Trump's market impact: Bitcoin, M&A, IPOs + transition picks; Polymarket CEO raided by FBI

The prediction is explicitly long‑dated: Chamath says that at some point in his lifetime Bitcoin will become “an independent asset and a non‑speculative store of value.” As of 30 November 2025:

• Bitcoin is still widely characterized as a volatile, high‑risk asset with large drawdowns and strong correlation to broader risk‑on sentiment and tech/growth equities, not as a stable monetary reserve asset.
• However, the prediction concerns a state that may or may not occur at any time in the remaining decades of his life. There is no specified deadline (e.g., by 2030), so the fact that it has not happened yet does not falsify the claim.

Since the timeframe extends indefinitely into the rest of Chamath Palihapitiya’s life, and that period has certainly not expired, we cannot yet determine whether Bitcoin will eventually meet his criterion of being a non‑speculative, reserve‑like asset.

Therefore, the correct classification as of now is: inconclusive (too early to tell).

The prediction ties a vague, perception‑based condition to a specific market outcome:

If, by some point in 2025, it looks like President Trump’s actions cannot course‑correct U.S. inflation or the deficit, then public markets will go massively risk‑off.

To score it, we’d need (a) a clear point in 2025 when markets broadly concluded Trump couldn’t fix inflation/deficits, and (b) a resulting, durable shift to a risk‑off regime across major risk assets.

1. Macroeconomic backdrop in 2025

• Trump is in his second term starting Jan 20, 2025, after winning the 2024 election. (en.wikipedia.org)
• Inflation: After the April 2, 2025 “Liberation Day” tariff shock, April CPI came in at 2.3% year‑over‑year, the lowest since 2021, defying fears of an immediate inflation spike. (abc7.com) By September 2025, headline CPI was about 3.0% YoY, with core inflation also around 3.0%. (m.economictimes.com) Forecasts and commentary did warn tariffs could push inflation toward ~4% and stall disinflation, but that’s still within a moderate range rather than an obvious “inflation is out of control” scenario. (uobgroup.com)
• Deficit: The FY 2025 federal deficit was about $1.8 trillion, essentially unchanged from FY 2024, with debt roughly the size of the economy and projected to exceed its WWII‑era record as a share of GDP. Net interest on the debt topped $1 trillion for the first time. (crfb.org) That clearly signals no meaningful fiscal improvement, but large deficits and debt warnings pre‑date Trump’s second term, so it’s hard to identify a new, 2025‑specific “realization” that his actions cannot fix the problem.

In other words, deficits stayed very large and inflation hovered around 2–3% with some upward tariff pressure. This is concerning but not an unambiguous “macro has broken and Trump obviously cannot course‑correct” moment.

2. Market behavior in 2025

• April 2025 crash: Trump’s sweeping "Liberation Day" tariffs (10% baseline on almost all imports plus much higher country‑specific rates) triggered a sharp global selloff described as the 2025 stock market crash. Major U.S. indices dropped roughly 10%+ in early April, and it was the largest global decline since the 2020 COVID crash. (en.wikipedia.org) This is clearly a massively risk‑off episode, but it was tightly linked to tariff/trade‑war and recession fears rather than a discrete realization about inflation or the long‑term deficit.
• Rapid recovery and new highs: After tariff walk‑backs and policy adjustments, markets rebounded. By May–June 2025, the S&P 500 and Nasdaq had turned positive for the year and reached new all‑time highs by June 27, 2025. (en.wikipedia.org) By late November 2025, the S&P 500 was up roughly 12–16% year‑to‑date, with strategists projecting further gains into 2026 on the back of strong earnings and AI‑driven optimism. (reuters.com) That is a classic risk‑on environment, not a sustained, structurally risk‑off regime.
• Crypto: Bitcoin and crypto behaved like high‑beta risk assets—plunging during tariff scares in Q1–Q2 2025 and again in November 2025, when Bitcoin fell from over $120,000 to the low $80,000s, wiping out more than $1 trillion in value. (thecoinrepublic.com) But these swings coincided with policy shocks and speculative excess, not with a clearly identifiable, market‑wide conclusion that Trump had definitively failed on inflation or the deficit.

3. Why the outcome is hard to judge against his condition

• The antecedent is vague and unobservable: “when it looks like Trump’s actions are not going to be able to course‑correct inflation or the deficit” is not tied to a specific, observable threshold (e.g., inflation above X%, deficit above Y%, ratings downgrade, failed fiscal package). Analysts have warned all year that debt is unsustainable and tariffs are risky, but similar warnings existed before 2025. There is no discrete, widely recognized 2025 moment where markets re‑priced on the view that Trump cannot fix inflation/deficits.
• Risk‑off episodes do occur, but they are short‑lived and clearly driven by other triggers—mainly the Liberation Day tariff shock and subsequent trade/AI bubble worries. Markets then revert to a strong risk‑on stance with new highs and double‑digit equity gains for 2025, despite continuing fiscal concerns and only modestly contained inflation.
• Because the condition is not clearly met, we cannot cleanly say “the condition happened but his consequence didn’t” (which would make the prediction straightforwardly wrong). Instead, we have:
  • Persistent large deficits and moderate inflation,
  • Ongoing debate about whether Trump’s mix of tariffs, spending, and tax plans will worsen or mitigate those issues, and
  • Markets that oscillate between brief risk‑off shocks and an overall bullish trend.

Given this, the prediction is not cleanly confirmed (no lasting, deficit/inflation‑driven shift to a massively risk‑off regime) but also not cleanly falsified, because the triggering condition is so subjective and never clearly, uniquely realized.

Bottom line:

Deficits remain huge and inflation is sticky but moderate, while 2025 markets are, on net, strongly risk‑on. The specific conditional link Chamath asserted—“once markets see Trump can’t fix inflation/deficits, they’ll flip massively risk‑off”—cannot be clearly tested with available data, so the outcome of this prediction is best classified as ambiguous, not definitively right or wrong.

As of November 30, 2025, it’s too early to determine whether Chamath’s conditional prediction is right or wrong.

1. The conditional hasn’t played out yet

• He conditioned the outcome on the U.S. running budget deficits of about 8% of GDP for 4–6 consecutive years starting around 2024. That would roughly cover 2024–2028/2030.
• Actual and projected deficits so far are very high but below 8%: CBO and related analyses show deficits of about 6.3% of GDP in 2023, an estimated 6.7% in 2024, and around 6.1–6.2% projected for 2025.(americanactionforum.org) Reuters’ report on the finalized FY 2025 budget puts the deficit at about 5.9% of GDP.(reuters.com)
• CBO’s baseline outlook through the 2030s projects deficits generally in the 5–7% of GDP range, rising to roughly 6.9% of GDP by 2034, not a clearly sustained 8% for several straight years—though future policy changes could alter that.(crfb.org)
• Because we are only ~1–2 years into that 4–6 year window, we don’t yet know if the U.S. will actually run 8%-of-GDP deficits for that long.

2. The interest-rate outcome window is also still open

• Chamath’s claim was that if those ~8% deficits persist for 4–6 years, then the 10‑year Treasury yield will be around 7–8% during that period.
• So far, the 10‑year yield has stayed much lower. Fed data and market trackers put the 10‑year around 4.0–4.1% in late November 2025,(tradingeconomics.com) and analysis from T. Rowe Price notes a recent peak near 4.79% on January 14, 2025, still well below 7–8%.(troweprice.com)
• However, the prediction is about yields sometime during the full 4–6 year span, not specifically by 2025. Future rate spikes (or policy shifts) between 2026–2030 could still move the 10‑year into his 7–8% range.

Because:

• we do not yet know whether the U.S. will actually maintain ~8% of GDP deficits for 4–6 years, and
• we still have several years in the stated window during which the 10‑year yield could, in principle, reach 7–8%,

there isn’t enough information yet to classify the prediction as right or wrong. The appropriate status as of now is: inconclusive (too early to tell).

As of 30 November 2025, the core condition of the prediction has not yet been met, but it still could be within the current Congress/Trump term.

Key points:

• FIT21 itself was never enacted. It passed the House in May 2024 but died in the 118th Congress without becoming law. (jonesday.com)
• In the 119th Congress, House Republicans advanced a successor bill, the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act of 2025 (H.R. 3633, the “CLARITY Act”), which explicitly builds on and refines FIT21 to establish a crypto market‑structure regime and divide jurisdiction between the CFTC and SEC over digital commodities vs. securities. (congress.gov) It passed the House on July 17, 2025, but as of late November 2025 it has only been received and referred in the Senate and has not been voted on there or sent to the president, so it is not law yet. (congress.gov)
• The GENIUS Act, a major crypto bill focused on stablecoin regulation, was enacted and signed by President Trump on July 18, 2025, but it addresses payment stablecoins, not the broader commodity–security classification problem for all digital assets that FIT21/CLARITY target. (en.wikipedia.org)
• Separately, Gary Gensler is no longer SEC chair; he was replaced by Paul Atkins in April 2025, and the SEC is developing its own “token taxonomy” guidance. (en.wikipedia.org) This shift supports the spirit of Sacks’s claim that the Gensler era is ending, but it does not satisfy the specific prediction that Congress will enact a FIT21‑like market‑structure law.

Because the 119th Congress and Trump’s term continue into 2026, there is still time for CLARITY or similar legislation to be enacted. At present, therefore, the prediction is not yet fulfilled nor definitively falsified, so the status is best characterized as inconclusive (too early).

Chamath’s prediction covered two linked claims for H1 2025: (1) tech-related M&A would stay “pretty subdued” with no wave of “crazy” mega-deals, and (2) only a small number of big, well-known private tech companies would IPO.

1. Tech M&A was not subdued and did see a wave of large deals
Multiple data sets and industry reports show that, by mid‑2025, tech M&A was running hot, not subdued:

• Corum Group’s H1 2025 tech M&A index reports 3,113 tech M&A deals vs 2,296 in H1 2024 (+36% volume) and deal value up 40% YoY, with megadeals ($1B+) rising from 31 to 40 in H1 2025. This is explicitly described as a “surge” in tech M&A. (corumgroup.com)
• A technology M&A outlook summarizing PwC data notes that in H1 2025 technology accounted for 78% of TMT deal volume and 83% of TMT deal value, describing the sector as leading a broader M&A boom. (legacyadvisors.io)
• Mergermarket data (via CNBC) shows that while global deal count hit a 20‑year low, total M&A value in H1 2025 was about $2T, up 25% YoY, explicitly “buoyed by a flurry of mega deals across U.S. tech, Chinese banking and Japan’s auto sector.” (cnbc.com)
• Dealogic data reported by FastBull indicates 17,528 global M&A deals in H1 2025 vs 20,583 a year earlier, but overall value up 26%, driven by a 62% surge in deals over $10B by June 27, 2025. (fastbull.com)
• A CB Insights / EquityZen “State of Tech Exits H1’25” summary describes “record-breaking M&A in AI”, highlighting landmark deals such as OpenAI’s $6.5B acquisition of Io and Databricks’ $1B acquisition of Neon, and characterizing H1 2025 tech M&A as unusually strong rather than quiet. (crowdfundinsider.com)

Collectively, these sources show that H1 2025 featured a high volume and value of tech deals and a sharp jump in large/mega transactions, including in U.S. tech, which is the opposite of “pretty subdued” or “no crazy M&A deals that everybody is expecting.” On the M&A dimension, his prediction was clearly falsified.

2. Big‑name tech IPOs: window opening, but still a limited set of large unicorn listings
On IPOs, the picture is more mixed and actually closer to what he described:

• EY’s Global IPO data for H1 2025 show 539 IPOs worldwide raising $61.4B, with the U.S. leading at 109 IPOs, its busiest first half since 2021, but still far from 2021’s frenzy. (proactiveinvestors.com)
• A CB Insights / EquityZen "Tech Exits H1’25" report explicitly says the tech IPO market remained muted in H1’25, even as it notes that high-profile unicorn exits like CoreWeave’s Q1 2025 IPO were important outliers. (crowdfundinsider.com)
• Stripe and Databricks—the exact scale of companies Chamath alluded to—remained private as of late 2025. Stripe is still not publicly traded and continues to handle liquidity via large tender offers rather than an IPO, explicitly noted as delaying IPO plans. (fool.com) Databricks likewise has major product and partnership announcements in 2025 but no public listing. (en.wikipedia.org)
• That said, several large and well-known tech/fintech/crypto companies did complete IPOs in H1 2025, including:
  • CoreWeave, an Nvidia‑backed AI cloud provider, which went public on March 28, 2025, raising about $1.5B at roughly $19–23B valuation, widely described as the largest U.S. tech IPO since 2021. (en.wikipedia.org)
  • SailPoint, an identity‑security software company returning to public markets, which raised about $1.38B at a valuation above $12B in its February 2025 Nasdaq IPO. (investors.com)
  • eToro, the social trading platform, which listed on Nasdaq in mid‑May 2025, raising roughly $310–620M at a valuation around $5.5–5.6B, and was billed as a major fintech IPO. (coindesk.com)
  • Circle Internet Group, issuer of the USDC stablecoin, which listed on the NYSE on June 4, 2025; underwriters and company disclosures indicate around $1.1–1.2B in proceeds and a multibillion‑dollar valuation. (circle.com)
  • Chime, a prominent U.S. neobank, which priced its IPO on June 11, 2025 and began trading June 12, raising about $864M and valuing the company at roughly $11.6B. (reuters.com)

Relative to the huge backlog of late‑stage tech unicorns, this is a short list of major IPOs rather than a broad rush of Stripe/Databricks‑scale giants. Independent analyses consistently describe H1 2025 tech IPO activity as cautious or "muted" compared with past booms, even while acknowledging that a few high‑profile deals signaled that the window was beginning to reopen. (crowdfundinsider.com)
So his qualitative call that “not a lot” of the very biggest private tech names would go public in H1 2025 is directionally reasonable, even though more sizable IPOs happened than a strict pessimist might have expected.

Overall assessment
Because the M&A portion of Chamath’s forecast was decisively wrong—H1 2025 tech M&A featured a sharp resurgence and a surge in large and mega‑deals rather than being “pretty subdued”—the combined prediction did not come true, even though his skepticism about a broad wave of mega‑unicorn IPOs was closer to how H1 2025 actually played out.

Therefore, the best overall verdict on this prediction is: wrong.

Evidence from 2025 shows that, under Trump’s second administration, the U.S. government did actively pursue structural antitrust remedies against Google, matching Sacks’s prediction that breakup efforts would be “pursued in the next administration in some capacity or at least investigated.”

1. Search monopoly case (filed 2020, remedies pursued under Trump 2.0)

   • The DOJ’s 2020 search case against Google (United States v. Google LLC, D.D.C.) resulted in an August 5, 2024 ruling that Google is an illegal monopolist in search.(en.wikipedia.org)
   • In Trump’s second term, the Trump Justice Department explicitly reaffirmed Biden‑era proposals to break up Google, including forcing divestiture of the Chrome browser and banning default‑search payment deals that entrench Google’s dominance. This was reported in early March 2025 as “the first significant antitrust move under Trump’s new administration,” and was framed as a continued aggressive push to dismantle parts of Google.(washingtonpost.com)
   • Although the final September 2, 2025 remedies order in the search case stopped short of ordering an immediate breakup and instead imposed strong conduct and data‑sharing remedies, those court‑ordered remedies followed a 15‑day remedies trial in May 2025 where DOJ had argued for significant structural measures.(justice.gov)

2. Ad‑tech monopoly case (filed 2023, structural breakup remedies pushed in 2025)

   • In a separate DOJ case over Google’s advertising technology (filed 2023), a federal court on April 17, 2025 found Google had illegally monopolized key ad‑tech markets.(en.wikipedia.org)
   • Following that liability ruling, the DOJ in May 2025 formally proposed structural divestitures—forcing Google to sell its AdX ad exchange and DFP publisher ad‑server business—arguing that “nothing short of a structural divestment” would restore competition.(cnbc.com)
   • These proposed remedies were filed and pursued during Trump’s 2025–2028 term and are classic examples of antitrust actions specifically aimed at breaking up parts of Google.

Taken together, Trump’s DOJ not only continued but affirmatively pursued structural breakup remedies against Google in multiple ongoing antitrust cases during 2025. Even though those suits pre‑dated the administration and the ultimate remedies are still being litigated or appealed, the core condition of Sacks’s prediction—serious, government‑driven antitrust efforts in the next Trump administration to structurally break up Google—has already been met. Accordingly, the prediction is best classified as right.

Donald Trump was inaugurated for his second (non‑consecutive) term as the 47th U.S. president on January 20, 2025. (en.wikipedia.org) The prediction explicitly concerns what the federal government will look like within 2–4 years of his taking office, so the relevant evaluation window runs roughly from January 20, 2027 to January 20, 2029.

As of the current date, November 30, 2025, less than one year of that term has elapsed. While Trump has already taken notable steps aimed at reshaping the federal bureaucracy—such as reinstating and rebranding the former “Schedule F” civil‑service category as “Schedule Policy/Career,” imposing a federal hiring freeze, ordering a full‑time return to in‑person work, and creating a new Department of Government Efficiency to oversee changes across agencies (en.wikipedia.org)—the prediction is about the recognizable end‑state of the government after 2–4 years, not just early moves.

Because the 2–4 year period the predictor specified has not yet passed, we cannot determine whether the federal government will ultimately "look very different" by the end of that window. The outcome could still plausibly validate or falsify the prediction, so at this time it remains too early to judge.

As of 30 November 2025, it is too early to determine whether this prediction is right or wrong.

Key reasons:

1. Timeline explicitly extends to 2026. The prediction describes a target to accomplish this by 2026 (the U.S. 250th anniversary). That deadline is in the future relative to the current date, so we cannot yet judge success or failure.
2. Outcome depends on future administrative actions. Whether a Trump administration (if in office and empowered to act) will, in practice, substantially dismantle parts of the federal apparatus using the mechanisms described (radical transparency, case-law-driven rollbacks, etc.) can only be evaluated after the 2026 target period has passed.

Because the core claim is about what will be attempted and accomplished by 2026, and we are still before that deadline, the correct classification is "inconclusive (too early)".