With another successful summit in the books, I’m delighted to share three of our most popular fireside chats from our fall summit.
This year, we held our first virtual event, the first of hopefully many more to come. It was a great format that afforded us the opportunity to reach more people around the world and go deeper than we ever have before, exploring not only the state of projects and their respective industries but also the evolving role of crypto investors, which has been a recurring theme at our events.
The chats highlighted below include conversations with key team members at Solana, Helium, and Ribbit Capital. These videos run about an hour long each and have been lightly edited for clarity and content.
Fireside Chat with Solana
Raj Gokal, the COO of Solana, joined Kyle and Tushar, the managing partners of Multicoin Capital, for the first fireside chat of the summit. Solana is one of the most promising Layer 1 platforms that we’ve invested in to date. We’ve written about them at length here and here. This conversation dives into the origins of Solana, the core innovations of the platform, recent traction, upcoming developments, and the relationship Multicoin Capital and Solana have cultivated over the past two years.
Fireside Chat with Helium
The next conversation is with Frank Mong, the COO of Helium. Helium is the world’s first peer-to-peer wireless network. The network recently crossed a major milestone by deploying more than 10,000 hotspots worldwide.
Helium is a great example of how traditional companies can leverage crypto-native infrastructure and incentives to launch new businesses that weren’t previously possible. This discussion touches on Helium hotspots, Tabs and other types of sensors and their applications, the economics of coverage mining, the near term potential for IoT devices, and the upcoming possibilities with decentralized connectivity networks.
Disclosure: This post includes views expressed by Frank Mong (“Investor”), who is or was at the time of this post an investor in one or more funds managed by Multicoin Capital Management, LLC (“Multicoin”) and is affiliated with Nova Labs, a portfolio company invested in by one or more Multicoin funds. Multicoin did not compensate Investor in connection with this interview. Investor’s status as an investor in Multicoin funds and an affiliate of Nova Labs creates a material conflict of interest since (1) Investor may be strongly incentivized to portray Multicoin and the investments it makes in a positive light, and (2) Investor may be less incentivized to be critical about Multicoin.
Fireside Chat with Ribbit Capital
Last but certainly not least, on the final day of the summit Tushar Jain sat down with Micky Malka, the Managing Partner of Ribbit Capital. Ribbit Capital is widely regarded as one of, if not the best, fintech investors in the world. Their portfolio includes companies like Coinbase, Brex, Wealthfront, Gusto, Affirm, Credit Karma, Xapo, and Robinhood. Ribbit Capital invested with Multicoin Capital late last year and most recently raised $350 million for a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC).
This conversation heavily focuses on trends in DeFi but also touches on Micky’s journey into bitcoin, the intersection of fintech and crypto, and how Ribbit thinks about investing in companies and funds. There is arguably no better person to discuss the collision course of decentralized finance with fintech than Micky.
Disclosure: This post includes views expressed by Micky Malka (“Investor”), who is or was at the time of this post an investor (directly or through an investing entity) in one or more funds managed by Multicoin Capital Management, LLC (“Multicoin”). Multicoin did not compensate Investor in connection with this interview. Investor’s status as an investor in Multicoin funds creates a material conflict of interest since (1) Investor may be strongly incentivized to portray Multicoin and the investments it makes in a positive light, and (2) Investor may be less incentivized to be critical about Multicoin.