After working at Multicoin for three years, I want to share my thoughts on "Trade Signal King" Kyle announcing his retirement from the industry.

Author: mable.sol (Former Partner at Multicoin Capital, Mable Jiang)

Editor: Ken, Chaincatcher

Everyone can only be good at one game. You should spend half your time figuring out what game you’re good at, and the other half fully focused on playing it well.

Kyle Samani knows exactly what his game is.

His strategy is to first develop a theory, then find suitable projects— and stick to waiting for the theory to be validated (while periodically reassessing whether the theory still holds). When it comes to building an “On-Chain Nasdaq” with Solana, he saw this argument from the very beginning (even though Solana is still some distance from that vision, but that’s not the point), and executed this strategy by leading multiple funding rounds— even participating in discounted over-the-counter rounds long after SOL launched its mainnet testnet. He does everything he can to promote Solana’s development.

His core game is to find asymmetric opportunities, i.e., contrarian bets. Haseeb is right: in this regard, probably no one is better than Kyle.

People question why Multicoin didn’t capture any top projects or related infrastructure in the perpetual contract decentralized exchanges (DEXs) during this cycle. No one knows better than I do that Multicoin was already a strong bull on perpetual contract DEXs before anything even existed in this cycle. Even before many in the industry understood how centralized limit order books work— you might be surprised, but that’s the truth. After all, many of us started as crypto punks and only later became trading experts (laughs). Multicoin carefully studied nearly every perpetual contract DEX and analyzed their trade-offs. There are many blog posts about the design space and why some designs are better—you can find them at multicoin.capital.

So why did they “miss” out? Because perpetual contract DEXs and on-chain liquidity—these are no longer contrarian bets. Of course, they still have huge growth potential. But contrarian bets are not attractive to Kyle. That’s never been his game.

And for a fund, the goal is to make money for limited partners. So, playing it safe and managing a fund well is no longer the game Kyle wants to focus on. Running a data-driven company might be more interesting to him—something no one has successfully done before (if you’re interested, you can probably listen to the episode I did with him on FWRD). Many asymmetric opportunities still await discovery. Kyle knows what his game is, so he decided to focus on playing the game he’s good at and interested in.

No one needs to worry about him shifting to other fields. When you know what your game is, you should focus on playing it well and aim to win. Winning isn’t everything, but devising a winning strategy is part of the game experience.

Many people worry about what Multicoin would look like without Kyle. But I’m not worried, because I know the opportunities before us are exactly where Tushar, Brian, Spencer, Shayon, Vishal, Matt, Greg, and the rest of the team excel: on-chain trading, artificial intelligence, and compliance. As long as the team focuses on playing this game correctly, it remains industry-leading.

For me, I’ve been a doer for nearly four years. Looking back, my time at Multicoin was unique—debating fiercely with Kyle in investment committee meetings, exchanging strategic ideas with Tushar, and exploring the design space of many things with every member of the investment committee. I know I can’t be as excellent as any of them, but I’ve also found my passion and my own game.

For Kyle, the dream of Web3 has simply turned into a cold ledger. For me, in this highly commoditized world, these ledgers embody real value transfer. When all other filtering mechanisms fail completely, money becomes the only relatively scarce resource in the world to express opinions—and in the near future, even money itself might not count anymore. That’s why I am building an asset generation protocol (@trendsdotfun).

We never needed to agree on what game to play. But we sincerely wish each other well and cheer for each other from the sidelines.

Life only happens once. Focus on the game you’re best at.

I may just be playing a game, but I play to win.

Relax, but don’t let your guard down.