E104: FTX collapse with Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong + election results, macro update & more

The prediction is conditional: Republicans will lose the 2022 Georgia Senate runoff if Trump continues his post‑2020-election style antics.

1. Outcome of the runoff: In the December 6, 2022 Georgia Senate runoff between Raphael Warnock and Herschel Walker, Warnock (Democrat) defeated Walker (Republican), 51.4% to 48.6%. Republicans therefore did lose the runoff. (en.wikipedia.org)

2. Trump’s continued “antics”: Trump had heavily tied himself to 2020-election grievances and confrontational public behavior throughout 2021–2022. He formally announced his 2024 presidential campaign on November 15, 2022, just days after this podcast, continuing to center his public persona on the same election-fraud narrative and polarizing style that followed the 2020 election, as documented in subsequent investigations and reports on his sustained effort to overturn or relitigate 2020. (reuters.com) These sources show that his post‑2020 behavior (claims of a stolen election, efforts to overturn results, inflammatory rhetoric) was not moderated but persisted into and beyond the runoff period.

Given that (a) Trump did in fact continue the same kind of behavior the speaker is referring to, and (b) under that condition the GOP did lose the Georgia runoff, the conditional prediction — “we’re going to lose the Georgia runoff again if Trump continues with these antics” — matches the observed outcome. The causal attribution can’t be proven, but the conditional forecast of the result under that scenario was borne out.

Therefore, the prediction is best scored as right.

U.S. regulators did "take the FTT token issue seriously"—Sam Bankman‑Fried was criminally prosecuted by the DOJ and convicted on seven counts of fraud and conspiracy in late 2023, receiving a 25‑year sentence in March 2024, and FTX-related investigations by U.S. agencies were extensive. (en.wikipedia.org) After FTX, the SEC also ramped up enforcement against other crypto tokens and token sales: it brought major cases against Terraform Labs/Do Kwon over TerraUSD and LUNA, Kraken’s staking program, Binance and Coinbase over dozens of allegedly unregistered "crypto asset securities" (including SOL, ADA, MATIC and others), and Consensys over MetaMask staking. (debevoisefintechblog.com) So the first part of Chamath’s conditional—serious pursuit of FTX and broader token crackdowns—clearly occurred.

However, the more specific claim that this would lead the SEC and DOJ to "start to look at" and effectively investigate "some very well‑known venture firms inside of Silicon Valley" for their role in token creation and sales has not materialized in any public, verifiable way. Public SEC and DOJ crypto actions since late 2022 have targeted exchanges (Binance, Coinbase, Kraken), issuers or projects (Terraform Labs, Ripple, various NFT and DeFi projects), and intermediaries like Consensys, but not major Silicon Valley VC firms themselves as enforcement targets. (sec.gov) Well‑known firms such as Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Sequoia Capital, Paradigm and others appear in reporting mainly as investors, class‑action defendants, or policy advocates—not as subjects of SEC or DOJ enforcement or announced investigations into their own token‑structuring conduct. (coindesk.com) In fact, by 2025 the DOJ had disbanded its National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team and explicitly scaled back crypto‑related white‑collar cases, and the SEC under the Trump administration began dropping several high‑profile crypto lawsuits—moves in the opposite direction of an expanding probe into venture firms. (theguardian.com)

Because the core distinctive part of the prediction—that top Silicon Valley VCs themselves would become regulatory targets over token schemes—has not occurred publicly by late 2025, even though there has been ample time and substantial crypto enforcement activity, the overall prediction is best judged wrong, despite being broadly right about post‑FTX scrutiny of other tokens and token sales.

Evidence since the FTX/FTT collapse in November 2022 shows no lasting structural reduction in speculative, venture-linked token issuance, even though there was a temporary slump.

1. Short-term pullback, not a lasting shift

• After Terra and FTX imploded in 2022, crypto venture fundraising and token activity fell sharply. Fortune, citing PitchBook, reported that fundraising for crypto VC funds in 2023 was down ~98% vs. 2022 by mid‑year, and that the environment was described by VCs as the hardest they’d ever seen. (inkl.com)
• CoinMarketCap data showed new token listings in early 2023 dropped steeply versus early 2022, as projects “waited out” the bear market. (dlnews.com)
• Major firms such as Sequoia cut the size of their dedicated crypto fund from $585M to $200M in July 2023 after the industry crash, indicating a reset in the pace and size of professional crypto investing. (en.wikipedia.org)

These data support a cyclical downturn right after FTX, but not yet a structural, permanent collapse of VC‑token activity.

2. VC token structures remained central to crypto deals

• A detailed Fortune investigation in June 2023 described how mainstream and crypto‑native VCs had adopted hybrid equity + token‑warrant structures as their standard model in the last cycle, and that despite big losses, “token strategies remain popular among crypto‑focused VCs,” with firms like Dragonfly continuing to do large token‑based deals. (fortune.com)
• In November 2023, Wormhole raised $225M at a $2.5B valuation, explicitly giving investors token warrants instead of traditional equity, underscoring that large, venture‑backed token issuances continued well after FTX. (coinlive.com)
• By late 2024 and 2025, fund‑of‑funds and managers like Accolade had raised new blockchain funds that explicitly target both equity and token investments, signaling renewed institutional appetite for token‑centric venture strategies as markets recovered. (wsj.com)

This shows VCs did not broadly abandon speculative token economics; they adapted but kept tokens at the core of many deals.

3. Overall token issuance exploded rather than structurally shrinking

• CoinGecko data indicate that 710k new tokens appeared in 2022 and ~830k in 2023, and that from January–early April 2024 alone over 540k new tokens were created (~5,300 per day)—putting 2024 on track to exceed 2023’s record. (support.bitrue.com)
• Follow‑up analyses show this trend accelerating into 2025: one report notes about 36,000 new tokens per day and ~1.1M tokens in a single recent month, highlighting a further surge in speculative token minting. (blockchain.news)

These counts include many memecoins and low‑effort tokens, not just VC‑backed projects, but they contradict the idea that the FTX collapse ushered in a regime of materially fewer speculative token launches overall.

4. New infrastructure for public token sales post‑FTX

• In November 2025, Coinbase launched a new platform for public digital token offerings, promising roughly one token sale per month and calling it the first broad opportunity for U.S. users to participate in token sales since the 2017–18 ICO era. (reuters.com)

Rather than marking the end of speculative token issuance, the post‑FTX period has seen major, regulated exchanges re‑enter the primary token‑sale business.

5. Putting it together

• Jason’s prediction was that the FTX/FTT collapse would be “the turning point in all of that token” — i.e., it would structurally curtail speculative, venture‑driven token issuance going forward, not just temporarily cool the market.
• The record shows:
  • A temporary funding winter and slowdown in listings (2023).
  • Continued and sizeable VC deals explicitly structured around future tokens.
  • A massive increase in total token creation by 2024–25, much of it clearly speculative.
  • New primary‑market token‑sale platforms from major regulated players.

Given these developments, the long‑run effect of FTX has not been a sustained, structural reduction in speculative venture‑backed token issuance. The market cycled down and then re‑accelerated with similar—and in aggregate, larger—token‑centric speculation.

Conclusion: the prediction that FTX would be a lasting structural turning point leading to a major, enduring reduction in speculative venture‑backed token issuance is not supported by the subsequent data and trends, so it is best judged wrong.

Evidence from 2022–2025 shows a shift in how VCs get token exposure, but not an end to venture investing in tradable tokens.

• VCs did not “largely stop” investing in tokens. By late 2022 there was a growing move away from pure SAFT/pure‑token rounds toward equity plus token warrant structures, where investors buy equity and receive contractual rights to future tokens, precisely to preserve token upside while adapting to regulation.

  • Industry lawyers and VCs described this hybrid equity+token‑warrant structure as having become “very much en vogue,” explicitly noting a trend away from pure token sales but not away from token exposure itself. (theblock.co)
  • Large post‑FTX financings were still explicitly structured around tokens. For example, Wormhole raised about $225M in November 2023 via token warrants for its W token at a $2.5B valuation, a round led and filled by major crypto VCs. (twitter.com)
  • Throughout 2023–2025, multiple projects (e.g., 0xVM, Enso, Neptune) completed sizable private “token rounds” or token‑warrant rounds with brand‑name crypto VCs, and ICO-style public token sales (such as pump.fun’s planned $600M token sale in 2025) remained a core capital‑raising mechanism. (icodrops.com)
  • Sector reports from Galaxy Digital show crypto/blockchain venture funding continuing in the billions of dollars per year across 2023–2025; while they note a focus on infrastructure and later‑stage companies, they make clear that crypto‑native projects (which typically have or plan tokens) still attract substantial VC capital rather than seeing token exposure disappear. (galaxy.com)
    Together this indicates VCs changed how they structure token exposure, but did not “end” or “largely stop” investing in tradable tokens.

• There was a meaningful shift toward equity—but as part of hybrids, not a clean switch away from tokens.

  • Regulatory concerns pushed many web3 deals to use equity (stock/SAFEs) as the primary fundraising instrument with token warrants attached; funds and SPVs are typically structured so ≥80% of capital is in equity and ≤20% in token rights to preserve VC regulatory exemptions. (sydecar.io)
  • This is qualitatively different from VCs abandoning token upside: in most high‑profile protocol deals, future token allocation remains a central part of the return profile, just packaged alongside equity in companies.

• Tokens did face significantly heavier regulation and enforcement, but “super regulated” is only partially accurate.

  • In the EU, the MiCA framework—adopted in 2023 and fully applicable from late 2024—creates a comprehensive regime for crypto‑assets, regulating public token offerings, trading, and service providers across the bloc. (europarl.europa.eu)
  • In the U.S., the SEC brought major cases against exchanges like Coinbase and Binance that explicitly alleged numerous prominent tokens (e.g., SOL, ADA, MATIC and others) are unregistered securities, signaling much harsher scrutiny of token offerings than pre‑FTX. (cnbc.com)
  • However, by 2024–2025 the U.S. regulatory stance became more uneven, with some enforcement easing and no fully harmonized statutory framework comparable to MiCA; globally, many jurisdictions still have relatively light or fragmented token rules. (guidehouse.com)
    So while regulation and enforcement pressure on tokens clearly intensified versus the pre‑FTX era, it is not accurate to say that “any of the tokens are going to be super regulated” across the board.

Because VC token investing demonstrably did not end—it continued at scale through hybrid and token‑warrant structures—and token regulation, though tougher, is not universally “super” stringent, the prediction overall is best scored as wrong, albeit with a partially correct insight about a shift toward more equity-weighted and regulation-aware deal structures.

Chamath argued that the FTX blow‑up would set back U.S. policymakers’ desire to let ordinary investors qualify for private/crypto markets via a knowledge‑based test by “a decade, if not more.” (podscripts.co) But within about two to three years of FTX, Congress actively advanced exactly this concept: the Equal Opportunity for All Investors Act of 2023 and its successor H.R. 3339 (2025) direct the SEC and FINRA to create an exam so non‑wealthy individuals can qualify as accredited investors, and the 2025 version passed the House unanimously. (congress.gov) The SEC’s Investor Advisory Committee has simultaneously been exploring ways to broaden retail access to private equity/credit—explicitly discussing redefining accredited‑investor status around sophistication or testing—and recommending structures to make private assets more available to ordinary investors under stronger safeguards. (barrons.com) In parallel, U.S. policy has expanded retail routes into both private funds (e.g., alts in 401(k)s) and crypto (spot bitcoin ETFs and easier listing rules), which increase ordinary investors’ access rather than freezing it for a decade. (ft.com) While FTX did stall some specific crypto bills such as the DCCPA, the overall post‑FTX trajectory shows continued and even growing momentum toward broader access mechanisms, contradicting a 10+ year policy chill. (en.wikipedia.org)

Evidence shows that, within a few months of FTX’s November 2022 bankruptcy, multiple top‑level U.S. policymakers and regulators did move quickly to tighten oversight and ramp up enforcement in crypto.

Timeline and actors

• FTX filed for bankruptcy on November 11, 2022, and Sam Bankman‑Fried resigned as CEO the same day. (en.wikipedia.org) Within weeks, Congress held high‑profile hearings: the House Financial Services Committee’s “Investigating the Collapse of FTX, Part I” on December 13, 2022, and the Senate Banking Committee’s “Crypto Crash: Why the FTX Bubble Burst and the Harm to Consumers” on December 14, 2022, explicitly framing the collapse as a systemic warning and promising stronger oversight. (congress.gov)
• On January 3 and 5, 2023, the Federal Reserve, FDIC, and OCC issued their first joint statement on crypto‑asset risks to banking organizations, highlighting “significant volatility and vulnerabilities” in the crypto sector over the past year and warning that certain crypto activities are “highly likely to be inconsistent with safe and sound banking practices.” They pledged to closely monitor banks’ crypto exposures and issue further guidance as needed—effectively tightening supervisory expectations around crypto at the core of the banking system. (federalreserve.gov)
• On January 27, 2023, the White House published “The Administration’s Roadmap to Mitigate Cryptocurrencies’ Risks.” It explicitly references that “a major cryptocurrency exchange collapsed” in 2022 and says agencies are using their authorities “to ramp up enforcement” and issuing new guidance, while urging Congress to expand regulators’ powers, strengthen penalties, and limit crypto’s risks to financial stability. (bidenwhitehouse.archives.gov) This is a direct, top‑level policy response from the Executive Branch linking the year’s turmoil (including FTX) to tougher oversight and enforcement.

Enforcement ramp‑up

• The SEC’s crypto enforcement actions jumped sharply after FTX: an analysis of SEC press releases shows at least a 183% increase in crypto‑related enforcement actions in the six months following FTX’s November 2022 bankruptcy, compared with the prior six months. (cointelegraph.com)
• On February 9, 2023, less than three months after the collapse, the SEC charged Kraken over its staking‑as‑a‑service program; Kraken agreed to shut down U.S. staking and pay $30 million in disgorgement and penalties. The SEC characterized this as a warning that crypto intermediaries must comply with securities laws and provide full investor protections. (sec.gov)
• In June 2023, the SEC filed major civil actions against Binance (13 charges including operating unregistered exchanges, broker‑dealers, and clearing agencies, and unregistered token and staking offerings) and Coinbase (operating as an unregistered national securities exchange, broker, and clearing agency, and running an unregistered staking program). (sec.gov) These cases targeted the largest global and U.S. crypto exchanges and marked a clear escalation in enforcement strategy.
• Separately, in November 2023 the U.S. Department of Justice and CFTC announced a sweeping criminal and civil resolution with Binance: CZ and Binance pleaded guilty to serious Bank Secrecy Act and sanctions‑related violations, and Binance agreed to pay about $4.3 billion in combined penalties and accept an independent compliance monitor, with the CFTC describing Binance’s conduct as willfully evading U.S. law. (justice.gov)

Assessment relative to the prediction

• Chamath’s prediction was that, in response to FTX, “top‑level” U.S. policymakers and regulators would move quickly—within months—to impose or push for much stricter oversight and enforcement in crypto.
• The record shows that, within roughly 2–3 months, the White House issued a policy roadmap explicitly calling for ramped‑up enforcement and more regulatory powers; federal banking regulators jointly tightened supervisory expectations around banks’ crypto exposure; and the SEC began a marked enforcement surge, culminating in shutdown of Kraken’s U.S. staking service by February 2023 and landmark lawsuits against Coinbase and Binance by June 2023. (bidenwhitehouse.archives.gov)
• While later political changes (in 2025) led to some of these cases being dropped and guidance withdrawn, those reversals occurred well after the “within months” horizon and do not change the fact that the initial response was indeed fast, high‑level, and substantially more aggressive.

Given this sequence, the prediction that top‑tier U.S. policymakers and regulators would subject crypto to heightened scrutiny and act quickly with stricter oversight and enforcement in the wake of FTX is best judged as right.

Evidence from the 6–9 months after November 12, 2022 shows both that (a) the macro developments Chamath highlighted largely occurred and (b) major risk assets delivered substantial upside from then-depressed levels.

1. Macro backdrop evolved as he described

• Disinflation: U.S. headline CPI peaked at 9.1% year‑over‑year in June 2022 and fell to about 3% by June 2023, the lowest since early 2021, reflecting clear disinflation over the period he was talking about. (jpmorgan.com)
• Policy gridlock: The 2022 U.S. midterms produced a divided government: Republicans captured the House while Democrats retained the Senate, creating exactly the kind of legislative gridlock he referenced from January 2023 onward. (en.wikipedia.org)
• China reopening: China abruptly exited its zero‑Covid policy in December 2022 and senior officials were describing the economy as “back to normal” by early 2023, consistent with his “China reopening” thesis. (forbes.com)
• Progress in Ukraine: Ukraine’s Kherson counteroffensive culminated in the liberation of Kherson on November 9–11, 2022, widely seen as a major Ukrainian success and blow to Russia, matching the “progress in Ukraine” point he cited. (en.wikipedia.org)

2. Risk assets did show notable upside over the next 6–9 months

• S&P 500: The index closed at about 3,992.93 on November 11, 2022, just as he was speaking. By August 11, 2023 it was around 4,464.05, an increase of roughly 12% over nine months. (statmuse.com) By May 12, 2023 (about six months later), it was 4,124.08, modestly higher than his starting point and up 7.4% year‑to‑date from the 2022 close, indicating a gradual grind higher as disinflation took hold. (wellergroupllc.com)
• Nasdaq Composite: The Nasdaq ended 2022 at 10,466.48 and had risen to 12,284.74 by May 12, 2023 (+17.4% YTD), then to 13,737.99 by August 10–11, 2023 (roughly +31% vs the 2022 close and more than +20% vs early‑November levels). (wellergroupllc.com) This is the sort of “upside for risk assets” he was pointing to.
• Bitcoin (higher‑beta risk asset): Bitcoin was around $17,043 on November 11, 2022 (right after the FTX collapse), and about $27,042 on May 11, 2023—roughly a 59% gain in six months, with prices generally in the high‑20Ks around mid‑2023. (statmuse.com) This is strong upside from the stressed conditions prevailing when he made the call.

3. Alignment with his qualitative claim Chamath’s prediction was directional and relative: that a cluster of macro positives (disinflation, gridlock, China reopening, progress in Ukraine, etc.) created more upside for risk assets over the next 6–9 months than markets were pricing in at that panic point in late 2022.

Looking back:

• The macro factors he listed did materialize to a significant degree.
• From the date of the podcast through mid‑ to late‑2023, major risk assets (equities, especially tech, and Bitcoin) rose substantially from their November 2022 levels, with double‑digit gains in broad indices and much larger gains in higher‑beta assets.

While we can’t measure “what was priced in” with precision, the combination of realized macro improvements and sizable positive returns in risk assets over the stated 6–9 month window is strong evidence that his high‑level call—that there was meaningful upside potential from those late‑2022 levels—was broadly correct.

Chamath’s guidance implicitly predicted that the fundraising environment would stay challenging enough that startups shouldn’t count on raising new capital until at least Q1 2025. That broadly matches what happened.

• In 2023, global startup funding fell sharply: Crunchbase reports total funding at $285B, down 38% year-over-year and the lowest since 2018, with deep cutbacks at seed, early, and late stage—clear evidence of a much tougher market than 2021–2022. (news.crunchbase.com)
• Through 2023, the slump persisted: global Q2 2023 funding was down 49% versus Q2 2022, and the first half of 2023 was down 51% versus the first half of 2022, with investors continuing to “scale back their pace,” indicating no quick reopening of the capital markets. (news.crunchbase.com)
• In 2024, total VC dollars recovered somewhat (about $368B vs. $349B in 2023), but deal volume actually fell and the rebound was driven by a handful of very large AI rounds; KPMG notes 2024’s Q4 funding was the best since Q2 2022, yet with the lowest deal count in over a decade, indicating capital was concentrated and selective rather than broadly easy. (kpmg.com)
• In Q1 2025, global VC investment hit a ten‑quarter high of $126.3B and US funding $91.5B, but this was again propelled by mega‑rounds like OpenAI’s $40B raise; at the same time, global deal volume fell to a record low 7,551 deals, showing that while a lot of money was deployed, it went into relatively few companies. (kpmg.com)
• Independent analyses of Q1 2025 show worldwide VC transaction counts down about 32% year‑over‑year, with around 58% of all VC dollars going to AI/ML startups, underscoring that most sectors and typical startups still faced a constrained, highly selective market rather than an easy fundraising environment. (en.tmtpost.com)

Because funding conditions remained historically tight, with depressed deal volume and capital concentrated in a narrow set of AI and late‑stage winners all the way through Q1 2025, advising startups in late 2022 to assume they might not be able to raise before that point turned out to be directionally accurate. Hence the prediction is best classified as right.

Chamath’s forecast had multiple components:

1. Inflation “comes back” within ~six months of Nov 2022
   Headline CPI year‑over‑year kept trending down from 7.1% in Dec 2022 to about 3.0% by June 2023, so there was no sustained re‑acceleration in that six‑month window.(officialdata.org)(moneylion.com) However, on a month‑over‑month basis, January 2023 CPI rose 0.5% after a soft December number, and contemporaneous coverage described this as inflation “turning higher to start 2023,” reflecting stickier inflation than markets had hoped.(cnbc.com) Later in 2023, year‑over‑year CPI did edge back up from ~3.0% in June to ~3.7% by September, i.e., some renewed inflation pressure, but that re‑uptick clearly arrived after the strict six‑month window.(moneylion.com) So this part of the prediction was directionally plausible but poorly timed and weaker than implied.

2. Fed hikes the policy rate to roughly 5.5%
   After the podcast (with the target at 3.75–4.00% in early Nov 2022), the FOMC raised the federal funds target range across several meetings: 4.25–4.50% in Dec 2022, 4.50–4.75% in Feb 2023, 4.75–5.00% in Mar 2023, 5.00–5.25% in May 2023, and finally 5.25–5.50% on July 26, 2023.(en.wikipedia.org) That terminal range is effectively the “about 5.5%” he called.

3. Fed holds around that level until about mid‑2024
   Once the Fed reached 5.25–5.50% in July 2023, it kept that range unchanged at every meeting through at least July 31, 2024 (Jan, Mar, May, June, and July 2024 meetings all held at 5.25–5.50%).(en.wikipedia.org) The first cut came later, on September 18, 2024, when the range was lowered to 4.75–5.00%.(en.wikipedia.org) That means the funds rate stayed at ~5.5% past the “middle part of ’24” that he suggested.

Overall assessment
The core, quantitative part of the forecast—that the Fed would take rates to roughly 5.5% and then keep them there until around mid‑2024—was very accurate in both level and duration. His mechanistic story and timing about inflation “coming back” within six months was weaker: inflation mostly decelerated over that horizon, though there was a brief early‑2023 monthly pickup and a modest re‑acceleration later in 2023. Given the evaluation standard and the fact that the most specific and risky elements (terminal rate and “higher for longer”) played out almost exactly as described, the prediction is best classified as right, with the caveat that the inflation‑timing rationale was off.

Public tech/growth equities had already been in a strong, sustained rebound well before the second half of 2024, so dating the start of the rebound to H2 2024 is materially off.

• After the 2022 bear market, tech and growth stocks roared back in 2023: the Nasdaq Composite gained about 43% in 2023, one of its best years in decades, while technology stocks rose roughly 59%, and the S&P 500 returned about 26% including dividends.(cnbc.com) This already constituted a major, broad-based rebound in tech/growth public equities.
• The strength continued into early 2024. In just the first half of 2024, U.S. stocks rose around 14%, with the move heavily concentrated in five mega‑cap tech names (Nvidia, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, Apple), which drove most of the S&P 500’s gains.(ft.com)
• For full‑year 2024, the S&P 500 returned about 25%, and market commentary describes 2024 as another “remarkable” bull‑market year following 2023’s big gains.(segalmarco.com) The Nasdaq Composite gained about 29.6% in 2024 and the Nasdaq‑100 about 25.9%, continuing an AI‑ and tech‑driven surge; by late 2024 they were near or at record highs.(investor.wedbush.com) Milestone data show the Nasdaq‑100 setting successive new highs throughout 2024, from 17,000 in January to 22,000 by mid‑December.(en.wikipedia.org)

Taken together, this shows that the sustained rebound in public tech/growth equities began in 2023 and was already well underway by early 2024, not just starting in H2 2024 as the normalized prediction states. The timing is therefore significantly too late.

On the venture sentiment lag portion, the picture is more mixed but broadly consistent with the idea that VC activity recovers only after several quarters of better macro and public‑market data:

• 2024 VC funding showed initial stabilization but not a full recovery: global VC investments were up only about 3% vs. 2023 and remained ~55% below 2021 peaks, even as AI deals surged and overall public markets were very strong.(barrons.com) U.S. VC deployment in 2024 grew nearly 30% year‑over‑year to about $209B, largely driven by AI, but fundraising into VC funds hit a five‑year low and exits/IPOs were still muted, implying cautious broader sentiment.(reuters.com)
• A more convincing rebound in venture deployment appears in early 2025: global VC‑ and PE‑backed rounds in H1 2025 reached about $189.9B, up from $152.2B in H1 2024 (≈25% growth).(spglobal.com) Crunchbase data show Q1 2025 as the strongest quarter for startup funding since Q2 2022, with global funding of $113B, up 54% year‑over‑year, and H1 2025 as the strongest half‑year for VC since early 2022, driven largely by AI megadeals.(news.crunchbase.com) That pattern—public markets strong in 2023–24, followed by a more evident VC recovery in 2025—does roughly match his qualitative point that venture investors wait for an extended period of better data before materially increasing deployment.

However, the core, time‑specific claim in the normalized prediction is that public equity markets would begin their sustained rebound in the second half of 2024. Given that a strong, sustained bull market in tech/growth equities was already underway from 2023 onward, with major gains in both 2023 and the first half of 2024, that timing is clearly incorrect. Even though his intuition about VC sentiment lagging public markets was directionally reasonable, the central timing call about when the rebound would start is wrong.

On balance, the prediction is therefore best classified as wrong.

It’s too early in the life of the 2018–2022 venture-capital vintages to know whether roughly half of the ~$1T invested will ultimately be lost.

Key points:

1. Fund lifecycles are ~10–12 years. Most VC funds are structured with a 10–12 year term, often with extensions, and exits tend to cluster in the latter half of that period. That means true outcomes (DPI—cash back to investors) are usually only clear a decade or more after the vintage year. (en.wikipedia.org)
   2018 vintage funds are only ~7 years into their life; 2019–2022 vintages are even younger.

2. 2018–2022 vintages are still mid‑cycle, not fully realized. Cambridge Associates’ 2023–2024 benchmark data show that vintages 2014–2022 make up the bulk of VC net asset value and are still being actively invested and written up/down. Calendar‑year 2024 returns for major VC vintages ranged from 0.7% (2018) to 25.3% (2022), and 2016–22 vintages together account for about 80% of index NAV—indicating that much value is still unrealized and subject to future exits and revaluations, not final losses. (cambridgeassociates.com)

3. Distributions have been weak, but that reflects timing, not final loss. Cambridge Associates notes that since 2022, capital calls have exceeded distributions and distribution yields have been low for several years, reflecting a poor exit environment (slow IPOs, fewer M&A deals) rather than a completed loss of capital. (cambridgeassociates.com) This supports the idea that the "cycle" Chamath refers to is still in progress.

4. The $1T premise is broadly right, but we lack loss estimates. Contemporary analyses note that VCs deployed $600–675B in 2021 alone and over $400B in 2022, easily pushing total global VC deployment over ~$1T across the 2018–2022 period. (forbes.com) However, no credible, comprehensive study yet estimates ultimate loss of paid‑in capital for those vintages; we mostly see mark‑downs, down rounds, and anecdotal high‑profile write‑offs, not a bottom‑line figure like “$500–700B permanently destroyed.”

Because (a) VC funds from 2018–2022 are still within a normal 10+ year realization window, (b) a large share of their NAV has not yet been exited, and (c) there is no reliable aggregate estimate of eventual capital loss versus paid‑in capital, Chamath’s specific quantitative prediction (that ~$500B from 2018–22, and ~$600–700B including older vintages, will ultimately be lost) cannot yet be validated or falsified. The correct classification today is therefore **“inconclusive (too early).”

Jason said in November 2022 that we were in the “end game” of the macro mess and likely had about two to four more quarters of choppiness before conditions improved.

From late 2022 through about mid‑2023, conditions were indeed choppy:

• The Fed kept hiking rates aggressively from 4% in November 2022 up to 5.25–5.50% by July 2023, then effectively paused further hikes, which fits the idea of being in the late phase of the tightening cycle.【0search19】
• Regional bank failures in March 2023 (SVB, Signature etc.) created a serious bout of financial stress, consistent with ongoing market and macro volatility in that window.【1search13】

By mid‑to‑late 2023, there were clear signs of improvement:

• Inflation, which had peaked around 9.1% in June 2022, fell steadily; the year‑over‑year CPI rate declined from 6.5% in December 2022 to about 3% by June 2023, and average annual inflation dropped from 8.0% in 2022 to 4.1% in 2023.【2search2】【2search7】
• The S&P 500 exited its bear market on June 8, 2023, after rising 20% above its October 2022 low, and went on to return about 24% for full‑year 2023, widely described as a new bull market and a strong recovery from 2022’s losses.【0search20】【4search0】【4search2】
• Real U.S. GDP growth improved to about 2.5% in 2023 versus 1.9% in 2022, while unemployment stayed low around 3.5–3.8%, indicating macro resilience rather than continued deterioration.【1search5】【3search2】

Counting from Q4 2022, Jason’s “2–4 quarters of choppiness” points to roughly Q2–Q3 2023 as the point where things should start to look better. The data show that inflation had materially cooled, the Fed was at or near the end of its hiking cycle, and equities had transitioned into a strong bull market by that time. While not every macro risk disappeared, the overall direction of conditions clearly improved within his predicted 2–4‑quarter window.

Given this, the prediction that late‑2022 conditions would stay rough for a few more quarters and then improve is broadly right.