Broad trends in crypto: open finance with programmable units of value, Web3 empowering users to control their data, global money free of national affiliation
Kyle Samani / Multicoin Capital : Tweets: @tusharjain_ and @tusharjain_ Tweets: Tushar Jain / @tusharjain_ : 1/ It's time for the blockchain industry to think beyond the “digital gold” thesis. We spent a lot of time working on refining our investment theses into crypto, and are excited to share a post on the 3 Mega Theses for Crypto. Link at the end of the tweet storm. Tushar Jain / @tusharjain_ : 11/ The transition from a trust-based economy to one of self-sovereignty will be behind one of the largest wealth transfers in human history, on par with the creation of the internet. We are extremely excited to be a part of this transition. http://multicoin.capital/...
Context & Ripple Effects
By mid-2019 the industry's defining argument was still the one laid out in the two-narratives debate — crypto as money versus crypto as infrastructure for decentralized control. Tushar Jain's '3 Mega Theses' post is Multicoin Capital's attempt to collapse that split into an investment framework: programmable units of value for open finance, user-owned data for Web3, and money free of national affiliation.
The post also reads as positioning against the 'digital gold' consensus Jain explicitly says the industry should move past, coming from a fund whose $100M vehicle had outperformed bitcoin over the prior stretch — which gives the theses distribution power among allocators, not just traders.
First-order effects
- LPs and crypto allocators get a three-bucket taxonomy replacing the single 'digital gold' lens, letting Multicoin justify positions across finance, data, and payments rather than one store-of-value bet.
Second-order effects
- Rival managers are pushed to publish their own theses to compete for the same institutional capital — a playbook a16z later institutionalized with its State of Crypto report separating market cycles from product development.
Third-order effects
- The 'global money free of national affiliation' thesis runs directly into the regulatory chokepoint identified back in the fiat-crypto exchange analysis: governments can regulate the on-ramps even if they cannot censor the chains, so the third thesis lives or dies on policy as much as technology.
The trend: Crypto venture capital is consolidating around published, multi-thesis frameworks that treat blockchains as platforms for finance, data ownership, and borderless money rather than a single digital-gold asset.