Crypto investing deep dive, Facebook's whistleblower fallout, Chappelle's new special & more

The recording opens with some jokes that, by the speakers' own admission, do not land, and a claim that the group is out of rhythm because of Mercury retrograde, which one host says will make the fiftieth episode bad. One speaker mentions a doctor's remark about a daughter's head having dropped, and the others use it for a quip. None of this is substantive.

The formal welcome marks episode 50. The hosts say nobody expected them to get this far, thank listeners for the support, and joke that they are one episode closer to being canceled, which one calls appealing because he would never have to work again. The moderator teases that the Facebook whistleblower, introduced by name, appeared on a news program on Sunday night and before a hearing, then pauses for the hosts' usual introductions.

The moderator needles Sacks about his holdings, joking that he is hiding his Solana in the bags under his eyes and asking about a lockup. A speaker says everything is bought at a discount and that he is holding. Asked how much appreciation is enough before locking in a win, with 100x or 500x as examples, one speaker says to sort holdings into those that are an investment and those that stand for an idea you love, and that you should never sell the latter but should manage risk on the former.

Sacks clarifies that his firm did not invest in Solana directly. In 2017 it concluded that crypto was turning into a full-time rabbit hole, so it backed a crypto venture and hedge firm called Multicoin Capital, run by two young founders whose names the transcript renders as Colin (later Kyle) and Tushar, introduced through Vinny Lingham. He says his firm put in a million dollars at what he calls a 20 cap, and that the fund, which he says was the first money into Solana, behaves like a 100x fund. He estimates the indirect Solana exposure could end up at about $1,000,000,000 in returns, with trading decisions made by the Multicoin team. These figures are his own and were not checked.

A host explains Solana for listeners as a programmable, Ethereum-competing smart-contract platform worth about $50,000,000,000, which he says traded near a dollar not long ago and is now at 164. He says some Silicon Valley investors are betting on a flippening in which it overtakes Ethereum, that it ranks about eighth, that transaction fees are a fraction of a penny, and that NFTs there would cost a fraction of what Ethereum fees do. Another speaker agrees that it is known as a faster, cheaper chain, and the group jokes that Vinny Lingham's Instagram suggests he did well.

Another host argues that being a limited partner in a new fund manager lets you place a small bet and get a meta-education about a whole sector. Sacks replies that learning was not the motive. His firm realized it would either have to do crypto full time as a fund or partner with people who did. He notes many venture firms now create specialized crypto funds or partners, and another speaker says he has struggled to learn crypto and feels uncertain after hours of study.

A speaker adds that people use the word crypto as if it were one thing, when there is business-model, technology, economic and infrastructure innovation. Asked how much of it he does personally, Chamath says he has a lot of exposure, cherry-picks and snipes opportunities that make him intellectually curious, and credits his team. He mentions an early investment in Barry Silbert and DCG, which he guesses is now worth around $20,000,000,000 or more, a figure he is unsure of.

He describes the team as having carte blanche. They work with entrepreneurs to seed projects, and when projects get large they issue tokens, some of which come to him. They take views on Bitcoin, Ethereum and Solana and allocate capital, while he gets involved only when he sees a chance for upside he puts at roughly 500 million to a billion dollars, by his own rough estimate.

The moderator notes that crypto market-cap rankings are shifting, with Cardano (transcribed "Cardona") at number 3, Tether at 5 and XRP at 6. One speaker warns against reading it as a ranked list and compares three projects: a distributed version of Discord with an integrated wallet, a decentralized social framework the transcript calls DISO, and Helium, which builds distributed on-ramps for Internet connectivity. Each, he says, needs a different set of beliefs, so buying something just because it is cheap on a list is, in his word, stupid.

The moderator replies that many people hold Bitcoin and Ethereum as numbers one and two, and that those projects can feel stagnant next to newer ones, and asks whether people may stop buying them. The speaker answers that these are layer-1 protocols, the core substrate, with other projects building on or around them. He says that anyone unwilling to work out which layer ones and twos to own would be better off with an ETF or similar, and notes that Solana does not need Ethereum to exist.

Another speaker lays out the evolution of his thinking. The first step was owning Bitcoin, because after a decade or more, he says, nobody has counterfeited it and it is better money. He suggests holding 1 to 2 percent of a portfolio in it in case fiat money is debased, and then realizing that Bitcoin is only one application of blockchains. This is his opinion and not a verified claim.