorships, musical intros/outros, and off-topic banter; all content is focused on substantive discussion points.