E43: Innovative venture strategies, Zymergen's implosion, Square acquires Afterpay, future of fintech & more

Evidence shows that Callin did in fact exit private beta and open to the public shortly after the August 6, 2021 recording.

On September 2, 2021, TechCrunch reported that Callin, David Sacks’ “social podcasting” app, “launches today on iOS” with a $12M Series A, indicating a public App Store launch rather than a closed beta. (techcrunch.com)
That same day, David Sacks published a Medium post titled “Meet Callin, the First Social Podcasting Platform”, stating: “Today is the public launch of Callin … it’s available now in Apple’s App Store.” (medium.com)

Fortune’s coverage also notes that Callin had been in closed beta until this launch, confirming that September 2 marked the end of the private/closed beta period. (fortune.com) Built In SF similarly describes Callin’s private beta and says the team was “excited to launch Callin publicly,” again tied to this launch. (builtinsf.com)

Since the app moved from private beta to a public iOS launch on September 2, 2021—less than a month after the August 6, 2021 episode—the prediction that Callin would open up to the public “soon” after the recording came true.

Evidence shows Jason Calacanis and David Sacks did, in fact, spin up recurring All‑In–related “post shows” on the Callin platform. A September 2021 analysis of Callin notes that Sacks hosts an “All‑In Afterparty” companion show on Callin in addition to his other Callin shows, explicitly framed as an in‑between show for the All‑In Podcast. (moorinsightsstrategy.com) The All‑In feed itself lists an episode titled “Leaked tapes: Sacks vs. Jason origins | All‑In After Party on Callin,” indicating an After Party format hosted on Callin with both Sacks and Jason actively participating. (bilingualpodcastplayer.com) Separately, a Callin-based spinoff called “After All In with JCal” is described as a live fan Q&A where listeners can “Talk to JCal about the last episode 48 hours after the episode drops,” with instructions to use the Callin app to listen live and call in, matching the idea of a recurring, roughly-two-days-later post show for interacting with fans in a smaller group setting. (podbay.fm) Taken together, these Callin shows match the substance of the prediction (Callin-hosted post shows tied to recent All‑In episodes, involving Jason and Sacks and enabling live fan interaction), so the prediction is best judged as having come true.

Public information shows that Harbor was the first company incubated by Craft Ventures to launch as a live product, and Callin was the next.

• Harbor as first incubation to launch: Multiple 2018 articles on Harbor’s Series A note that it "was previously incubated by Craft Ventures" and had just launched its blockchain compliance platform in early February 2018, clearly establishing it as a Craft incubation that reached market. (prweb.com)
• Callin as a Craft-incubated company and its launch date: Press releases and funding coverage explicitly state that Callin "was also incubated at Craft" and that the co-founders "announced the launch of Callin" on September 2, 2021, when the app became publicly available on the Apple App Store and came out of beta. (prnewswire.com)
• Later Craft incubations came after Callin: Subsequent incubations are dated later. SaaSGrid is described as having been "incubated at Craft Ventures in 2023," and Glue is reported as a startup that Craft Ventures incubated and used internally before offering it publicly starting May 14, 2024. (capterra.com) A TechCrunch piece summarizing Sacks’ incubations cites Callin and then SaaSGrid as prior examples, reinforcing that these came after Harbor and that Callin is treated as an early Craft incubation. (techcrunch.com)
• No evidence of another Craft incubation launching in between: Searches for other companies explicitly described as “incubated by” or “incubated at” Craft Ventures only turn up Harbor, Callin, SaaSGrid, and Glue; there is no public record of any other Craft-incubated startup launching between Harbor (2018) and Callin (Sept 2021). A founder interview also characterizes SaaSGrid as a later, largely unintentional incubation, consistent with Harbor and Callin being the earlier, intentional ones. (frontlines.io)

Given this evidence, the ordering of Craft incubations that actually launched is Harbor first, then Callin, with SaaSGrid and Glue only appearing later. That matches Friedberg’s prediction that Callin would be the second Craft incubation to launch after Harbor.

Elizabeth Holmes’ criminal fraud trial related to Theranos began with jury selection on August 31, 2021 in the Northern District of California, matching the podcast’s timing for an August 2021 start. (en.wikipedia.org) On January 3, 2022, the jury found Holmes guilty on four counts (three counts of wire fraud against investors and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud), i.e., she was convicted on multiple felony fraud charges. (en.wikipedia.org) On November 18, 2022, Judge Edward Davila sentenced her to 135 months (11 years, 3 months) in federal prison. (justice.gov) She was ordered to surrender and subsequently reported to the Federal Prison Camp in Bryan, Texas, on May 30, 2023, to begin serving her sentence, meaning she was in fact sent to prison as predicted. (cnbc.com) As of 2025 she remains incarcerated there. (people.com) Given that Holmes was both convicted and imprisoned following the trial that started in August 2021, Jason’s prediction is substantively accurate.

Regulators have found that Tether previously misrepresented the nature and timing of its reserves. In 2021 the New York Attorney General concluded that Tether and Bitfinex overstated reserves and covered up large losses, leading to an $18.5 million settlement and mandatory reserve disclosures, and the CFTC later fined Tether $41 million for misleading statements about being fully backed at all times. (ag.ny.gov) These actions established that Tether’s marketing was deceptive but did not find that USDT was fundamentally unbacked or that the entire float was a near-total fraud.

Since the 2021 podcast, Tether’s USDT has grown rather than imploded: by 2025 it remains the dominant stablecoin, with a market cap in the $150–180+ billion range and roughly 60% of the global stablecoin market, and it continues to trade near its $1 peg. (blockchainreporter.net) Even recent S&P research, while sharply downgrading Tether for reserve risk and poor transparency, still treats USDT as fully backed and functioning, not as a revealed $60 billion (or larger) fraud whose value has evaporated. (reuters.com) Because Tether has not been exposed as a massive fraud on the order of its full then-outstanding value—and instead has expanded and integrated further into global crypto markets—Jason’s prediction is best classified as wrong as of November 2025.

Key observable outcomes by late 2025 contradict the core claim that standalone BNPL companies would not be viable as independent businesses, even though BNPL has indeed become a common feature inside larger platforms.

1. Large standalone BNPL firms remain viable, independent companies

• Affirm is still a publicly traded, independent BNPL-focused fintech. For the year ended June 30, 2025, it reported $3.22B in revenue and $52.2M in net income, with $36.7B GMV, $11.15B in assets, and $3.07B in equity, serving 24.1M consumers and 419k merchants. This is hard evidence of ongoing commercial viability as a standalone company, not merely a feature of someone else’s stack. (en.wikipedia.org)
• Klarna also remains independent and even went public in September 2025, raising about $1.37B in its IPO at an estimated $15B valuation, despite being down from its 2021 peak. (en.wikipedia.org) Its first post‑IPO earnings showed Q3 2025 revenue of $903M, strong GMV growth, and continued (but manageable) net losses of about $95M, indicating an ongoing standalone business rather than a failed “non‑company.” (barrons.com)
• Both firms are still framed in media and regulation as core BNPL providers, not just incidental features. The CFPB, for example, explicitly names Affirm and Klarna among lenders in the BNPL market as it extends credit‑card‑style protections to BNPL products. (cnbc.com)

These data points directly contradict the statement that BNPL "is not a company" and "has always been a feature"—at least two large BNPL specialists remain viable, scaled, independent public companies four years after the prediction.

2. Some consolidation occurred, partially supporting the “feature inside a platform” idea

• Afterpay, a major BNPL provider, was acquired by Square (now Block, Inc.) and fully became a subsidiary as of January 31, 2022, clearly turning one prominent BNPL player into a product line inside a larger payments ecosystem. (en.wikipedia.org)

This is directionally consistent with the idea that BNPL can end up as a feature of broader financial platforms—but it is one notable case, not the dominant fate of the major players.

3. BNPL has become a common embedded feature in big financial platforms

• PayPal offers BNPL options like Pay in 4 and Pay Monthly directly inside the PayPal wallet; to the user this is clearly a feature of a broader payments platform. (paypal.com)
• Apple killed its own Apple Pay Later BNPL product and instead integrated BNPL loans from third‑party providers (notably Affirm) and card issuers directly into Apple Pay checkout. Users now see installment options from Affirm and banks as checkout choices in Apple Pay, which is exactly BNPL presented as a feature of a large wallet ecosystem. (macrumors.com)
• Google Pay and Chrome embed Affirm’s BNPL functionality, and Google Pay is also adding Afterpay and Klarna; Samsung Wallet similarly added installment options powered by Splitit. BNPL in these contexts is clearly delivered as an integrated feature within big wallet/payment platforms. (docs.affirm.com)

So, the second half of the prediction—BNPL being widely delivered as a feature of larger financial platforms—has materialized to a significant extent.

4. Why this nets out as “wrong” rather than “right” or “ambiguous”

• The prediction wasn’t just that BNPL could also be a feature; it was that BNPL "is not a company" and that standalone BNPL players would not remain viable as independent businesses. The continued existence, growth, and in Affirm’s case profitability, and in Klarna’s case a fresh IPO, show that substantial value still resides in dedicated BNPL companies. (en.wikipedia.org)
• Even as these firms partner with Apple Pay, Google Pay, Samsung Wallet, and merchants like Walmart and DoorDash, they do so as separate corporate entities and brands, not as absorbed back‑end features owned by someone else. (investopedia.com)

Given that major BNPL specialists are still large, independent, and functioning businesses four years after the forecast—while BNPL has also become a common embedded feature—the central, strong claim that BNPL "is not a company" and would not be viable as an independent business is contradicted by the evidence. The prediction is therefore best evaluated as wrong overall, albeit with a partially correct insight about BNPL increasingly appearing as a feature within broader financial platforms.

• The prediction (Aug 2021) was that Goldman Sachs and Apple would launch their own buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) product integrated into Apple’s financial ecosystem within a few years.
• Apple announced Apple Pay Later—a BNPL service—at WWDC in June 2022 and began rolling it out in the U.S. in March 2023, with broader availability by October 2023. The service lets users split purchases into four payments over six weeks, directly from the Wallet app and at checkout with Apple Pay, i.e., fully integrated into Apple’s financial products. (techcrunch.com)
• In Apple’s own materials and consistent press coverage, Apple Pay Later is described as being enabled via the Mastercard Installments program, with Goldman Sachs acting as the issuer of the Mastercard payment credential used to complete Apple Pay Later purchases—i.e., Apple and Goldman jointly underpin the BNPL function, even though the actual lending/credit risk sits with Apple Financing LLC. (techcrunch.com)
• This clearly matches the substance of Chamath’s claim that Goldman Sachs and Apple were about to do something in BNPL for themselves, and it happened well within “a few years” of August 2021 (roughly 1.5–2 years later).
• Although Apple announced in June 2024 that it would discontinue Apple Pay Later in favor of new global installment options, that is a later strategic change and does not alter the fact that the predicted product was indeed launched as described. (9to5mac.com)

As of late 2025, the specific prediction that WhatsApp and Facebook would have a built‑in buy‑now‑pay‑later (BNPL) feature has not fully come true.

WhatsApp:

• Official WhatsApp Payments (the in‑app payment product) in India is UPI‑based and explicitly does not offer any wallet, credit line, or BNPL functionality as of 2025.(gitakart.in)
• BNPL can appear around WhatsApp via third‑party solutions (e.g., hoolah/Jumper.ai, valU/PayTabs/notchnco, Zaakpay/MobiKwik, and various payment‑link providers), which let merchants send BNPL payment links or run conversational commerce flows inside WhatsApp chats. But in all these cases the BNPL is provided by external fintechs using WhatsApp’s business APIs and links, not by a native WhatsApp/Meta credit or installment product.(thefintechtimes.com)
• Multiple overviews of WhatsApp Payments in 2025 still list “no credit lines or BNPL” as a core limitation, reinforcing that WhatsApp itself hasn’t added a built‑in BNPL feature.(gitakart.in)

Facebook / Instagram (Meta):

• Meta’s commerce surfaces on Facebook and Instagram support Shop Pay as an integrated checkout option, via Shopify’s "Facebook & Instagram" sales channel and later expansions that made Shop Pay available to any merchant selling on Facebook/Instagram.(shopify.com)
• Shop Pay Installments is Shopify’s BNPL product (powered by Affirm) and is a feature of Shop Pay itself. Shopify describes Shop Pay Installments as a buy‑now‑pay‑later option that lets buyers split purchases into interest‑free installments.(shopify.com) Independent analyses note that Shop Pay (and thus its BNPL capability) can be used on Facebook and Instagram as part of those on‑platform checkouts.(unitedcapitalsource.com)
• However, this BNPL is not a Meta‑branded credit feature inside Meta Pay or Facebook Marketplace; it is surfaced only when a merchant uses Shop Pay in Facebook/Instagram Shops. Guides for Facebook Marketplace still state there is no native BNPL integration there, and suggest workarounds using separate BNPL or cash‑advance apps.(joingerald.com)
• Separately, Meta does offer a BNPL‑style plan for its Quest 3 headset ("Play Now, Pay Later") via Affirm, but that is tied to hardware purchases, not a general social‑platform payment feature on Facebook or WhatsApp.(benzinga.com)

Assessment:

• The prediction named both WhatsApp and Facebook as examples of major social platforms that would themselves add BNPL functionality.
• By 2025, Facebook/Instagram commerce does expose BNPL at checkout via Shop Pay Installments, but WhatsApp still lacks any native BNPL or credit feature, and Facebook’s core consumer payments (Meta Pay, Marketplace) do not have a Meta‑owned BNPL product either.

Because a central part of the prediction (WhatsApp gaining built‑in BNPL) has clearly not happened by now—and the remaining pieces are only partially realized through third‑party integrations rather than true native BNPL—the overall prediction is best classified as wrong (so far) rather than right, ambiguous, or merely “too early to tell.”

The statement is more of an investing heuristic than a concrete, time‑bounded prediction. It doesn’t specify:

• Which exact companies qualify (what counts as “adjacent features” or “turning expense lines into revenue lines”),
• How much outperformance counts as “significant,” or
• What time horizon “compound forever” / “many years” actually means.

Because of that, it’s impossible to cleanly test it, and the evidence since 2021 is mixed:

Evidence against the idea as a near‑universal “sure bet” rule

• In the episode, this logic is applied explicitly to Square/Block: “If Square can continue to acquire adjacent features, the stock market will reward these guys.”(metapodcast.net) But Block’s stock fell from an all‑time high around $289 in early August 2021 to roughly the mid‑$80s by early 2025, a ~70% drawdown, while the S&P 500 index rose from about 4,500 in August 2021 to the high‑6,000s by late 2025, a gain of roughly 50%.(stockscan.io) That’s massive underperformance from a flagship example of the pattern.
• Salesforce is a textbook serial acquirer of adjacent capabilities (e.g., Slack, Tableau, MuleSoft, now Informatica) intended to broaden its platform.(salesforce.com) Yet its stock is down over the past five years and has underperformed the S&P 500 by more than 90 percentage points in that span.(barrons.com) This contradicts the idea that such strategies are “sure bets” for market‑beating compounding.
• Sector vehicles full of exactly these kinds of “adjacent feature” fintech names have also lagged: the Global X FinTech ETF (FINX) shows a 5‑year average annual return of about –4.2%, versus +14–15% annually for an S&P 500 tracker over the same period.(assetsanalyzer.com) That’s substantial underperformance across a basket of companies pursuing these strategies.

Evidence that the pattern sometimes aligns with big long‑term winners

• Alphabet (Google) expanded aggressively into adjacent products (email, maps, video via YouTube, mobile via Android, cloud, etc.) and has delivered ~19% annualized returns over 20 years versus about 10.8% for the S&P 500, creating over $1 trillion in shareholder value.(kiplinger.com)
• Apple has repeatedly turned internal capabilities and services into major revenue lines (custom silicon, services ecosystem, accessories) and produced roughly a 590% total return over 10 years, versus ~220% for the S&P 500.(marketwatch.com)

These mixed outcomes show that the pattern can describe some great compounders but is far from a “sure bet,” and many companies that fit it have badly lagged the market. Because the claim is qualitative, absolute (“sure bet,” “forever”), and lacks a precisely testable universe and timeframe, we can’t cleanly call it right or wrong using post‑2021 data.

So, while subsequent performance of high‑profile examples (especially Block and fintech more broadly) undercuts the strength of Chamath’s claim, the prediction as phrased remains ambiguous rather than definitively right or wrong.

The prediction’s explicit time horizon is “over the next decade” from August 2021, i.e., roughly by 2031. As of today (November 29, 2025), we are only about four years into that ten‑year window.

While there is ongoing consolidation and integration in consumer financial services (e.g., large players bundling banking, lending, trading, and sometimes crypto/insurance offerings), the predictor’s claim is specifically about the end-state by around 2031—that there will be 3–5 dominant “superpowers” providing a fully consolidated stack across banking, lending, trading, crypto, and insurance.

Because the deadline has not yet arrived, we cannot definitively evaluate whether this end-state will be reached. Therefore, the correct status as of now is “inconclusive (too early)”, not “right” or “wrong.”

From August 2021 through late 2025, only a small handful of U.S.-focused fintechs actually obtained full federal banking charters or similar insured bank licenses, notably Varo Bank (national bank charter in 2020), SoFi Bank, N.A. (national bank charter approved in 2022), and Square Financial Services (FDIC‑insured Utah industrial bank beginning operations in 2021).(occ.treas.gov) That limited issuance already contradicts the idea that regulators would broadly ‘king‑make’ a set of chartered fintech consolidators.

Among those chartered fintechs, the operating reality has been mixed and far from dominant consolidation:

• Varo has struggled with heavy losses, shrinking deposits, down‑round financings and leadership turnover, and has been raising capital to stay afloat rather than acting as an acquirer of others.(forbes.com) There is no evidence it has become a consolidator in consumer financial services.
• SoFi has used its bank license to support growth and has done several deals (Golden Pacific Bancorp for the charter, Technisys, Wyndham Capital Mortgage). But even after this, SoFi reports only single‑digit share in U.S. personal loans and a negligible share in home lending, i.e., it is a meaningful niche player, not a dominant industry‑wide consolidator.(en.wikipedia.org)
• Block/Square completed a very large BNPL acquisition (Afterpay), but industry coverage treats this as one major BNPL transaction among several (e.g., PayPal–Paidy, multiple Klarna deals), not as part of a broader pattern where chartered fintech banks are the primary consolidators across consumer finance.(en.wikipedia.org)

By contrast, much of the subsequent consolidation and strategic M&A in consumer/retail finance has come from large incumbent banks and from non‑bank fintechs: reports highlight traditional banks as leading fintech M&A and seizing on depressed fintech valuations to buy capabilities, with examples like JPMorgan’s acquisition and integration of Nutmeg for its retail expansion.(bankingdive.com) Regulators at the OCC have also explicitly adopted a “careful and cautious” stance toward fintech charters and partnerships, noting that the post‑2021 valuation collapse disproved expectations that fintechs would rapidly displace banks, and emphasizing bank–fintech partnerships rather than charter‑driven dominance by fintechs.(businesslawtoday.org)

Taken together, the small number of licensed fintech banks, their modest or troubled scale, and the fact that consolidation has largely been driven by incumbent banks and non‑bank fintechs rather than by this licensed subset mean the prediction that chartered fintechs would become the dominant consolidators in consumer financial services has not come true.

Sacks’ prediction was that, like Hollywood studios, legacy banks would increasingly be “gobbled up” or eclipsed by large digital tech/fintech players over the ensuing years.

What actually happened 2021–2025:

1. Bank consolidation was led by banks, not big tech/fintech.

   • In 2023, UBS rescued and acquired Credit Suisse in a government‑brokered deal – a giant bank buying another giant bank, with no tech acquirer involved. (en.wikipedia.org)
   • In the 2023 U.S. regional banking crisis, First Republic was seized and sold to JPMorgan, and Silicon Valley Bank’s U.S. business went to First Citizens – again, large/traditional banks absorbing weaker banks. (fdic.gov)
   • Ongoing consolidation (e.g., PNC’s 2025 deal for FirstBank; NatWest acquiring most of Sainsbury’s Bank and a Metro Bank mortgage book) has also been bank‑to‑bank, not big tech buying banks. (en.wikipedia.org)

2. Fintechs did not start gobbling up major legacy banks.

   • A few fintechs bought small community banks mainly to obtain charters – e.g., SoFi’s $22.3M acquisition of Golden Pacific Bancorp and LendingClub’s earlier Radius Bank deal – but these are tiny relative to the global banking system and pre‑date or just coincide with the 2021 prediction. (en.wikipedia.org)
   • The fintech sector then hit a “winter”: global fintech funding fell 32% in 2022 vs. 2021 and another 42% in 2023, leaving many fintechs capital‑constrained rather than in a position to acquire large banks. (spglobal.com)

3. Big tech’s direct banking/credit pushes mostly stalled or retrenched instead of scaling into bank takeovers.

   • Google scrapped its Plex bank‑account plan in late 2021 and explicitly said it would focus on enabling banks rather than becoming a provider itself. (cnbc.com)
   • Meta’s Diem/Novi crypto and wallet initiatives were shut down by 2022 after heavy regulatory resistance. (cointelegraph.com)
   • Apple experimented with deeper finance (Apple Card, Apple Savings, Apple Pay Later) but then:
     • Moved to exit its consumer partnership with Goldman Sachs for Apple Card/Savings. (macrumors.com)
     • Discontinued its in‑house BNPL product Apple Pay Later in 2024, shifting installment loans back to banks and third‑party lenders like Affirm. (cnbc.com)
   • Amazon has expanded into lending in India by acquiring non‑bank lender Axio and gaining a direct‑lending license, but Axio is a modest fintech, not a major bank; this is a niche regional move, not a wave of global bank acquisitions. (reuters.com)

4. Regulators have actively curbed big tech dominance in finance, not enabled a takeover of banks.

   • Central banks and the BIS have warned that big tech in finance raises serious concerns over market power and data concentration, prompting calls for entity‑based regulation. (bis.org)
   • The EU is moving to exclude large U.S. tech firms like Meta, Apple, Google, and Amazon from its new Financial Data Access (FiDA) regime specifically to prevent them from dominating digital finance. (ft.com)
   • Under the Digital Operational Resilience Act, EU regulators instead classify Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, Microsoft, etc., as critical third‑party service providers to banks – powerful infrastructure vendors, not bank owners. (reuters.com)
   • In the U.S., the CFPB has moved to supervise major wallet and payment apps (Apple Pay, Google Pay, Venmo) similarly to banks, signaling a push to regulate them rather than let them quietly morph into bank‑like giants. (reuters.com)

Taken together, by late 2025 the financial sector has not “gone the same way media did” in the sense Sacks described. Consolidation has been driven by traditional banks absorbing other banks, while big tech and fintech players have mostly become partners, vendors, or niche lenders, often retreating from the most bank‑like activities under regulatory and economic pressure. There is no broad pattern of legacy banks being “gobbled up” by big tech/fintech analogous to his Hollywood‑studio analogy, so the prediction is best assessed as wrong given the evidence to date.

Sacks correctly anticipated a consolidation phase in fintech: global fintech investment fell sharply after 2021 and M&A has increasingly been used to rationalize the sector, with reports in 2024–2025 explicitly describing a consolidation wave and rising fintech M&A deal values, especially in payments and infrastructure. (kpmg.com) However, the distribution of winners has not matched his forecast.

1. Mixed outcomes for the named online fintechs (Square/Block, Stripe, PayPal)

   • Stripe has indeed emerged as a major winner: after a valuation cut to about $50B in 2023, it rebounded to around $90–106B in 2025, above its 2021 peak, while processing $1.4T in payments in 2024 and operating profitably. (pymnts.com)
   • PayPal and Block (Square), by contrast, have lost a large portion of the equity value they had at the time of the prediction. PayPal’s market cap fell from roughly $220B in 2021 to about $59B in late 2025, and its share price is down about 75% from its 2021 high. (companiesmarketcap.com) Block’s market cap dropped from about $75B at end‑2021 to roughly $40B in 2025, despite joining the S&P 500 and giving optimistic long‑term guidance. (companiesmarketcap.com) These are still important companies, but they have not been clear “primary long‑term winners” relative to the broader financial sector.

2. Legacy banks have not “largely lost ground” and in many ways are winning

   • Large incumbent banks remain vastly bigger and have grown in value since 2021. JPMorgan’s market cap rose from about $468B in 2021 to around $846B in 2025; Bank of America’s is near $392B in 2025, up from about $359B in 2021. (companiesmarketcap.com) U.S. banks collectively reported a 13.5% profit increase in Q3 2025, with strong capital and liquidity, indicating sector health rather than broad decline. (reuters.com)
   • Strategy reports show a nuanced picture: a Boston Consulting Group study notes that banks are losing some market share to fintechs, while McKinsey’s 2024 Global Banking Review emphasizes that traditional banks have recovered profitability and many neobanks remain fragile. (timesofindia.indiatimes.com) In checking accounts, digital banks/fintechs had 44% of new openings in 2024 (down from 47% in 2023), while megabanks regained share, suggesting incumbents are competing effectively rather than “largely losing ground.” (forbes.com) Overall, incumbents and card networks (e.g., JPMorgan, Bank of America, Visa, Mastercard) remain the dominant long‑term winners so far.

3. Conclusion
   The consolidation wave call was directionally right, and Stripe has turned into a clear winner. But the stronger part of the prediction — that "it’s going to be Square, Stripe, [and] PayPal ... not the offline legacy banks" who are the primary long‑term winners — has not held up: Stripe is thriving, yet PayPal and Block have dramatically de-rated, while large legacy banks have increased in value and profitability and continue to dominate the system. Given this divergence, the prediction as stated is best judged wrong rather than merely premature or ambiguous.

As of late 2025, Disney’s streaming business has not surpassed or dominated Netflix; Netflix is still clearly ahead on the core metrics used in the industry.

• Current subscribers: Netflix has about 300–310 million paid subscribers globally, and is widely described as the world’s largest subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) service.
  • Estimates for 2025 place Netflix around 301.6 million paid memberships, after crossing 300 million at the end of 2024. (evoca.tv)
• Disney’s streaming subscribers: Disney’s own reporting for Q3 FY2025 shows a combined 207.4 million subscriptions across Disney+, Hulu and ESPN+ (183 million for Disney+ + Hulu, plus 24.1 million for ESPN+). (thewrap.com) By Q4 FY2025, Disney+ itself is around 131.6 million subscribers, with Hulu at 55.5 million, and ESPN+ roughly flat in the mid‑20‑millions — still totaling only a little over 210 million, well below Netflix’s base. (en.wikipedia.org)
• Temporary "catch up" did not become dominance: In August 2022, Disney briefly did edge past Netflix in combined subscribers (Disney+ + Hulu + ESPN+ ≈ 221 million vs. Netflix’s ~221 million at that time). (en.wikipedia.org) But this lead was short‑lived: Disney later lost significant low‑ARPU Hotstar subscribers while Netflix resumed strong growth, leading to today’s ~300M vs. ~210M gap in Netflix’s favor.
• Market position: Industry analyses in 2025 still describe Netflix as the largest global SVOD platform by paid subscribers, ahead of Disney+ and other rivals, and emphasize Netflix’s higher overall scale and revenue. (dataforcee.us) Disney’s direct‑to‑consumer division has only recently turned a few hundred million dollars of quarterly profit (about $346M on $6.2B in quarterly streaming revenue), which is meaningful progress but not evidence of market “domination” over Netflix. (thewrap.com)

Because Disney’s streaming business has neither maintained a subscriber lead nor achieved clear overall dominance of Netflix by 2025—and the current trajectory shows Netflix well ahead again—the prediction that Disney would “catch up to Netflix and then roll right over Netflix” is best evaluated as wrong.

Within a year of August 2021, there was some U.S. political conversation about “financial deplatforming,” but it did not rise to the level of a major, system‑wide political hot potato in the way Sacks described.

The main flare‑up in that 12‑month window was the 2022 Canadian Freedom Convoy: GoFundMe removed the convoy’s fundraiser and U.S. Republican officials (e.g., Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and several state attorneys general) opened investigations and publicly attacked the move as fraud and censorship. Commentary from right‑leaning outlets framed this as “financial deplatforming” or “bank account deplatforming” and explicitly as a new tool of cancel culture or censorship, especially in response to Canada’s use of emergency powers to freeze convoy‑linked bank accounts.(cbsnews.com) However, this remained a fairly niche, partisan concern tied to a specific foreign protest, not a sustained, top‑tier political issue in U.S. domestic debates.

The broad, national fight Sacks envisioned—framed in terms of “debanking” and systemic financial censorship—only really took off later. Coverage notes that the term “debanking” gained mainstream traction after a 2024 Joe Rogan–Marc Andreessen episode brought alleged politically motivated account closures to wide attention.(en.wikipedia.org) In 2024–25, the issue became a recurring flashpoint: Republican‑led states passed and defended laws against perceived viewpoint‑based financial discrimination, Treasury and the OCC publicly pushed back, and President Trump issued an executive order directing regulators to crack down on discriminatory “debanking.”(reuters.com) That later wave matches Sacks’ substance and “next wave of censorship” framing, but it arrived roughly 2–4 years after his August 2021 prediction, not “over the next year.”

Because the core phenomenon he described did not become a major, widely debated U.S. political issue within about a year of August 2021—even though it did become one later—the prediction is best scored as wrong on its stated time horizon.