E60: The 2021 Bestie Awards PLUS Jack Dorsey starts the Web3 Wars

As of November 30, 2025, Kamala Harris has not become President of the United States, and the United States still has not had any female president.

• Joe Biden was inaugurated as President on January 20, 2021, with Kamala Harris as Vice President.
• Biden remained in office for the duration of his first term through January 20, 2025, without resigning, being removed, or otherwise vacating the office in a way that would have elevated Harris to the presidency.
• The winner of the 2024 U.S. presidential election was Donald Trump, who was inaugurated for another term on January 20, 2025; his vice president is J.D. Vance. Neither is female, and Kamala Harris did not become president at or before that transition.
• There has been no subsequent event (resignation, death, incapacity, impeachment/conviction, etc.) leading to Harris or any other woman assuming the presidency as of the current date.

Therefore, the prediction that Kamala Harris will become the first female President of the United States, likely by succeeding Joe Biden during his first term (and before any other woman becomes president) has not come true by this date and is thus wrong.

Joe Biden served a full term as the 46th president of the United States from January 20, 2021, until his term ended on January 20, 2025, without resigning, being removed, or otherwise leaving office early. (en.wikipedia.org) On January 20, 2025, he left office at the normal constitutional end of his term, and Donald Trump was inaugurated as his successor, not Kamala Harris.

Kamala Harris served as vice president from January 20, 2021, to January 20, 2025, and never held the office of president; afterward she is described in reliable sources as former vice president and 2024 Democratic presidential nominee, not as a former president. (en.wikipedia.org) Since Biden did complete his first term and Harris did not ascend to the presidency before January 2025, Jason Calacanis’s prediction did not come true.

The prediction was that the U.S. FDA would grant authorization/approval for the new oral COVID-19 antiviral pills from Pfizer and Merck by December 31, 2021.

What happened:

• The FDA issued an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for Pfizer’s oral antiviral Paxlovid on December 22, 2021. (fda.gov)
• The FDA issued an EUA for Merck’s oral antiviral molnupiravir on December 23, 2021. (fda.gov)

EUAs are precisely the form of regulatory authorization expected for these COVID-19 treatments at that time, and both were granted well before the December 31, 2021 deadline implied in the normalized prediction.

Because both Pfizer and Merck oral antivirals received FDA authorization by the specified time window, Sacks’s prediction is right.

The prediction was that widespread availability and use of the new oral protease-inhibitor antivirals for COVID-19 (Pfizer’s and Merck’s pills) would effectively end the COVID-19 pandemic during 2022 by preventing large future waves of severe disease.

Key facts:

1. Pfizer’s nirmatrelvir/ritonavir (Paxlovid) received U.S. FDA Emergency Use Authorization on December 22, 2021, and Merck’s molnupiravir on December 23, 2021. Both began wider rollout in 2022, with Paxlovid becoming the dominant oral treatment.
2. Despite availability of these antivirals, large waves of infection and substantial severe disease continued after 2022, driven by Omicron subvariants and later variants:
   • Major Omicron waves occurred in late 2021–2022, followed by additional waves through 2023, with significant hospitalizations and deaths globally and in the U.S., even after Paxlovid was widely used.
   • COVID-19 remained a leading cause of death in the U.S. in 2022 and stayed a significant cause of mortality in 2023, indicating that severe disease was reduced but not prevented to the point of “ending” the pandemic.
3. No major public-health body (WHO, U.S. CDC) declared the pandemic effectively ended in 2022 due to the pills. Instead:
   • The WHO declared in May 2023 that COVID-19 was no longer a Public Health Emergency of International Concern—but emphasized that it remained an ongoing global health issue, not that it had been “ended” by antivirals.
   • The evolving situation has been attributed to a combination of vaccination, prior infections, changing variants, and some use of antivirals—not to pills alone, and certainly not in a way that prevented large subsequent waves.
4. In practice, oral antivirals have been underused relative to their potential (prescribing and access issues, timing of treatment, awareness), limiting their population-level impact. Large waves of infection and notable hospitalization surges have still occurred well after 2022.

Given that:

• 2022 did not see the effective end of the pandemic.
• Large waves and substantial severe disease continued after 2022.
• The oral antivirals helped but did not prevent those waves nor singularly end the pandemic.

The prediction that these pills would effectively end the COVID-19 pandemic during 2022 by preventing large future waves of severe disease is wrong.

Chamath’s claim was that the combined market capitalization of the major U.S. platforms (Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet/Google, Amazon, Meta, etc.) would reach a peak within 1–2 years of December 2021 (so by the end of 2023) and not be exceeded thereafter.

Public data on the so‑called “Magnificent Seven” (Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, Nvidia, Tesla—a superset that includes all of Chamath’s cited platforms) shows the opposite:

• As of November 17, 2023, the Magnificent Seven’s combined market cap was about $11.73 trillion.(mundurek.com) Other analyses put their 2023 peak at around $17.1 trillion in late 2023.(mindmatters.ai) This is roughly the high point within Chamath’s 1–2 year window.
• By July 2024, their combined market cap was already about $15.4 trillion, reflecting further gains after 2023.(investor.wedbush.com)
• By December 2024, Benzinga reports the group at $18.23 trillion, explicitly noting that each of the seven was near or at its own all‑time‑high valuation.(benzinga.com)
• By October 9, 2025, multiple sources put the Magnificent Seven’s combined market cap at a record ~$20.9 trillion, which then climbed to about $22.2 trillion later in 2025—far above any 2023 level.(voronoiapp.com)

Individually, the core platforms Chamath named also hit new record valuations well after 2023:

• Apple reached and then exceeded a $4 trillion market cap for the first time in October 2025.(macrumors.com)
• Microsoft crossed $4 trillion in July 2025 after strong cloud/AI earnings.(cnbc.com)
• Alphabet (Google) is now nearing $4 trillion as well, with its stock at all‑time highs in late 2025.(reuters.com)

On a relative basis, big tech also did not top out and then fade. The Magnificent Seven’s share of the S&P 500’s market cap rose from about 27% at end‑2023 to roughly 37% by Q3 2025, meaning their weight and dominance in the index increased after Chamath’s supposed peak window.(linkedin.com)

Because both the absolute combined market cap and the index share of the large U.S. tech platforms clearly moved to much higher highs in 2024–2025 than in 2023, the forecast that Big Tech’s market cap would peak within a year or two of December 2021 and never surpass that level is incorrect.

On balance, the prediction matches how events unfolded from late 2021 through 2025.

Evidence that the crisis did enter a winding‑down “final phase” after late 2021:

• The World Health Organization declared on May 5, 2023 that COVID‑19 was no longer a Public Health Emergency of International Concern, citing over a year of declining deaths and hospitalizations and noting that this trend had allowed most countries to return to pre‑COVID life. (financialexpress.com)
• The United States ended its federal COVID‑19 national and public‑health emergencies on May 11, 2023, explicitly framing this as a shift away from crisis response to routine management. (cnbc.com)
• By 2024–2025, multiple analyses describe COVID-19 as having become an endemic respiratory virus: in the U.S., annual COVID deaths fell dramatically (from hundreds of thousands in 2020–2021 to under ~50,000 in 2024), and experts now characterize it as a persistent but much lower‑level health threat, comparable to influenza in its typical impact. (washingtonpost.com)

On the disruption side, the world did not return to the generalized, synchronized 2020‑style upheaval (global lockdowns, school closures almost everywhere, and unprecedented travel bans) after late 2021:

• Although major waves (especially Omicron in early 2022) produced record case counts and temporary strain—and some countries such as China imposed severe localized lockdowns like the Shanghai lockdown of spring 2022—these were geographically limited, and most of the world progressively relaxed rather than re‑escalated restrictions after 2021. (en.wikipedia.org) That is consistent with a bumpy “final phase” rather than a return to the earlier global shock.

Regarding his explicit caveat, “Unless something escapes from the lab again”: there is no accepted evidence that any new, distinct lab‑engineered SARS‑CoV‑2 lineage escaped after 2021. Later variants (Omicron sublineages, etc.) are treated in the scientific literature as products of viral evolution in humans, not as separate lab-origin outbreaks. (en.wikipedia.org)

So, even though the final phase was longer and more damaging than many people hoped—2022 still saw substantial additional mortality worldwide—the trajectory from late 2021 onward was indeed a long, uneven wind‑down toward endemicity without a second, globally comparable crisis phase. Under that interpretation, Chamath’s conditional prediction is best classified as right.

Jason framed his prediction as a broad, near‑total political purge: he said the “woke socialist leadership” of San Francisco — explicitly including District Attorney Chesa Boudin — would see “Chesa Boudin and all of these whack jobs…all…get voted out and recalled.”

Parts of this did happen:

• Chesa Boudin was successfully recalled as San Francisco district attorney on June 7, 2022, with 55% voting “yes” on recall, and was replaced by Brooke Jenkins, who then won the November 2022 special election and a full term in 2024.
• Three progressive school board commissioners — Alison Collins, Gabriela López, and Faauuga Moliga — were overwhelmingly recalled in February 2022.
• Progressive supervisor Gordon Mar lost re‑election in 2022 to moderate Joel Engardio, and in 2024 progressive supervisor Dean Preston lost to Bilal Mahmood while Aaron Peskin’s seat went to moderate Danny Sauter.

But Jason’s stronger claim — that essentially all of the “woke socialist” officials would be removed in the ensuing election/recall cycles — did not come true. Several prominent progressives either kept or gained power:

• Progressive supervisor Connie Chan was re‑elected in District 1 in 2024.
• Progressive/left‑leaning incumbents like Myrna Melgar in District 7 also won re‑election in 2024.
• New explicitly progressive or democratic socialist figures, such as Jackie Fielder in District 9 and Chyanne Chen in District 11, were elected to the Board of Supervisors in 2024 and described as major wins for progressives.
• Progressive Shamann Walton remained supervisor for District 10 through this period, with no successful recall removing him from office.

By 2024–25, San Francisco had clearly experienced a backlash against some high‑profile progressive officials (Boudin, school board members, Mar, Preston), but it did not amount to the clean sweep Jason predicted: progressives still held, and in some cases gained, key seats in city government. Because his claim was essentially that all of the “woke socialist” officials would be voted out or recalled, the prediction is best judged as wrong, even though parts of it (notably Boudin’s recall) were accurate.

Evidence shows that after late 2021, U.S. officials and mainstream commentary quickly stopped using “transitory” as an active label for ongoing inflation and instead talked about the word itself in the past tense.

• In late November and early December 2021, Fed Chair Jerome Powell and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen both publicly said it was time to “retire” the term transitory for inflation, signaling an official abandonment of the word as a descriptor of current price pressures.(fortune.com) Media coverage at the time framed this as officials no longer viewing inflation as “transitory.”(fortune.com)
• In 2022, commentary referred to the word mainly to note that it had been retired or misused (for example, a CNBC column titled that the Fed may have retired “transitory” too soon, explicitly treating it as a former label).(cnbc.com) This is consistent with the prediction that its popularity as a descriptor would fade.
• By 2024–2025, references by senior officials are explicitly retrospective and apologetic: Yellen says she regrets having called inflation “transitory,” explaining that to most people that implies only a few weeks or months, and she now distances herself from the term.(foxbusiness.com) A 2025 CNBC market brief even describes “transitory” as a term that “became taboo for Fed officials” after they got the inflation call wrong, underscoring that it is no longer part of their normal inflation vocabulary.(cnbc.com)

Across policymakers and the media, the usage pattern matches Sacks’s prediction: the word “transitory” briefly enjoyed heavy use for inflation in 2021 but was then publicly “retired” and largely vanished as an active descriptor in the following year or so, surviving mainly as a historical or critical reference. This makes the prediction essentially correct.

Evidence about Twitter/X’s user metrics since December 2021 indicates that its primary monetizable/daily active user base has not reached ~300 million.

Key points:

1. Starting point near the prediction date
   In Q4 2021, Twitter reported about 214.7 million global monetizable daily active users (mDAU), up from ~209 million in Q3 2021. (benzinga.com)

2. Highest official mDAU before going private
   The last official public filings before Elon Musk took Twitter private show mDAU peaking at 237.8 million in Q2 2022, up from 229 million in Q1 2022. Multiple independent summaries of Twitter’s earnings and Statista’s dataset agree on this figure and treat it as the all‑time high for mDAU. (androidcentral.com)

3. Post‑acquisition daily active user data
   After privatization, Twitter (now X) stopped regular official disclosure, but available data points and reconstructions show levels well below 300 million daily actives:

   • A widely cited November 2022 snapshot puts X at 259.4 million daily active users, presented as a high point. (jeffbullas.com)
   • Multiple 2024–2025 overviews of X statistics converge on about 245 million daily active users, with the company itself described as claiming “200 to 250 million” DAUs. (owlead.com)
   • One 2025 roundup notes that current stats show about 245 million DAUs, with outside estimates ranging “between 240–300 million”, but still centers its own estimate around 245 million, not 300 million. (igbestcaptions.com)

4. Monetizable users remain anchored to the old 237.8M figure
   Recent 2025 summaries that mention “237.8 million monetizable daily active users” are clearly reusing the last public pre‑acquisition mDAU number, not reporting a new, higher figure; no credible source shows monetizable daily actives rising to ~300 million. (mobilemarketingreads.com)

5. No evidence of a 300M‑scale primary user metric
   While monthly active users (MAU) are now often estimated around 560–600 million, the prediction as normalized is about monetizable or daily active users, not total monthly actives. All available official numbers and serious third‑party estimates for mDAU/DAU top out in the mid‑200 millions, not around 300 million. (affmaven.com)

Given that nearly four years have passed since December 2021 and the best available data never show Twitter/X’s monetizable or daily active user base at or near 300 million (only around 230–260 million at peak), the most reasonable assessment is that Jason’s prediction did not come true.

Because X is private, it’s theoretically possible that an internal metric briefly touched 300 million without disclosure, but in practice such a milestone would likely have been highlighted by Musk or in industry reporting. The consistent clustering of independent estimates well below 300 million makes the prediction best classified as wrong.

As of November 30, 2025, Disney+ has not surpassed Netflix in subscribers or overall market position, but the prediction had no explicit time horizon, so it cannot yet be called definitively wrong.

Current scale (global subscribers):

• Netflix has about 301.6 million global paid subscribers in 2025, and is still described as the biggest streaming service in the world. (demandsage.com)
• Disney+ has roughly 125–132 million subscribers globally in 2025 (e.g., 124.6M in Q1 2025; about 131.6M as of September 30, 2025). (demandsage.com)

From late 2021 to 2025, the gap has widened in Netflix’s favor: Netflix grew from ~222M subscribers in Q4 2021 to ~302M in 2025, while Disney+ is near the mid‑100M range. (evoca.tv) Industry rankings and recent analyses continue to treat Netflix as the leading global streaming platform, ahead of Disney+. (digitaltrends.com)

However, the original statement was that Disney+ is “going to roll over Netflix,” without specifying by when this must occur. Since Disney+ still operates and could, in principle, overtake Netflix at some later date, the claim has not come true so far but also cannot be judged permanently false. Therefore, the appropriate status is inconclusive (too early): the prediction is not borne out yet, but it remains logically possible in the future.

The prediction that the post‑merger Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) equity would be a “juggernaut stock you want to own” has clearly not come true.

• Stock performance: The Discovery–WarnerMedia merger closed in April 2022 and WBD began trading on April 11, 2022. (en.wikipedia.org) Since then, Warner Bros. Discovery’s total shareholder return has been described as “a disaster,” with the stock down over 70% from post‑merger levels and massively underperforming peers such as Netflix and Disney, as well as the broader market. (koalagains.com) Reuters reported in 2024 that WBD had lost more than $40 billion in market value since the merger, with its market cap a fraction of pre‑merger expectations. (investing.com) This is the opposite of a top‑performing or “juggernaut” media stock.

• Business results and investor perception: Since the merger, WBD has posted large net losses every year (e.g., approximately -$7.4B in 2022, -$3.1B in 2023, and -$11.3B in 2024, largely from write‑downs and restructuring), and its operating margins have been weak or negative, in sharp contrast to more profitable peers like Netflix and healthier-margin competitors like Disney and Comcast. (koalagains.com) Analysts and financial press coverage consistently frame WBD as a challenged turnaround story rather than a must‑own winner.

• Streaming library vs. Disney: On the content side, HBO/Max plus Warner’s film/TV catalog do give WBD a strong library, and it has grown streaming subscribers (e.g., over 120M–130M global subs by 2025 and meaningful positive streaming EBITDA). (benzinga.com) However, Disney remains larger in total streaming subs and stronger in key family/IP franchises; and market data typically compares Disney and WBD as struggling legacy media players trying to catch Netflix, not as WBD surpassing Disney on content or stock performance.

Because the central, falsifiable part of the prediction was that the merged company’s equity would be a standout, “juggernaut” media stock—and instead it has severely destroyed shareholder value and trailed peers—the prediction is best classified as wrong, even though the company does possess a competitive content library.

Jason was talking about Disney+’s IP library (Star Wars, Marvel, Pixar, classic Disney) making 2022 a “ridiculous” year in terms of content and engagement. In hindsight, that’s what happened.

1. 2022 was packed with marquee releases from exactly that library
Disney+ in 2022 launched multiple tentpole series and films built on Star Wars, Marvel, Pixar, and core Disney IP:

• Marvel series: Moon Knight (March–May 2022), Ms. Marvel (June–July 2022), and She‑Hulk: Attorney at Law (Aug–Oct 2022) all premiered as Disney+ originals. (en.wikipedia.org)
• Star Wars series: Obi‑Wan Kenobi (May–June 2022) and Andor (Sept–Nov 2022) were the flagship Star Wars shows on the service that year. (en.wikipedia.org)
• Pixar and Disney films direct to Disney+: Pixar’s Turning Red became a Disney+ original in March 2022, and Hocus Pocus 2 (a sequel to a classic Disney film) debuted exclusively on Disney+ in September 2022. (en.wikipedia.org)
  This is exactly the IP mix Jason was referring to, and it did in fact drive a very crowded, high‑profile 2022 release slate.

2. Engagement: multiple internal and Nielsen records on Disney+
Within Disney+’s own ecosystem, 2022 titles set or tied several platform records:

• Obi‑Wan Kenobi was announced by Disney+ as the most‑watched original‑series premiere globally on the service (based on hours streamed opening weekend). Nielsen noted it was one of the very few Disney+ titles to exceed 1 billion weekly viewing minutes, and third‑party data shows it accounted for 12.6% of all Disney+ original‑series viewing on the service in 2022. (nielsen.com)
• Hocus Pocus 2 became the #1 film premiere on Disney+ domestically by hours watched in its first three days; Disney later said it was the service’s most‑viewed film overall. Nielsen measured 2.7 billion minutes streamed opening weekend, a record for any streaming movie debut and surpassing Encanto’s previous record. (press.disneyplus.com)
• Library titles powered by Disney IP also dominated usage: Nielsen’s 2022 year‑end figures show Encanto (on Disney+) as the #1 streamed movie of 2022 with about 27.4 billion minutes watched, and Bluey (also on Disney+) in the overall top 10 programs with 21.1 billion minutes. (disneybymark.com)
• Andor, though more niche, still had demand 37.7x the average series and ranked as the 9th most‑streamed series on Disney+ in 2022, generating over $300M in subscriber revenue for the service across 2022–2024. (en.wikipedia.org)

Even though Netflix still dominated the industry‑wide 2022 Nielsen originals chart, the question is about whether Disney+ itself had a “ridiculous” year of releases and engagement driven by its big franchises. The record‑breaking premieres and heavy viewing of Disney+ originals and library films strongly support that.

3. Subscriber and corporate results also describe 2022 as a strong streaming year
On the business side, Disney+ subscriber numbers and Disney’s own framing of the year back up the idea that the content slate worked:

• Disney+ had 129.8M subscribers as of Jan 1, 2022 and reached 164.2M by the end of its 2022 fiscal year—around 34M net adds on Disney+ alone that year. (subscriptioninsider.com)
• Across Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+, Disney added nearly 57M streaming subscriptions in fiscal 2022, and then‑CEO Bob Chapek explicitly called 2022 “a strong year for Disney, with some of our best storytelling yet… and outstanding subscriber growth” in his letter to shareholders. (techcrunch.com)

You can argue about creative quality on specific shows, but in terms of (a) volume of high‑profile IP releases and (b) engagement and subscriber growth on Disney+ itself, 2022 was indeed an exceptionally strong, record‑setting year driven by exactly the Star Wars, Marvel, Pixar, and Disney IP that Jason was talking about.

Given that, the prediction that “this library is going to have a ridiculous 2022” for Disney+ in releases and engagement is best judged as right.

The prediction’s time horizon is “over the next century” from 2021, i.e., by roughly the year 2121. A basic calculation confirms that 2021 + 100 = 2121. Since the current date is November 30, 2025, fewer than five years have elapsed.

The prediction concerns a very long‑term moral shift in mainstream human society, and there is still about 96 years remaining in the forecast window. It is therefore far too early to determine whether by ~2121 mainstream human society will widely regard industrial animal agriculture as morally worse than human slavery.

Because the deadline has not yet arrived and no contrary evidence can be decisive this early, the prediction must be classified as inconclusive (too early) rather than right or wrong.

The prediction explicitly gives a 10‑year horizon from late 2021 ("…will happen in the next ten years"), i.e., by around 2031. As of the current date (November 30, 2025), only about four years of that window have elapsed, so it’s too early to definitively judge:

• Some DAO-based capital formation has occurred (e.g., various DAO token raises, investment DAOs, and experiments like ConstitutionDAO itself), and regulators in multiple jurisdictions are still actively working out how to treat DAOs for legal and securities purposes.
• There have been sizable crypto/DAO-related fundraises, but the prediction is about DAOs being broadly legalized as investment/capital-formation vehicles and about routine fundraises scaling from tens of millions to hundreds of millions or even multiple billions specifically in DAO form by ~2031. Whether that full scenario materializes cannot yet be determined, since the deadline is still several years away.

Because the specified time period has not passed, the correct assessment as of 2025 is “inconclusive (too early)”, not “right” or “wrong.”

As of November 30, 2025, there is no commercial fusion power plant connected to an electrical grid and selling power. The major advances since 2021 have been scientific, not commercial:

• The National Ignition Facility (NIF) achieved fusion ignition in December 2022, producing more energy from the fusion reaction (3.15 MJ) than was delivered to the target by the laser (2.05 MJ), and has since repeated and improved on this in multiple shots. However, the facility still consumes vastly more energy overall than it produces and is a research experiment, not a power plant. (en.wikipedia.org)
• Private fusion companies are planning first-of-a-kind commercial plants, but none are operating yet. Commonwealth Fusion Systems plans a grid-scale plant in Virginia targeting the early 2030s for electricity production. (reuters.com) Helion is aiming for a first reactor around 2028, but this remains an ambitious target with permitting and technical risks and no operating plant today. (axios.com)

Friedberg’s normalized prediction is that commercially viable, net-positive fusion power "online" is still roughly 10–15 years away as of 2021, i.e., around 2031–2036. That time window has not arrived yet; we are only four years past the prediction date.

• We do not yet have commercial fusion power, so the prediction hasn’t been falsified.
• At the same time, we cannot know whether fusion will, in fact, become commercially viable between 2031 and 2036; the crucial years are still in the future.

Because the forecasted window (2031–2036) has not yet occurred, the correctness of the prediction cannot presently be determined. Therefore, the appropriate evaluation is "inconclusive" (too early to tell).

Evidence since late 2021 strongly supports Chamath’s prediction that the creator economy, driven by platforms like TikTok and YouTube, would keep growing and enabling large careers and new content formats:

• Creator economy market growth: Industry estimates put the creator economy at around $100B+ by 2022 and continuing to grow substantially through 2023–2025, with millions of people monetizing content across platforms (YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Twitch, etc.). These reports describe it as a fast‑growing ecosystem of independent creators earning from ads, sponsorships, fan payments, and more, not a shrinking or stagnant sector.
• Rising creator earnings and careers on YouTube: YouTube has repeatedly reported paying out tens of billions of dollars to creators, artists, and media companies over recent multi‑year windows, and has expanded monetization (e.g., Shorts ad‑revenue sharing, memberships, Super Thanks, etc.), signaling both sustained growth and more viable full‑time creator careers.
• TikTok and short‑form explosion: TikTok’s global user base and watch time have continued to expand since 2021, and the short‑form vertical-video format it popularized has been widely copied (YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels, Snapchat Spotlight). This has directly enabled many new large‑scale creator careers, especially in niches that didn’t meaningfully exist pre‑TikTok (e.g., certain micro‑influencer, commentary, and short‑skit formats).
• Novel formats and tools: Since 2021 there has been a visible boom in new creator‑centric products and content styles—short‑form vertical video, live shopping, subscription communities, fan platforms (Patreon‑like), and more sophisticated brand‑creator marketplaces—along with widespread coverage describing these as part of a growing “creator economy.”

Chamath’s claim was directional (continued expansion and new creator opportunities, not a specific numeric forecast) and over the "coming years" after 2021. By late 2025, growth in creator earnings, platform investment in monetization tools, and the proliferation of new content formats and full‑time creators on TikTok, YouTube, and similar platforms all align with his prediction, not contradict it. Therefore the prediction is right.

The prediction has some supporting signals but is too broad and causally vague to call clearly right or wrong.

1. Public dissatisfaction with current systems has clearly risen.

Surveys since 2021 show widespread discontent with how democracies are working. An Ipsos poll in 2025 across nine Western countries found that in eight of them, fewer than half of respondents were satisfied with democracy, with strong majorities saying democracy is at risk and demanding radical reform.(theguardian.com) The Economist Intelligence Unit’s 2024 Democracy Index reports global democracy at its lowest level on record, with over a third of the world’s population living under authoritarian regimes.(axios.com) Other global surveys (e.g., Edelman) show deep distrust of government and elites and growing readiness—especially among younger people—to support disruptive tactics for change.(reuters.com) These trends are consistent with a broad dissatisfaction that could motivate people to seek alternatives.

2. There has been notable growth in alternative / decentralized governance experiments.

Decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), which encode governance rules in smart contracts and allow token‑based collective decision‑making, have expanded rapidly. Academic and market analyses estimate that by 2024–2025 there are on the order of 13,000 DAOs managing roughly $23–24.5 billion in treasuries, with about 11 million governance‑token holders involved in on‑chain decision processes—dramatic growth from only a few thousand DAOs just a few years earlier.(arxiv.org) Research explicitly frames DAOs as new governance models and studies them as laboratories for alternative organizational structures.(arxiv.org)

Related ideas like Balaji Srinivasan’s “network state” (cloud‑first, community‑governed quasi‑states) moved from blog posts in 2021 to a 2022 book and recurring “Network State” conferences, drawing thousands of attendees and even government delegations by 2024–2025—evidence of at least niche interest in alternative governance concepts.(balajis.com) Meanwhile, decentralized social platforms such as Mastodon saw significant user spikes after concerns about centralized control and moderation on Twitter/X, and are explicitly positioned as community‑governed alternatives to corporate platforms.(en.wikipedia.org) These developments suggest that some portion of the public is experimenting with different ways to organize and govern digital communities.

3. But scale, causality, and direction of broader trends are unclear.

Even after their growth, DAOs, network‑state projects, and decentralized platforms still involve only a tiny fraction of the global population; they are far from a mainstream shift in how “people in general” govern themselves. The evidence that rising authoritarianism specifically is the primary driver of this experimentation is also mixed: motivations range from crypto‑economic speculation to privacy, censorship concerns, corporate power, and general institutional distrust, and are not cleanly attributable to anti‑authoritarian sentiment.

At the same time, macro‑level political trends do not show a clear mass migration toward alternative governance models. Global democracy measures indicate continued democratic backsliding and expansion of authoritarian rule, not a broad popular exit toward decentralized self‑governance.(axios.com) In many countries, public anger at perceived authoritarian or corrupt elites has been channeled into street protests and support for populist or strongman leaders within existing state structures, as seen in recent protest waves in parts of Europe and elsewhere, rather than into DAOs or network‑state‑like experiments.(en.wikipedia.org)

4. Overall assessment.

The direction of the prediction—rising dissatisfaction with authority coinciding with growth in decentralized and non‑traditional governance experiments—has some qualitative support, especially in digital and crypto‑adjacent domains. However, the claim is broad ("people in general" and a general acceleration of sociopolitical trends) and implies a scale and causal clarity that we cannot demonstrate from available data. Because we see:

• clear dissatisfaction and democratic backsliding,
• some real but still niche growth of alternative governance models, and
• no strong evidence that such models have become a major, dominant outlet for that dissatisfaction,

the prediction’s truth value cannot be determined with confidence. Hence the best judgment is ambiguous rather than clearly right, wrong, or merely too early.

Evidence shows Joe Biden served exactly one four‑year term and did not win the 2024 election:

• Biden’s presidency ran from January 20, 2021, to January 20, 2025, with Donald Trump succeeding him, confirming it was a single term. (en.wikipedia.org)
• In the 2024 U.S. presidential election, the Republican ticket of Donald Trump and JD Vance defeated the Democratic ticket of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz; Biden was president before the election and Trump after it, so Biden did not win a second term. (en.wikipedia.org)
• Biden initially ran for re‑election but withdrew in July 2024; Harris then became the Democratic nominee, further confirming Biden himself was not re‑elected. (en.wikipedia.org)
• Biden left office on January 20, 2025, when Trump was inaugurated as the 47th president, and he and Jill Biden departed Washington as a former first couple. (apnews.com)

Since Biden only served one term and did not win the 2024 election (and thus is not president beyond that single term, let alone past January 2029), Jason’s prediction that “this presidency is one and done” is right.

Available audience data for late 2021 shows no support for Chamath’s claim that All‑In had already eclipsed MSNBC and would surpass CNBC and Fox Business by the end of 2021.

• MSNBC scale in 2021: Nielsen-based rankings for 2021 show MSNBC’s prime-time shows drawing well into the millions of viewers. The Rachel Maddow Show averaged about 2.6 million viewers, and All In with Chris Hayes (ironically, also called “All In”) averaged about 1.57 million viewers that year. MSNBC had multiple shows in the 1.5–2.6M range in 2021. (adweek.com) There is no evidence that All‑In’s total per‑episode audience was anywhere near these levels in 2021.

• CNBC and Fox Business scale: Business-news channels are smaller than general cable news, but still substantial. Historical and reference data put CNBC’s typical U.S. daytime audience in the 200,000–400,000 range, and Fox Business Network (FBN) business-day averages in the low- to mid‑hundreds of thousands. (en.wikipedia.org) These numbers are for linear TV only and don’t include additional digital reach, so total audience for those brands is larger still.

• All‑In’s size around 2021–2022: By June 2022, a fan on the All‑In subreddit described the show’s YouTube performance as ~100k views in the first 24 hours and ~200k within a few days, with the channel having about 216k subscribers at that time. (reddit.com) That strongly implies that in late 2021 the show was at or below this level on YouTube. Even if you (generously) double those figures to account for audio downloads, All‑In would still be in the low‑hundreds‑of‑thousands per episode—far below MSNBC’s top shows and not obviously above CNBC/Fox Business network-wide.

• Later reporting confirms growth came after 2021: A 2025 Wall Street Journal profile describes All‑In as averaging about 750,000 views/downloads per episode and being among the top 100 podcasts in the U.S., emphasizing its subsequent rise rather than any earlier moment when it surpassed major cable news outlets. (wsj.com) If All‑In were already beating MSNBC/CNBC/Fox Business in 2021, such a milestone would likely be noted in this kind of media-industry coverage; it is not.

Given:

• MSNBC’s marquee shows were drawing 1.5–2.6M viewers on TV in 2021.
• CNBC and Fox Business were each still drawing a few hundred thousand viewers during business day.
• All‑In’s own audience didn’t clearly reach even a half‑million total per episode until years later,

the prediction that All‑In had already “eclipsed MSNBC” and would “pass CNBC and Fox [Business] by the end of this year” is inconsistent with the best available audience data and industry reporting. It therefore counts as wrong.

Evidence from the All-In release history shows that Jason’s promise of “no weeks off” and “every Friday night” was broken almost immediately and multiple times afterward.

1. Not every episode came out on Friday night, starting the very next week.
   • The next episode after E60, E61: 2022 Predictions!, was released on December 29, 2021, which was a Wednesday, not a Friday. Apple Podcasts, Listen Notes, and the show’s own Libsyn feed all list this date. (podcasts.apple.com)
   • Subsequent early‑2022 episodes were also released on dates that correspond to Saturdays rather than Fridays (e.g., E62 on January 8, 2022, E63 on January 15, 2022, E64 on January 22, 2022, and E65 on January 29, 2022, per episode lists), contradicting the "every Friday night" part of the promise. (allinpodcastsummary.com)

2. They did take weeks off (gaps > 7 days with no main episode).
   • In late 2022, the show’s own notes and third‑party episode indexes show a two‑week gap between main episodes: E106 is dated November 19, 2022, E107 is dated December 3, 2022, and E108 is December 10, 2022, indicating no regular All-In episode over the week of November 26 (Thanksgiving week). (nota.fm)
   • Similar two‑week gaps appear in later years; for example, in 2023, E154 is listed on November 17, 2023 and E155 on December 1, 2023, again implying a skipped week. (allinpodcastsummary.com)

Because episodes did not consistently arrive on Friday nights and there were clear weeks with no new main episode, Jason’s prediction/promise that starting after E60 they would take no weeks off and be with listeners every Friday night is not fulfilled.