E68: Trudeau invokes emergency powers, Bitcoin vs. government, Tiger Global's new strategy & more

Jason’s prediction was that Trudeau’s use of emergency powers and bank-account freezes against the convoy protest would “blow up in his face” in the near term—i.e., cause clear political backfire within about one to two years.

1. Immediate and short‑term public reaction (2022)
Polling around and after the invocation of the Emergencies Act shows more support than opposition:

• Multiple polls in February 2022 found majority support for invoking the Emergencies Act: Maru (66% support), Abacus (57–30), Research Co (66–28), and Nanos (63–36 even after the emergency was revoked). (en.wikipedia.org)
• An Angus Reid poll during the convoy found that while 65% of Canadians felt Trudeau’s conduct had worsened the situation, most also wanted the protests ended by force and backed firm action against the blockades. (angusreid.org)
• A May 2022 Angus Reid survey, explicitly about the Emergencies Act review, found a plurality (46%) saying invoking the Act was necessary vs 34% who said police already had enough powers, and only 15% opposed any government action. (angusreid.org)
  These data show controversy, but not the kind of broad backlash or collapse in support that “blow up in his face” implies.

2. Institutional/judicial judgments in the 1–2 year window

• The Rouleau Commission report (Public Order Emergency Commission), released in February 2023, concluded the Trudeau government met the “very high threshold” for invoking the Emergencies Act, while criticizing aspects of implementation (including the lack of a clear delisting process for frozen accounts). (en.wikipedia.org)
  That finding gave the decision a measure of legal/political legitimacy rather than turning it into an obvious scandal.
• In January 2024—about 23 months after invocation—the Federal Court ruled the use of the Act unreasonable and ultra vires, and held that the financial surveillance/bank freezes violated Charter protections against unreasonable search and seizure. (en.wikipedia.org)
  This is potentially damaging, but it comes at the very end of, or slightly beyond, the 1–2‑year window and is a legal setback more than clearly a mass‑opinion shock; the government immediately appealed, and there is no clear polling showing a discrete post‑ruling collapse attributable to this issue alone.

3. Trudeau’s popularity and political standing 2022–early 2024
Trudeau’s approval did erode in the 2022–24 period, but available polling ties this mainly to cost‑of‑living and general fatigue with his government, not specifically to the Emergencies Act:

• Angus Reid shows Trudeau’s approval around the low‑40s in late 2022, with a “bump” after his testimony at the Emergencies Act inquiry, then sliding to 37% in March 2023 and 36% by June 2023—lows for the post‑2021 period. (angusreid.org)
• By mid‑/late‑2023, multiple polls describe widespread dissatisfaction driven by housing affordability, inflation, health‑care concerns, and long incumbency; roughly three‑quarters of respondents were unhappy with his handling of housing and inflation, and about half said he should resign before the next election. (ipolitics.ca)
• Early‑2024 polling shows the Conservatives with a large, sustained national lead, with analysts again pointing to cost of living, housing, and general “everything is broken” sentiment as the core drivers of discontent, not the convoy or the Emergencies Act. (en.wikipedia.org)
  There were no major federal elections or near‑term electoral wipeouts directly following the Emergencies Act episode; Trudeau remained in office through early 2025 and only announced his resignation under pressure after years of accumulating economic and political problems. (en.wikipedia.org)

4. Overall assessment
For Jason’s prediction to be right, we would expect the emergency‑powers/bank‑freeze episode to trigger a clear, identifiable political blowback in the near term—such as a sharp, durable collapse in support specifically linked to that decision, or major electoral losses in 2022–23 clearly attributed to it.

Instead, the evidence shows:

• Public opinion on the convoy was hostile to the protesters and, on balance, supportive or at least accepting of invoking the Emergencies Act, including the associated financial measures. (en.wikipedia.org)
• A formal inquiry largely validated the government’s decision, and Trudeau even enjoyed a temporary approval bump afterward. (angusreid.org)
• Trudeau’s later unpopularity and his party’s polling troubles are consistently linked in reporting and polling analysis to inflation, housing, long time in office, and various scandals—not to a specific backlash over the Emergencies Act.

Because the central, causal claim—that the emergency powers and bank‑account freezes themselves would quickly “blow up in Trudeau’s face” politically—does not match the observed polling, institutional findings, or electoral outcomes in the following 1–2 years, the prediction is best judged wrong.

Evidence shows some short‑term behavioral change but does not let us cleanly confirm or falsify Jason’s stronger, long‑run causal claim.

Key points:

• What happened in Canada: During the 2022 Freedom Convoy, the Trudeau government invoked the Emergencies Act and froze dozens of bank accounts tied to organizers and supporters. Some donors and organizers responded by turning to Bitcoin explicitly to avoid government control of funds. (en.wikipedia.org) This clearly demonstrates the possibility Jason described (using crypto to stay outside direct state control) but on a very localized, episodic scale.

• Canadian adoption data do not show a post‑event surge: Bank of Canada surveys show Bitcoin ownership among Canadians rose to about 13% in 2021, before the convoy, then fell to ~10% in 2022 and stayed around 10% in 2023, with ownership of other cryptoassets also declining over that period. (bankofcanada.ca) The Bank attributes these changes mainly to price declines and tighter regulation, and finds that most owners see Bitcoin primarily as an investment, not as a censorship‑resistant store of wealth. (bankofcanada.ca) So in Canada itself—where the triggering event occurred—there is no measured, sustained bump in ownership that can be tied to the Emergencies Act.

• Global privacy‑coin/"self‑custody" trend has many drivers: By 2024–2025, privacy‑focused assets such as Monero and Zcash and broader anti‑surveillance narratives did become more prominent, with privacy coins accounting for a growing share of crypto transactions and user portfolios. (coinlaw.io) However, major analyses link this primarily to global regulatory and surveillance developments—like sanctions and prosecutions around Tornado Cash and expanding state on‑chain monitoring—rather than to the Canadian convoy episode specifically. (chaincatcher.com) Existing data do not separate out “I hold this to keep assets outside government control because of what happened in Canada” as a distinct, measurable motive.

• The comparison to McDonald’s accepting Bitcoin is inherently hypothetical: McDonald’s has not rolled out Bitcoin payments as a standard, global option. Only small, localized pilots (e.g., in Lugano, Switzerland, and within El Salvador’s broader Bitcoin experiment) have ever existed; corporate‑wide adoption has never happened. (blog.mexc.com) That means we cannot empirically compare the impact of the Canada incident to the effect of a true, global “McDonald’s accepts Bitcoin” moment—Jason’s benchmark remains counterfactual.

Because:

1. We do see the specific behavior Jason described (using Bitcoin to escape financial censorship) during the convoy itself, but
2. National data in Canada contradict the idea of a sustained, measurable adoption surge afterward, and
3. Global data do not isolate the Canadian event as a major causal driver of people holding part of their net worth in crypto for anti‑government reasons, and
4. His comparison point (full McDonald’s adoption) never occurred in a way we can measure,

there isn’t enough clean, quantitative evidence to say his prediction was clearly right or clearly wrong. The overall assessment is therefore ambiguous rather than definitively correct or incorrect.

The prediction explicitly sets a 10–20 year horizon starting in 2022 ("over the subsequent decade or two"). We are only about three years into that window (late 2025), so by construction the forecast period runs roughly 2022–2032/2042, and has not elapsed yet.

Some early evidence is directionally consistent with the intuition:

• During the 2022 Canada convoy protest, the Trudeau government invoked the Emergencies Act, and dozens of bank accounts linked to protesters were frozen. Some supporters then turned to Bitcoin for donations, citing its resistance to government control, and the event sparked political debate about using crypto to circumvent state financial power. (en.wikipedia.org)
• Globally, crypto ownership has continued to rise. Triple-A’s 2024 report estimates that the number of cryptocurrency owners increased from about 420 million in 2023 to ~562 million in 2024 (about 6.8% of the world’s population, a ~34% year‑on‑year increase). (chaincatcher.com) This is clear growth in adoption of digital assets, including Bitcoin.

However, this does not yet let us judge whether, over the full decade or two, state actions like account freezes are a primary driver of a sustained acceleration in “off‑government‑chain” crypto adoption:

• Crypto ownership was already on a long‑term upward trend before 2022, driven by speculative cycles, technological development, and broader fintech adoption.
• Major 2023–2025 adoption catalysts highlighted in the same Triple‑A and media reports include regulatory changes and the approval of Bitcoin ETFs, macroeconomic concerns like inflation, and general market cycles—rather than specifically state account‑freezing episodes. (reuters.com)
• Governments have also expanded regulation and surveillance of crypto on‑ and off‑ramps over this period, which cuts against a simple narrative that crypto is moving cleanly “beyond direct state control.”

Because:

1. The forecast’s minimum time horizon (10 years from 2022) has not yet passed, and
2. The causal claim (that these kinds of state actions will be a key accelerator of global off‑chain crypto adoption) cannot be cleanly separated from many other concurrent drivers with current data,

it is too early to say whether Friedberg’s long‑term prediction has ultimately come true or failed.

Evidence from Canadian provincial timelines shows that, within a few months of February 2022, essentially all provinces moved to lift most or all broad COVID‑19 mandates (vaccine passports, capacity limits, and general mask rules) on roughly the schedule Sacks implied.

• By mid‑February 2022, provinces and territories had already begun multistage reopening plans after the Omicron peak, including “eliminating the use of vaccination passports and vaccine‑specific restrictions,” reopening venues, and then gradually removing mask mandates in a majority of settings by early summer 2022. (www150.statcan.gc.ca)
• A legal and employment analysis summarizing provincial decisions notes that Alberta ended its proof‑of‑vaccination system on February 9, 2022; Saskatchewan ended its vaccine passport on February 14; Manitoba planned to end proof‑of‑vaccination on March 1 and indoor mask requirements on March 15; Quebec ended proof‑of‑vaccination by March 14; Newfoundland and Labrador planned to end its COVID restrictions, including mask and vaccination requirements, by March 14; New Brunswick targeted lifting all restrictions by March 14; PEI and Nova Scotia also set late‑February and March dates to drop vaccine passport rules. (mondaq.com)
• Nova Scotia explicitly announced on February 23, 2022 that all provincial COVID‑19 restrictions would end by March 21, 2022, removing gathering limits, distancing, and mask requirements in public spaces and businesses (with only health‑facility controls left to institutional discretion). (en.wikipedia.org)
• Quebec—one of the strictest provinces—reopened most sectors and dropped its vaccine passport in March 2022 and then lifted its general indoor mask mandate on May 14, 2022, making it the last province to end that broad requirement. (en.wikipedia.org)
• A national summary of the COVID‑19 response in Canada shows that all provinces and territories reached a “no restrictions” status (with mask mandates terminated or limited to narrow settings) between March and June 2022, confirming that provincial‑level COVID mandates in general public life were largely gone within a few months of February 2022. (en.wikipedia.org)

Regarding the second part of the prediction—whether this made the trucker protest’s original policy demands “largely moot”:

• The Freedom Convoy began over a federal vaccine mandate for cross‑border truckers but broadened into opposition to a wide range of pandemic restrictions, including provincial vaccine passports and other mandates. (apnews.com)
• As shown above, those provincial mandates were already in the process of being lifted and were mostly gone by late spring 2022, independent of the protesters’ continued presence. That meant a large share of the day‑to‑day restrictions the protesters objected to (e.g., proof‑of‑vaccination to enter businesses, capacity limits, general mask rules) disappeared on the timeline Sacks described.
• It is true that some federal requirements (notably border and travel vaccination rules) persisted longer, with domestic travel and federal‑employee vaccine mandates only suspended on June 20, 2022, and border vaccination/testing rules removed on October 1, 2022. (canada.ca) However, the specific claim being evaluated concerns provincial mandates and their impact on the protest’s broader policy goals.

Given that (1) Canadian provinces did, in fact, end most or all broad COVID‑19 mandates within a few months of February 2022, and (2) this substantially undercut the protest’s original demands around provincial restrictions, the prediction is best categorized as right, even though certain federal mandates remained in place somewhat longer.

Justin Trudeau is no longer prime minister and did not lead his party into the next general election, matching the concrete part of Jason’s prediction that he would “lose” politically (e.g., lose his position or lose his next election).

Key facts:

• On 6 January 2025, Trudeau announced he would resign as prime minister and Liberal Party leader once a successor was chosen, and that he would not run again in his Papineau riding, citing collapsing support, internal party conflict, and recent political setbacks including by‑election losses and cabinet resignations. (theguardian.com)
• The Liberal leadership race concluded with Mark Carney elected leader on 9 March 2025, and he was sworn in as prime minister on 14 March 2025, replacing Trudeau. (en.wikipedia.org) In the subsequent 28 April 2025 federal election, Carney (not Trudeau) led the Liberals, who remained the largest party and kept government. (en.wikipedia.org) Thus, Trudeau had already lost his position before the very election that would have tested him next.

On the cause (“as a consequence of his handling of the trucker protests and Emergencies Act”):

• Polling in early 2022 showed his handling of the Freedom Convoy and Emergencies Act was politically damaging: a Nanos poll reported that 47% of Canadians said their view of Trudeau worsened over his handling of the convoy, versus only 20% saying it improved, leading analysts to argue the episode could inflict permanent damage on Trudeau and the Liberals. (thenationaltelegraph.com)
• Legal and political criticism persisted. Rights and civil-liberties experts warned that invoking the Emergencies Act risked serious long‑term consequences and overreach. (rightsprobe.org) In January 2024, a federal court ruled the government’s use of the Act “was not justified,” calling it unreasonable and rights‑infringing; Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre and others used this decision to attack Trudeau’s judgment and leadership. (theguardian.com)
• Reporting on Trudeau’s 2025 resignation noted sustained declines in public support and accumulating political setbacks as the backdrop for his departure. (theguardian.com) While these problems were multi‑factor (cost of living, housing, broader fatigue, U.S. tensions, etc.), the convoy/Emergencies Act episode is widely documented as a significant blow to his popularity and a continuing line of attack for opponents. (thenationaltelegraph.com)

Because (1) Trudeau did in fact lose his position as prime minister before the next general election, and (2) credible evidence shows the Freedom Convoy/Emergencies Act episode contributed meaningfully to his longer‑term political decline (even if not the sole cause), Jason’s prediction is best scored as right. The causal link cannot be proved with scientific precision, but the observed outcome aligns with the prediction’s core claim that Trudeau would ultimately “lose” politically rather than emerge unscathed from that episode.

Available post‑2022 data show a clear, measurable rightward shift among Asian American voters, while they still overall lean Democratic.

1. Evidence of a measurable shift away from Democrats

• Baseline: In 2020, Asian Americans gave Joe Biden about 63% of their vote, and were a solidly Democratic constituency; as of 2023, roughly 62% of Asian American registered voters identified with or leaned Democratic, vs. 34% Republican/lean Republican.

  Sources: Wikipedia summary of Asian American vote shares; Pew 2022–23 survey of Asian voters. (en.wikipedia.org)

• In 2024, multiple analyses find a significant rightward shift:

  • A table of racial vote shares shows Democratic share of the Asian vote falling from ~63% in 2020 to ~54% in 2024 in the presidential race — a ~9‑point drop for Democrats. (en.wikipedia.org)
  • A RealClearPolitics analysis using Washington Post and NBC exit polls reports a 9‑point national shift toward Republicans among Asian American voters vs. 2020; in some states (e.g., Nevada and Texas) exit polls suggest Trump actually won the Asian vote. (realclearpolitics.com)
  • A Pew-based recap (reported in the New York Post) similarly finds Trump’s support among Asian voters rising from about 30% in 2020 to around 40% in 2024, another indication of a sizeable rightward move. (nypost.com)

• Party identification also nudges away from Democrats: AAPI Data’s pre‑election surveys show Democratic ID among Asian American voters slipping from 44% (2020) to 42% (2024), Republicans holding around 22–23%, and independents growing from 25% to 31%, i.e., modest but real erosion of solid Democratic identification. (aapidata.com)

• Local results reinforce the pattern: In New York, majority‑Asian precincts moved 23 points to the right between 2018 and 2022; in 2024 Trump flipped several New York City Assembly districts with large Asian populations, with analysts noting that heavily Asian neighborhoods in southern Brooklyn and Queens showed some of the largest pro‑Trump swings. (theamericanconservative.com)

Taken together, these national and local data show a measurable shift of Asian Americans away from their prior level of reliable Democratic support, consistent with the core quantitative part of the prediction.

2. Role of education/“war on merit” and public safety

The prediction tied the shift partly to Democratic‑backed policies seen as a “war on merit” in education and to declining public safety. There is substantial, though not perfectly causal, evidence that these themes were important drivers in the places where the shift has been most visible:

• Education / “war on merit”:

  • In San Francisco, the 2022 recall of three school‑board members—heavily supported by Asian American parents—was closely linked to controversies over ending merit‑based admissions at Lowell High School and prioritizing symbolic renamings over academic concerns. These moves were framed by critics as attacks on merit and fairness in competitive schooling. (en.wikipedia.org)
  • In New York City, proposals and lawsuits targeting merit‑based gifted and specialized‑high‑school admissions (Stuyvesant, Bronx Science, etc.) were widely described by opponents as a “war on merit,” especially by Asian parent groups who saw them as threatening opportunities their children had earned through testing. (realcleareducation.com)
  • Coverage of Asian voters “shifting right” in New York explicitly mentions anger over these school‑admissions changes as a factor behind the dramatic 23‑point move toward Republicans in majority‑Asian precincts. (theamericanconservative.com)

• Public safety / crime:

  • A RealClearPolitics post‑2024 analysis argues that Asian Americans, like Hispanics, “shifted right” in part due to dissatisfaction with Democratic leadership on crime and public order, highlighting concern about personal safety and harassment. (realclearpolitics.com)
  • Reporting on New York and other urban areas finds that Asian American voters in neighborhoods that swung hardest toward Trump cite crime, homelessness, and public safety as primary reasons for abandoning their traditional Democratic votes. (theguardian.com)
  • AAPI Data’s 2022 and 2024 surveys list crime and education among the top‑ranked issues for Asian American voters (alongside economy and healthcare), and show that voters are more divided on which party they trust on crime than on issues like gun control or voting rights. (aapidata.com)

These sources do not “prove” causality in a strict econometric sense, but they broadly support the narrative that concerns over merit‑based education policies and public safety were salient factors in the notable rightward swings among Asian American voters in key urban areas and in the national 2024 results.

3. Important caveats

• Asian Americans still lean Democratic overall: as of 2022–23, about 62% of Asian registered voters identify or lean Democratic and 34% Republican; pre‑2024 surveys often showed Harris or Biden leading Trump comfortably among Asian voters, and AAPI polls in September 2024 still had Harris ahead among Asian Americans by roughly 2‑to‑1. (pewresearch.org)
• The shift is significant but not a total “flip” of the entire community into the Republican column; it is better described as erosion of the Democrats’ prior dominance and emergence of a more competitive, heterogeneous electorate.

Bottom line: By late 2024, Asian American voters had measurably shifted away from their earlier level of solid Democratic support, with Republican vote share rising and Democratic margins shrinking nationally and in key states. Media and analytical accounts consistently tie that shift in part to backlash against education policies perceived as undermining merit‑based advancement and to frustration with crime and public safety in Democratic‑run cities. That aligns closely with the substance of Sacks’s prediction, so it is best classified as right (with the caveat that the shift is partial, not an outright partisan flip).

Chesa Boudin was recalled in the June 7, 2022 San Francisco District Attorney recall election, so the directional part of Jason’s prediction (that he would be removed) was correct. Official results, however, show that only about 55% of voters cast a "yes" ballot on the recall (roughly 122k yes vs. 100k no), not anything close to the ~95% he forecast as an “extremely high” share of the vote. (en.wikipedia.org)

Because the core quantitative component of the prediction (a landslide ~95% yes vote) was off by about 40 percentage points, the prediction overall is best judged as wrong, even though it correctly anticipated that the recall would succeed at all.

Evidence from 2022–2025 shows that social‑justice‑oriented or “woke” currents in criminal justice and education did not disappear quickly after early backlash in places like San Francisco; instead, they persisted amid an ongoing tug‑of‑war.

On the criminal‑justice side, San Francisco’s progressive DA Chesa Boudin was recalled in 2022 and replaced by Brooke Jenkins, who has since pursued more punitive policies, including sharply increasing misdemeanor prosecutions and reducing diversion to treatment programs. This reflects a local backlash against progressive prosecution. (en.wikipedia.org) However, analysis of the broader progressive‑prosecutor movement in 2024–2025 notes that, despite high‑profile recalls in California (Boudin in San Francisco and Pamela Price in Alameda County), reform‑minded prosecutors have continued to win races in other jurisdictions (e.g., Orlando and Austin). Leaders of the movement explicitly describe it as “alive and well” and focused on regrouping rather than ending, indicating a continued national reform current rather than a short‑lived fad. (law360.com)

In education, there has been a pronounced conservative backlash against DEI and equity initiatives (e.g., federal policies cutting funding to schools with DEI programs and state‑level measures like Florida’s Stop WOKE Act). (reuters.com) Yet these policies have triggered sustained resistance and litigation from civil‑rights groups such as the NAACP, and courts have begun to strike down some anti‑DEI guidance as unlawful, which presupposes that schools and universities still maintain or seek to maintain DEI efforts. (reuters.com) Academic work on the DEI backlash in industry similarly finds that, even where companies scale back or rebrand DEI, core inclusion practices and values tend to persist in adapted forms rather than vanishing. (arxiv.org) Together, these strands show an ongoing, evolving social‑justice/"woke" movement in criminal justice and education several years after 2022, consistent with Friedberg’s prediction that it was “not a movement that’s going to go away overnight.”

Tyler Cowen’s February 2022 column (which Chamath endorsed) explicitly claimed that wokeism has peaked in the U.S. and forecast that it would evolve into a subculture that is highly educated, highly white, fairly feminine, and no longer able to “run the country or all its major institutions.” (postbulletin.com)

Evidence that the ‘peak and ebb’ part looks directionally right

• Corporate and financial institutions have clearly retreated from the height of DEI/ESG enthusiasm seen around 2020–2021. Analyses of earnings calls show a steep drop (about 31%) in mentions of DEI/ESG beginning after early 2022, indicating firms are downplaying these agendas in public-facing settings. (bizpacreview.com)
• Major companies and asset managers that were once flagship “woke capitalism” advocates — including BlackRock, Bank of America, GM, PepsiCo, Boeing and others — have reduced or removed DEI/ESG language from filings and have scaled back related policies, often explicitly citing political and legal backlash against “woke” practices. (nypost.com)
• Polling shows the word woke has become significantly more negative in mainstream discourse: a 2023 USA Today/Ipsos poll found 40% of Americans consider “woke” an insult and only 32% a compliment; similar polling in 2024–2025 finds rising shares in both the U.S. and U.K. who treat “woke” as an insult and a non-trivial minority identifying as “anti‑woke.” (ipsos.com) This supports the idea that high-water-mark cultural influence was earlier and has since faced sustained backlash.
• State and federal policy has moved aggressively against DEI and related ideas in key arenas (especially education and law): Florida’s SB 266 restricts DEI programs and related content in public universities; Texas SB 12 limits DEI and LGBT-related content in schools; the Florida Bar has abolished its diversity-and-inclusion policy; and institutions such as the University of Michigan and Emory University have shut down or radically restructured DEI offices under pressure from a second Trump administration and its executive orders. (en.wikipedia.org) The U.S. State Department is even preparing to cut dozens of universities, including top elites, from its Diplomacy Lab program over DEI-based hiring, underscoring federal backlash. (theguardian.com) All of this suggests that “woke” frameworks are no longer uncontested at the top of U.S. institutions.

Evidence that the stronger parts of the prediction are not clearly met

• Public opinion is not simply that wokeism has shrunk to a marginal, easily isolated niche. In the same Ipsos poll, a majority (56%) of Americans defined “wokeness” as being informed and aware of social injustices, rather than as mere word-policing — a view especially common among Democrats and younger adults. (ipsos.com) This implies that while the label has become polarizing, the underlying concerns remain widely endorsed, not just within a thin, rarefied subculture.
• At the institutional level, “woke” or DEI-aligned positions still command significant power in many corporations and universities, especially in blue states and elite organizations. For example, Disney shareholders in 2025 overwhelmingly rejected an “anti‑woke” proposal to sever ties with the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index, and similar shareholder challenges at companies like Apple and Costco have failed, indicating continuing institutional support for LGBTQ+ and diversity benchmarks despite broader backlash. (them.us)
• Cowen and Chamath’s more specific sociological claim — that wokeism would consolidate into a highly educated, highly white, fairly feminine subculture — is difficult to verify. Public polling around “woke” shows partisan and age divides but does not clearly establish that its adherents are disproportionately white versus people of color; indeed, support for social-justice-framed issues is often at least as strong among non‑white respondents. (ipsos.com) Without robust demographic data on self-identified “woke” activists in elite institutions, this part of the prediction remains speculative rather than confirmable.
• The claim that this movement would no longer be capable of running the country or all its major institutions is inherently interpretive. The 2024 return of a Trump administration explicitly committed to dismantling DEI in federal agencies, universities, and corporate governance does show that wokeism is not politically hegemonic. (financeand.money) Yet the simultaneous persistence of strong DEI commitments in many blue-state institutions, HR departments, and parts of corporate America suggests that woke-aligned norms continue to shape significant swaths of “major institutions,” even if they now face a powerful counter-elite.

Because (a) there is solid evidence that the peak/ebb portion of the prediction matches post‑2022 trends, but (b) the more precise claims about the movement’s sociological composition and its diminished ability to “run” institutions cannot be cleanly tested and are partly contradicted by continued institutional and popular support, the overall forecast cannot be judged clearly right or wrong. It rests on contested, hard-to-measure concepts of cultural hegemony and subcultural identity.

Given these mixed and partly subjective elements, the fairest assessment is ambiguous: some aspects look broadly validated (peak and backlash), while others remain unproven or only partially consistent with the evidence available by late 2025.

Chamath argued that, after the public‑market crash in high‑growth tech (late 2021–early 2022), late‑stage private tech valuations would undergo a fast reset over the next several quarters, rather than a slow multi‑year grind. That is broadly what happened.

Evidence:

• PitchBook data summarized by SiliconANGLE show that median late‑stage U.S. VC valuations fell about 29% just between Q1 and Q3 2022, with deal value dropping to an 11‑quarter low and the prior "top of the market" effectively disappearing.【1†turn1search4】
• Carta and related legal/market commentary report that late‑stage “unicorn” valuations were more than halved in a matter of quarters in 2022. One summary of Carta’s cap‑table data notes the median valuation for late‑stage companies fell from unicorn territory (~$949M) in Q3 2022 to about $436M in Q4 2022.【1†turn3search1】
• Carta’s own analysis describes late‑stage startup valuations “plummeting” throughout 2022 and into Q1 2023, characterizing it as a yearlong freefall. By Q2 2023, even after a rebound, Series E+ median valuations were still 71% below their level a year earlier.【1†turn2search0】
• A later Carta review of 2022–2023 data notes that in 2022 alone the median Series D valuation fell 58% and Series E+ fell 74%, calling the late‑stage drop “unprecedented in the previous decade.”【1†turn3search5】
• Silicon Valley Bank data (as summarized in a 2023 discussion) similarly showed 2022 median late‑stage private valuations down ~55%, versus a smaller ~30% drop at early stage and an increase at seed, underscoring that the sharpest, quickest repricing hit exactly the late‑stage cohort Chamath was referring to.【1†turn2reddit19】

While there was some initial lag—late‑stage valuations were still elevated in early 2022—by late 2022 and early 2023 the bulk of the markdowns happened in roughly 3–5 quarters, not stretched over many years. Subsequent down‑round IPOs (e.g., ServiceTitan and Hinge Health listing at ~40–50% below peak private valuations) and deep markdowns at crossover/late‑stage investors like Carta itself being repriced ~75% below its 2022 peak confirm that the lofty 2021‑era late‑stage marks were rapidly reset rather than slowly eroding.【1†turn1news15】【1†turn2news14】【1†turn2search16】

Given this data, Chamath’s forecast of a quick private‑market valuation reset following the public‑market crash was directionally and temporally accurate, so the prediction is best classified as right.

Chamath’s prediction was that within 1–2 years of early 2022, many richly valued late‑stage private tech companies would either:

1. Be forced to raise capital at significantly lower valuations, or
2. Go public at valuations far below their last private marks (be “taken to the woodshed”).

1. Broad late‑stage valuation reset and surge in down rounds (2022–2023)
Data from major cap‑table and VC datasets shows a sharp reset in late‑stage valuations and an unusual rise in down rounds during 2022–2023:

• PitchBook’s 2023 US VC Valuations report notes that by 2023 the market was two years past the 2021 valuation highs and that companies which raised in that period but delayed new financings were expected to run low on cash and be “forced back into raising” with investor leverage, contributing to higher down‑round incidence.(scribd.com)
• Carta’s Q1 2023 late‑stage report shows the median Series D pre‑money valuation fell 70% year‑over‑year, and Series E+ medians fell 82% YoY—“the lowest quarterly figures in at least three years,” explicitly highlighting late‑stage startups as bearing the brunt of the correction.(carta.com)
• Carta’s 2023 State of Private Markets finds down rounds around 19–20% of all venture deals in every quarter of 2023, the four highest quarterly down‑round rates since 2018, and describes down rounds as a common feature of the landscape rather than a rarity.(carta.com)
• A Forbes summary of 2023 VC trends dubs 2023 “the year of the down round,” noting that over 19% of venture deals were down rounds in every quarter of 2023, as companies across stages faced valuation resets.(forbes.com)

These sources collectively show that by 2023 (within 1–2 years of Feb 2022), a large number of startups—especially at late stage—were raising at lower valuations, matching the core of Chamath’s thesis.

2. High‑profile late‑stage unicorns forced into steep down rounds
Several of the world’s most valuable private tech/fintech companies from the 2020–2021 boom raised new capital at dramatically lower valuations in 2022–2023:

• Klarna – Europe’s most valuable private fintech at a $45.6B valuation in 2021(en.wikipedia.org) raised $800M in July 2022 at a $6.7B valuation, an ~85% cut. Major outlets framed this as emblematic of the grim environment for high‑growth fintech and BNPL lenders.(cnbc.com)
• Stripe – Once valued at $95B in 2021, the payments giant raised $6.5B in March 2023 at a $50B valuation, almost halving its prior peak.(cnbc.com) Coverage explicitly describes this as part of a broader tech‑valuation correction affecting unicorns.
• A Crunchbase 2023 review of valuations documents a “significant valuation reset that began in 2022 and deepened in 2023,” listing multiple prominent unicorns that raised at large discounts, including Stripe (‑47%), Shein (‑34%), Cybereason (~‑90%), Tonal (‑64%), Flink (‑62%), Blockchain.com (‑50%), Jokr (‑38%), and Ramp (‑28%). It highlights Klarna’s 85% down round as one of the defining high‑profile examples.(news.crunchbase.com)

These are exactly the kind of high‑burn, late‑stage, previously sky‑high valued companies Chamath was referring to. Within his 1–2‑year window (roughly Feb 2022–Feb 2024), multiple marquee names were indeed forced to raise at valuations far below their 2021 peaks.

3. IPOs at valuations far below last private rounds
Chamath also said that companies needing to go public in that window would be “taken to the woodshed,” i.e., IPO at market caps well under their last private valuations. That, too, happened:

• Instacart (Maplebear) went public on Nasdaq in September 2023.
  • Forbes notes that at IPO, Instacart’s market cap was around $11.1B, far below the $39B private valuation it achieved in March 2021.(forbes.com)
  • A separate analysis of its S‑1 and private‑market history shows the company targeting an $8.6–9.4B IPO valuation, explicitly described as “a far cry from its last private round of $32.9B.”(primeunicornindex.com)

Instacart is a textbook case of a late‑stage, pandemic‑era high‑flyer that was compelled to IPO at a fraction of its last private valuation well within the two‑year horizon.

4. Synthesis vs. the prediction
Chamath’s normalized claim was not that every such company would IPO quickly, but that:

• The 2020–2021 late‑stage tech valuations would not be defendable if companies needed capital in the next 1–2 years; and
• When they did raise or IPO in that window, valuations would be significantly lower (i.e., they’d be “taken to the woodshed”).

Within roughly two years of February 2022:

• Late‑stage valuations collapsed, especially at Series D+ and venture‑growth stages.(carta.com)
• Down rounds became unusually common, with ~19–20% of all rounds in 2023 being down rounds—historically elevated levels.(carta.com)
• Many of the emblematic high‑valuation unicorns from 2021 (Klarna, Stripe, others) raised at drastic valuation cuts.(cnbc.com)
• Instacart’s 2023 IPO valuation was a fraction of its 2021 private valuation, illustrating the “woodshed” dynamic on the public‑market side.(forbes.com)

Not every late‑stage company was forced to raise or IPO in that exact window—some cut burn and delayed—but the prediction was about what would happen when these high‑valuation, high‑burn companies needed fresh capital or a public exit, and whether prior valuations could be defended. The data and high‑profile cases show that in 2022–2023, many could not defend those valuations and were repriced sharply downward in private rounds or IPOs.

Given the timing and breadth of the evidence, Chamath’s core prediction is substantially borne out, so the best classification is:

Result: right.

Evidence indicates Sacks’ prediction largely came true.

1. Tiger Global’s late‑stage tech/enterprise SaaS portfolio was heavily marked down within 1–3 years. Tiger’s $12.7B Private Investment Partners 15 fund, launched near the peak in late 2021, reported a ~20% paper loss by end‑2022 after the firm decreased valuations every month of 2022. (inkl.com) Separate reporting shows Tiger marked down its venture funds’ valuations by about 33% ($23B) in 2022. (theinformation.com) Roughly a quarter of that megafund’s investments were in enterprise SaaS and related software businesses, meaning late‑stage SaaS was a core part of the portfolio that was written down. (benzinga.com)

2. Specific late‑stage SaaS names backed at high 2021 valuations saw materially lower marks. Prime Unicorn Index notes that ServiceTitan, a vertical home‑services SaaS company where Tiger Global was a key investor, was valued around $8.1B in a 2021 Series G led by Tiger/Thoma Bravo but later marked down to $5.8B in the index, a drop of roughly 28%. The same piece highlights broad markdowns in Tiger’s other large late‑stage tech holdings (Instacart, Databricks, Klarna) as part of the 2022 tech valuation reset. (primeunicornindex.com) When ServiceTitan finally IPO’d in December 2024, its public valuation (about $9B) was below its prior peak private valuation of ~$9.5B from 2021, showing no multiple expansion from the boom-era pricing even three years later. (reuters.com)

3. Market‑wide late‑stage SaaS/growth tech repriced sharply in the same window. CB Insights data reported by TechCrunch show that by Q2 2023, median valuations for Series D and later rounds had fallen about 60% year‑over‑year, with later‑stage deals suffering the steepest compression. (techcrunch.com) Additional coverage of Tiger’s PIP 15 fund notes that around 25% of its investments were enterprise SaaS, and that multiple positions across its private portfolio were marked down significantly, aligning with this broader late‑stage tech repricing. (benzinga.com)

Taken together—large Tiger-led 2021 SaaS financings (e.g., ServiceTitan) being marked down, Tiger’s flagship late‑stage tech fund taking sizable write‑downs, and a ~60% median valuation drop for Series D+ rounds across the market within about a year—show that valuations of late‑stage SaaS companies funded at high multiples pre‑2022 did decline materially over the subsequent 1–3 years. That matches Sacks’ prediction that “those valuations are going to come down.”

Evidence suggests Chamath’s core claim—that Tiger Global’s light-touch, passive-style Series A strategy would attract many founders because they preferred non‑intrusive capital—largely played out, even though the strategy later proved financially painful.

Key points:

• Tiger’s model was explicitly hands‑off and marketed as founder‑friendly. Analyses of Tiger Global’s venture practice describe a deliberate “hands-off, founder‑trusting approach,” with very fast decisions, minimal governance, and a pattern of not taking board seats or imposing heavy reporting. This was framed as a competitive advantage because it reduced friction for founders and was “indeed compelling to many entrepreneurs.”(umbrex.com) That maps closely to Chamath’s “they may never call you / you won’t get fired” description.

• Founders did flock to Tiger’s checks in the immediate years around and after the prediction. During the boom, Tiger became one of the world’s most aggressive startup investors, backing hundreds of companies. In early 2022—around when Chamath spoke—Crunchbase data shows Tiger as the most active early‑stage lead investor globally, with 96 early-stage deals in H1 2022, up from 69 in the prior half.(news.crunchbase.com) In India specifically, Tiger’s Series A participation jumped sharply: it joined 10 Series A rounds totaling about $377M in just the first half of 2022 (vs. 3 such rounds in all of 2021), and Series A capital it backed in India rose roughly 3x year‑on‑year; overall Series A participation in 2022 was up ~80% by value versus 2021, even as its global investing slowed.(moneycontrol.com) Those are exactly the kinds of “many founders taking passive Series A money” outcomes he predicted.

• The motivation he cited—founders preferring passive, non‑governance capital—matches broader commentary. Post‑bubble reflections explicitly criticize the 2020–21 wave of ultra “founder‑friendly” capital as investors who stayed hands‑off, let founders raise at record valuations, and provided little governance—precisely because founders liked that arrangement at the time.(techcrunch.com) This supports Chamath’s claim that plenty of entrepreneurs would choose such capital even if it wasn’t optimal for company quality.

• Where he wasn’t right is on long‑term outcomes, not founder demand. Tiger’s pandemic‑era “spray and pray” venture fund (PIP 15) has since landed in the bottom decile of its 2021 vintage, with >15% paper losses as of mid‑2024, and its follow‑on private fund (PIP 16) closed at just $2.2B vs. an original $6B target, reflecting LP pushback and a sharp pullback in its VC ambitions.(techcrunch.com) Those results show the financial strategy backfired, but they don’t contradict his narrower prediction about founders being willing to take Tiger’s passive money.

Overall, the record shows: Tiger’s light‑touch Series A strategy did, for a time, attract a very large number of founders for the very reasons Chamath described, even if the subsequent market turn exposed that such “founder‑friendly” passivity was bad for returns and governance. That makes his prediction about founder behavior and near‑term uptake essentially right.

The prediction has a ~15‑year horizon from February 2022 (i.e., until around 2037). As of the current date (November 30, 2025), only about 3.8 years have elapsed, so there is still more than a decade left for it to be proven right or wrong.

On the science side, autologous induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) therapies are in early clinical and preclinical stages but are not yet in broad, routine “practical therapeutic use” across multiple tissues:

• The first autologous iPSC‑derived retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) sheet transplant for age‑related macular degeneration was done in Japan in 2014; 4‑year follow‑up showed survival of the graft without major adverse events, but this was a single‑patient research intervention, not a widely available therapy. (pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)
• A 2021 review of autologous iPSC‑based cell therapies notes that only three single‑patient in‑human autologous iPSC transplants had been performed worldwide and that one Phase I/IIa autologous iPSC trial had been initiated in the U.S., underscoring that the field is still at an early, experimental stage. (pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)
• More recent commentary and news (2024–2025) describe autologous iPSC‑derived therapies as a realistic but emerging approach, with efforts to industrialize and move them through early‑phase clinical studies (e.g., cardiovascular disease applications), again indicating development rather than established, routine clinical use. (insights.bio)

At the same time, other stem‑cell and gene‑modified cell therapies (including some autologous products, though generally not iPSC‑based) have reached full regulatory approval for specific indications, showing rapid progress in the broader cell‑therapy field. (en.wikipedia.org)

Because:

1. The forecast deadline (~2037) has not yet arrived, and
2. Current evidence shows active development but not yet the kind of widespread, multi‑tissue, autologous iPSC therapeutic use described,

there is not enough information yet to say definitively whether the prediction will end up correct or incorrect.

Therefore, the appropriate rating today is: inconclusive (too early to tell).

As of late 2025, the core condition of the prediction has not yet come true:

• HIV today: With combination antiretroviral therapy, HIV has been transformed from an almost uniformly fatal infection into a long‑term, manageable chronic condition for many patients, with near‑normal life expectancy when treatment is accessible and adhered to.(aids.org)
• Cancer status: Cancer remains a leading cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide. The WHO and NCI report ~20 million new cancer cases and ~9–10 million deaths globally in 2022, with over 2 million new cases and ~618,000 deaths projected in the U.S. alone for 2025.(cancer.gov) While treatments (including targeted therapies, immunotherapy, and some cell/gene-based approaches) have improved survival for many cancers, there is no broadly applicable cure or "resolved" status analogous to well-controlled HIV.
• Biological aging: Aging is still viewed as a complex, multifactorial biological process and a dominant risk factor for disease and death, not a condition that has been clinically "resolved". Recent work emphasizes organ-specific biological aging (e.g., brain aging as a strong predictor of mortality), and there are experimental efforts toward rejuvenation, but no accepted medical intervention yet halts or reverses human aging in the way the prediction envisions.(ft.com)

However, the time horizon baked into the quote is explicitly open‑ended and long term: “one day we will look back at cancer and aging in the same way that we’re talking about HIV today” and that these diseases “can and will be resolved” with future tools. The podcast aired in February 2022, so only about 3–4 years have passed—far short of a typical multi‑decade biomedical horizon for wholesale “resolution” of cancer and aging.

Because:

1. The outcome state (cancer and aging effectively resolved like modern HIV) has clearly not been reached yet, but
2. The prediction does not specify a concrete deadline and is framed as a distant future possibility,

there is not enough elapsed time to fairly label it right or wrong. The appropriate status, given the long implicit horizon, is "inconclusive (too early)" rather than "wrong."

In February 2022 Friedberg effectively claimed that, over the next few years, hundreds of distinct cell‑based therapies that were then in late‑stage trials would win regulatory approval and come to market globally, alongside gene‑editing therapies.

Actual approval numbers fall far short of that scale:

• In the US, there were 26 FDA‑approved cell and gene therapies at the end of 2022 and 33 by the end of 2023.(hitech-health.com) A later analysis reports 43 FDA‑approved cell and gene therapies as of December 2024.(axtria.com) Even adding the new 2024–2025 approvals such as Amtagvi (lifileucel), Lenmeldy (atidarsagene autotemcel), Encelto (revakinagene taroretcel) and Zevaskyn (prademagene zamikeracel), the total number of distinct cell/gene therapies in the US by late 2025 is still well under 100.(en.wikipedia.org)
• Globally, a systematic review of US, EU and Japanese regulators found 75 authorised gene therapeutics as of April 2024.(pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov) A separate Citeline/ASGCT analysis counted 111 approved gene, cell or RNA therapies worldwide by mid‑2023, of which only 62 were non‑genetically modified cell therapies and 11 were gene‑modified cell therapies – roughly 73 cell‑based therapies in total, not hundreds.(pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)
• A 2024 market report similarly estimates 32 globally approved gene therapies and 68 non‑genetically modified cell therapies (about 100 therapies altogether).(media.market.us)
• Forward‑looking industry assessments project that only about 60–70 cell and gene therapies will be approved globally by 2030, indicating that even by the end of the decade the cumulative number of distinct CGTs will remain in the tens, not the hundreds Friedberg implied for the mid‑2020s.(hmpgloballearningnetwork.com)

The gene‑editing part of the prediction did materialize in a limited way: CRISPR‑based and other gene‑editing therapies such as Casgevy and Lyfgenia for sickle cell disease have been approved since 2023.(hitech-health.com) But the central quantitative claim – that hundreds of cell‑based therapies in late‑stage development would actually reach the market within a few years of 2022 – has clearly not occurred and is inconsistent with both current counts and authoritative forecasts.