E50: Crypto investing deep dive, Facebook's whistleblower fallout, Chappelle's new special & more

Available historical data show that Solana has not yet reached #3 by total cryptocurrency market capitalization, but the prediction did not specify any time limit, so it still could occur in the future.

Key points:

• Around the time of the podcast (late 2021), Solana climbed from the #8 region up to #4. For example, on Nov. 7, 2021, Solana surpassed Cardano and Tether to become the fourth‑largest cryptocurrency by market cap, behind only Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Binance Coin. (cointelegraph.com)

• In later bull runs, multiple independent reports again describe Solana flipping BNB and/or XRP to become #4, not #3. Cointelegraph (Feb. 13, 2024) notes Solana overtaking BNB to become the fourth‑largest cryptocurrency by market cap. (cointelegraph.com) KuCoin and several other outlets report the same "4th largest" milestone in mid and late 2024 as SOL’s market cap surged. (kucoin.com) Coin Republic likewise describes Solana dethroning BNB to become the fourth‑largest crypto in November 2024. (thecoinrepublic.com)

• As of late 2025, aggregate rankings of top cryptocurrencies by market cap still place Solana below third place. A late‑October 2025 snapshot (based on CoinMarketCap data) lists Bitcoin #1, Ethereum #2, Tether #3, BNB #4, XRP #5, and Solana #6. (es.wikipedia.org) Current live data from CoinMarketCap and similar trackers around November 2025 show SOL typically in the #6–#7 range, not near #3. (coinmarketcap.com)

• Separately, institutional analyses (e.g., Franklin Templeton’s note) explicitly talk about Solana’s potential to become the third‑largest crypto asset, indicating that this is still viewed as a forward‑looking scenario rather than something that has already happened. (crypto.news)

Because:

1. The prediction’s condition (Solana reaching approximately #3 overall) has not occurred so far, and
2. The prediction is open‑ended with no deadline ("at some future point"),

we cannot say it is definitively right or wrong as of November 30, 2025. It remains unfulfilled but still possible, so the fairest assessment is "inconclusive (too early)" rather than "wrong."

The prediction was that, following early-October 2021 comments from Jerome Powell and Gary Gensler indicating the U.S. would not ban crypto, the SEC would in the ensuing years approve one or more crypto-based ETFs (including a potential Grayscale conversion) as simpler on-ramps for U.S. investors.

That has happened:

• In October 2021, shortly after those comments, the SEC allowed the first U.S. Bitcoin futures ETFs, such as ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF (BITO), to begin trading, marking the first SEC-approved crypto-based ETFs in the U.S.
• On January 10, 2024, the SEC approved multiple spot Bitcoin ETFs, including Grayscale’s conversion of GBTC into a spot Bitcoin ETF, along with products from BlackRock, Fidelity, and others. These are explicitly designed as regulated, simpler on-ramps for U.S. investors to gain Bitcoin exposure through traditional brokerage accounts.
• In 2024, the SEC also moved to approve spot Ethereum ETFs, further reinforcing the broader trend of SEC-approved crypto-based ETFs as mainstream access vehicles.

Because the SEC has in fact approved multiple crypto-based ETFs, including the specific Grayscale conversion mentioned, within a few years of the 2021 comments, this prediction is right.

Available data show that the total cryptocurrency market capitalization:

• Was around $2–3 trillion in late 2021 and briefly hit about $3 trillion in November 2021, consistent with the context of Chamath’s comment. (fortune.com)
• Reached new all‑time highs in 2024–2025, with reports of the total crypto market cap around $3.8T in July 2025 and roughly $4T in Q3 2025, surpassing the prior ~$3T peak from 2021. (cointelegraph.com)
• Was about $4.21T when Bitcoin hit an all‑time high above $125,000 in October 2025, and around $3.5T in mid‑November 2025 during a consolidation phase. (investopedia.com)

There is no evidence that the global crypto market cap has reached $6 trillion, let alone $10 trillion, by November 30, 2025; the documented highs are in the ~$4T range. (cryptorank.io)

However, Chamath’s prediction as phrased (“will grow over time to roughly $6 trillion and then to roughly $10 trillion”) does not include a clear time horizon. Since crypto market cap has grown beyond the ~$3T level he referenced but has not yet had enough time (or a specified deadline) to definitively prove or disprove eventual moves to $6T and $10T, the claim cannot be judged fully right or wrong as of 2025.

Because the numerical targets have not been reached but the prediction had no explicit time limit, the fairest assessment today is: too early to tell → inconclusive.

By late 2025, cryptocurrencies clearly remain a persistent asset class and have not been banned out of existence or disappeared.

Key checks:

1. Total crypto market value still in the trillions
   As of 2025, the global cryptocurrency market capitalization (including Bitcoin, Ethereum, and many others) continues to fluctuate in the trillions of USD, not at or near zero. Major market trackers (e.g., CoinMarketCap, CoinGecko) show a large, active market with substantial daily trading volume and thousands of listed assets.

2. Ongoing institutional adoption
   Since 2021 there has been more institutionalization, not less:

   • Multiple spot Bitcoin ETFs and other crypto-based exchange‑traded products have launched in major markets (e.g., in the U.S. and Europe), aimed specifically at institutional and mainstream investors.
   • Large financial institutions (global banks, asset managers, payment processors, and custodians) continue to offer crypto trading, custody, or related services; several have dedicated digital‑asset divisions.
   • Public companies continue to hold Bitcoin and other cryptoassets on their balance sheets and to provide crypto‑related products to clients.

3. Regulation instead of prohibition
   While some jurisdictions (e.g., China) have imposed very strict bans on certain crypto activities, no coordinated global ban has wiped out the asset class. In major financial centers (U.S., EU, U.K., etc.), authorities have moved toward a mix of regulation, enforcement actions, and licensing regimes rather than outright elimination. Crypto markets, exchanges, and DeFi protocols remain widely accessible (within varying regulatory constraints).

4. Integration into the broader financial system
   Cryptocurrencies are now embedded in:

   • Regulated exchanges, brokerages, and fintech apps.
   • Payment and remittance services using stablecoins and other tokens.
   • On‑chain financial infrastructure used by both retail and institutional participants.

Given that, several years after the October 2021 prediction, crypto clearly has not been wiped out and remains a substantial, institutionalized part of the global financial system, Chamath’s qualitative claim that it is “here to stay” is borne out by events so far.

Therefore, the best classification is: right.

It’s too early to determine whether this prediction is right or wrong.

Chamath’s claim (paraphrased) is that over the 20–30 years after 2021 (i.e., roughly 2041–2051), about one full year of today’s world GDP (he references roughly $70 trillion in U.S. boomer wealth) will be transferred to about 100 million Americans via inheritance and related mechanisms.

Key points:

• The time window of the prediction runs approximately from 2021–2041 (20 years) out to 2021–2051 (30 years). As of today (late 2025), we are only about 4 years into that period, so the transfer process is nowhere near complete.
• Independent estimates of the so‑called “Great Wealth Transfer” in the U.S. (intergenerational transfer from Baby Boomers and older generations) do suggest very large magnitudes on the same order of magnitude Chamath mentions:
  • Cerulli Associates has estimated over $68 trillion will be transferred in the U.S. from 2018–2045.
  • Other analyses and press coverage commonly cite figures in the $70–80+ trillion range for U.S. intergenerational wealth transfer over the coming decades, roughly matching his order‑of‑magnitude framing.
• However, these are forward-looking projections, not completed historical data. The full 20–30‑year period he specified has not elapsed, and we do not yet have final empirical data on:
  • The total actual amount ultimately transferred.
  • The number of distinct recipients (whether it ends up around 100 million people in the U.S.).

Because the prediction is explicitly about what will happen over the next 20–30 years from 2021, and we are still near the beginning of that timeline, it cannot yet be judged as correct or incorrect. The most that can be said today is that:

• The scale he referenced (tens of trillions of dollars, around a year of world GDP) is broadly consistent with mainstream projections of U.S. intergenerational wealth transfer.
• But whether the actual realized transfer by ~2041–2051 matches his specific framing ("one entire turn of the world's GDP" to "100 million people in America") remains unverifiable at this time.

Therefore, the appropriate status is “inconclusive (too early)”, not “right” or “wrong.”

Evidence since October 2021 shows Meta has not managed to launch and sustain a major, successful crypto initiative:

1. Diem (Libra) was formally shut down. In January–February 2022 the Diem Association announced it was selling its assets/technology to Silvergate and would wind down operations, ending Meta’s long‑running stablecoin effort without a public launch or user adoption. (coindesk.com)

2. Novi, Meta’s crypto wallet, was ended. Novi ran only as a small pilot and never reached broad consumer scale; Meta announced it would shut down the wallet on September 1, 2022, telling users to withdraw balances and discontinuing both the standalone app and WhatsApp integration. (engadget.com) This is not consistent with a “really compelling” or majorly successful crypto product.

3. NFT / “digital collectibles” features were short‑lived and also shut down. Meta launched NFT support (“digital collectibles”) on Instagram and Facebook in 2022, allowing wallet connections and NFT display/minting. (about.fb.com) By March–April 2023 Meta announced it was winding down these NFT features across both platforms, with support ending after less than a year and existing posts losing blockchain metadata. (coindesk.com) Again, this does not match a durable, large‑scale success.

4. Current efforts are exploratory, not launched successes. As of 2025, reports indicate Meta is only exploring integrations of third‑party stablecoins like USDC/USDT for creator payouts and small payments, holding preliminary talks with infrastructure partners and regulators. (timesofindia.indiatimes.com) There is no evidence yet of a widely adopted, standout crypto product in production.

Across more than four years since the October 2021 prediction, every notable Meta crypto initiative (Diem, Novi, NFTs) has been canceled or wound down, and no new major, clearly successful crypto project has replaced them. While Meta could still succeed in crypto in the more distant future, as of late 2025 Chamath’s claim that Facebook/Meta would not land a really compelling, major crypto project has been borne out by events, so the prediction is best scored as right on the available record.

Sacks predicted that after the Frances Haugen whistleblower episode in October 2021, government authorities would bring formal actions against Facebook/Meta and that these would lead to settlements in which Facebook paid fines.

Evidence since then supports this:

• Shortly after Haugen’s disclosures, Facebook told investors it was already facing “government investigations” related to a former employee’s allegations and release of internal company documents about its algorithms, advertising, and content enforcement, confirming the regulatory machinery had been set in motion. (ktvz.com)

• In June 2022, the U.S. Department of Justice filed a lawsuit and simultaneously entered into a court‑approved settlement with Meta over discriminatory housing ads, under the Fair Housing Act. As part of the final judgment in United States v. Meta Platforms, Meta agreed to change its ad‑delivery algorithms and pay a civil penalty of $115,054, the statutory maximum—a clear example of a government enforcement action ending in a settlement and fine. (justice.gov)

• In 2024, Texas sued Meta over unlawful capture and use of Texans’ biometric data (facial recognition on Facebook photos) and, in July 2024, reached a $1.4 billion settlement, the largest privacy settlement ever obtained by a single U.S. state. This is a classic government action (state AG enforcement) resolved by a monetary settlement paid by Meta. (texasattorneygeneral.gov)

• European regulators have likewise brought multiple post‑2021 actions resulting in large fines against Meta: in May 2023 the Irish Data Protection Commission, following a binding European Data Protection Board decision, imposed a €1.2 billion GDPR fine on Meta Ireland for unlawful EU‑US data transfers; in December 2024 the same regulator imposed another €251 million fine over the 2018 Facebook data breach. These are formal regulatory actions culminating in financial penalties. (edpb.europa.eu)

• In April 2025, the European Commission fined Meta €200 million under the Digital Markets Act for its “consent or pay” ad‑funding model—again a government enforcement action with a substantial fine. (pcgamer.com)

Meta’s own summarized history of legal actions now lists multiple post‑2021 government cases and resulting fines or settlements, including the DOJ housing‑ads settlement, major GDPR fines, and the Texas biometric settlement. (en.wikipedia.org)

These developments match Sacks’ forecast in all material respects: there were indeed new and escalated government actions after the Haugen episode, several of which ended in formal settlements or regulatory decisions forcing Meta/Facebook to pay monetary penalties to resolve them. Accordingly, the prediction is best classified as right.

• By late 2023–2024, major centralized platforms like Facebook/Instagram, X (Twitter), YouTube and others became subject to the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA), which imposes strict content-related obligations: removal of illegal content, mitigation of systemic risks to civic discourse and public security, transparency on algorithms, and the threat of fines up to 6% of global revenue for non‑compliance. These rules first applied to designated Very Large Online Platforms (VLOPs) from August 2023 and to essentially all platforms from February 17, 2024, with enforcement by the European Commission and national regulators. (commission.europa.eu) This matches Friedberg’s “regulatory hammer” scenario of governments telling platforms what they can and cannot make available.

• After the October 2021 episode date, several Twitter/Facebook‑like decentralized alternatives either emerged or significantly matured:

• Bluesky / AT Protocol – A decentralized social network and protocol originally incubated inside Twitter; the AT Protocol spec was first released in 2022, the Bluesky app hit app stores in 2023, and the network opened to the general public in February 2024. It offers a feed-based experience very similar to X/Twitter and is explicitly designed as a distributed social protocol. (en.wikipedia.org)
• Farcaster / Warpcast – Farcaster is a decentralized social protocol (founded 2020) whose main client, Warpcast, launched in February 2023. Warpcast offers short posts (~320 characters), follows, likes, and reposts—directly comparable to Twitter/X or Facebook’s feed—while user identities and data live on a shared decentralized protocol rather than a single company’s servers. (theblock.co)
• Nostr – An open, censorship‑resistant decentralized social protocol using public‑key identities and independent “relays” instead of a central platform, explicitly designed to avoid any single entity deciding who can speak or what can be said. It gained notable traction by 2023, with tens of millions of registered users across its ecosystem. (en.wikipedia.org)
• Mastodon (Fediverse) – While Mastodon predates the prediction (launched 2016), it is a decentralized, federated microblogging platform that closely mimics Twitter/X and has seen renewed surges in adoption as an alternative social graph. (en.wikipedia.org)

• These systems all provide similar discovery and access use cases (feeds, follows, discovery algorithms, public posting) to Facebook/Twitter‑style platforms, but operate on decentralized protocols or federated architectures where control is spread among many servers or protocol participants rather than a single intermediary.

• We cannot cleanly prove that regulation alone caused their emergence—other forces like ownership changes at Twitter/X and broader interest in Web3 also mattered. But Friedberg’s qualitative prediction was that heavy regulatory pressure on centralized platforms would be accompanied by the emergence of alternative, more decentralized platforms serving similar social‑discovery functions. That is exactly what happened in the 2022–2025 period.

Given that (1) strong content/speech regulations have in fact been imposed on major centralized platforms, and (2) multiple decentralized alternatives with comparable social‑discovery roles have emerged or significantly grown since the prediction, the forecast is best judged as right in its main thrust, even if the causal chain is not perfectly isolatable.

Why it’s not clearly right or wrong (yet)

1. Regulatory "whack‑a‑mole" is largely borne out.
Since 2021 there’s been a surge of attempts to curb harmful or addictive social feeds, especially for minors:

• The EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA) imposes risk‑assessment and mitigation duties on very large platforms, including obligations around recommender systems and addictive design, fully applying to all platforms from February 2024. (commission.europa.eu)
• Multiple U.S. states have passed laws targeting “addictive feeds” or limiting minors’ social‑media use (New York’s SAFE for Kids Act, California SB 976, Virginia SB 854, Florida’s HB3), though several have been delayed or challenged in court. (en.wikipedia.org)
• Other countries (e.g., Denmark, Australia) are moving to ban or heavily restrict children’s access to social media. (apnews.com)

At the same time, when one outlet is constrained, others quickly fill the gap. After India’s 2020 TikTok ban, short‑video demand shifted to Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, and local clones like Moj and Josh; surveys suggest a majority of former TikTok users there migrated to Reels, and India became a huge market for Instagram and YouTube. (time.com) This is a clear whack‑a‑mole pattern consistent with Friedberg’s mechanism claim.

2. Emotionally arousing content (esp. short‑form video) is still booming.
Short‑form, highly engaging video—arguably the archetype of “emotionally stimulating” content—has grown sharply since 2021:

• TikTok, Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, and Facebook Reels all report massive user bases and view counts (e.g., Shorts and Reels with hundreds of billions of monthly or daily views, Reels and Shorts user numbers in the billions). (wiki.tapnex.tech)
• One 2025 compilation estimates the average person spends ~1 hour 16 minutes per day watching short‑form video alone, and short‑form video ad spend is projected to exceed $100B in 2025. (mconverter.eu)
• Reports describe short‑form as “the engine of social media,” with post volumes and engagement still rising year‑over‑year. (influencermarketinghub.com)

So despite regulatory pressure, the ecosystem of emotionally arousing, engagement‑optimized content has not shrunk; in many respects, it has intensified and spread beyond classic social networks.

3. But total time on social media per user has stopped its steady rise, and is now edging down.
Data since the episode aired show a peak and modest decline in average daily social‑media use:

• The "Digital 2024" report (We Are Social / Meltwater) found 5.04B social‑media users and an average of about 2h23m per day, but noted that this was not sharply increasing anymore. (globenewswire.com)
• A 2025 analysis using global usage data reports that average time on social media peaked around 2022 and has fallen about 8–10% by late 2024, to roughly 2h20m per day, with the biggest drop among teens and twenty‑somethings. (edwardconard.com)
• Another 2025 dataset shows a similar pattern: 149 minutes/day in 2022, then down to 146 (2023), 143 (2024), and 141 (2025). (texting.io)

Meanwhile, the number of social‑media users keeps rising and people use more different apps per month, but the per‑user time is no longer monotonically increasing. (globenewswire.com) Some outlets explicitly describe this as “peak social media.” (edwardconard.com)

4. How this maps to Friedberg’s exact claim

He predicted two linked things:

1. Regulation would be whack‑a‑mole, with users shifting to new services.

   • That pattern is strongly supported: regulations are proliferating but are fragmented, often delayed or struck down, focused heavily on minors, and readily routed around by users shifting platforms or formats (as in India’s TikTok experience, and in the rapid rise of Reels/Shorts). (time.com)

2. “At the end of the day” consumers will be “consuming ever more” emotionally arousing digital content despite regulation.

   • On the intensity and availability side, the evidence points in his direction: there is more high‑stimulus, bite‑sized content than ever, and short‑form video dominates attention and ad budgets. (mconverter.eu)
   • On the total time per user side, however, the data show a clear peak around 2022 and a slow decline since, even while regulations have only recently begun to bite. That contradicts a simple “ever more time spent” trajectory, at least so far. (edwardconard.com)
   • The prediction explicitly spans "a few years, maybe a few decades"; four years of mixed data are not enough to decisively confirm or falsify the long‑run “ever more” claim, and it’s unclear whether the recent decline is a blip, a plateau, or a lasting reversal.

Conclusion

• The mechanism Friedberg described—regulation playing whack‑a‑mole while demand for emotionally stimulating content persists and migrates—is strongly supported by events since 2021.
• The quantitative part of his claim—consumers ending up consuming “ever more” of such content—has mixed evidence: the supply and intensity of this content have clearly grown, but average daily social‑media time per user has plateaued or fallen slightly from its peak.
• Given the long time horizon he invoked (“years, maybe decades”) and the conflicting indicators, the prediction is neither clearly fulfilled nor clearly falsified as of late 2025.

Hence the overall judgment: ambiguous.

As of November 30, 2025, Dave Chappelle: The Closer is still available to stream on Netflix’s official site, indicating that Netflix has not removed the special.(netflix.com) Coverage of Netflix controversies and “most controversial series” explicitly notes that, despite intense criticism and calls from advocacy groups to pull the title, The Closer was never removed from the platform.(the-independent.com)

However, the original prediction was probabilistic (“I give it a 50% chance that Netflix takes it down”) and did not specify a time horizon—it referred to removal “at some point in the future.” Since:

1. The event (Netflix taking down The Closer) has not occurred yet, but
2. The prediction only assigned a 50% probability and did not expire by a given date,

we cannot strictly label the forecast as right or wrong from a single outcome at a still-ongoing time horizon. We can say the removal has not happened so far, but we cannot definitively falsify a 50% long-run probability claim with an open-ended future. Therefore, under the given scoring options, the status of the prediction is best classified as inconclusive (too early) rather than right or wrong.

As of November 30, 2025, Dave Chappelle has not launched his own standalone subscription streaming service for comedy. His major releases since 2016 have been through Netflix under a lucrative multi-special deal, including recent specials like The Closer (2021) and The Dreamer (2023), all distributed by Netflix rather than via any Chappelle-owned platform.(en.wikipedia.org) Searches for any Chappelle-branded or Pilot Boy–branded paid streaming service show no evidence of such a product; the only relevant historical reporting concerns him potentially doing a show for existing services like Netflix or Crackle, not building his own service.(digitalmediawire.com) Because the condition of the prediction (“if he were to create his own Netflix”) has never been met, there is no observed subscriber count to compare against the 10 million figure. The prediction is therefore neither confirmed nor falsified by real-world events and must be rated as ambiguous.