we're at the beginning of the beginning. Okay. For all of us that lived through 2000, this was four years of sheer hell and a grind. Now we have $30 trillion that we have to work through the economy, a recession. We have to overcome, a war we need to end... it's just an observation that we're at the beginning of something that just fundamentally has to take some amount of time to work its way through the system.View on YouTube
Chamath’s prediction was that the post‑2021 downturn, driven by excess debt, recession, and the Russia–Ukraine war, would resemble the 2000 dot‑com bust in duration and take on the order of four years of grinding pain to work through, rather than resolving within a few quarters.
In reality, the U.S. did not experience a prolonged, dot‑com‑style recession. After the brief COVID recession ending in April 2020, the NBER has not dated any new recession through at least mid‑2024, meaning the subsequent period has been classified as an ongoing expansion. (congress.gov) U.S. real GDP grew each year from 2022 through 2024 (roughly 1.9% in 2022, 2.5–2.9% in 2023, and about 2.6–2.8% in 2024), with unemployment staying in the 3.5–4.2% range, consistent with a soft‑landing rather than a multi‑year recessionary grind. (tradingeconomics.com)
Financial markets also recovered much faster than a four‑year bust. The S&P 500 fell about 25% from its January 2022 high to an October 2022 low, but by June 8, 2023 it had rallied more than 20% off that low, exiting bear‑market territory. (en.wikipedia.org) The index then gained roughly 24% in 2023 and another ~23–25% in 2024, setting new all‑time highs and closing above 5,000 in February 2024 and 6,000 in November 2024, with a further record high near 6,875 in October 2025. (en.wikipedia.org) The Nasdaq likewise surpassed its 2021 peak by February 2024, driven by AI‑related tech strength. (reuters.com) This pattern is a relatively quick bear‑market-and-recovery sequence, not a drawn‑out four‑year equity bust like the early 2000s.
Crypto markets, which had collapsed in 2022, also rebounded strongly instead of remaining in a long winter. Bitcoin exceeded its 2021 all‑time high in March 2024 and went on to set higher peaks, including a run to around 90,000–109,000 in early 2025. (coindesk.com) That is again inconsistent with a multi‑year period of unrelenting pain comparable to 2000–2003.
The Russia–Ukraine war did persist into late 2025, with active fighting and only evolving peace‑framework talks, so that specific risk did not “resolve in a few quarters.” (theguardian.com) However, Chamath’s central quantitative claim was about the duration and character of the macro downturn and market bust, and on those dimensions the world saw a relatively fast recovery and soft landing rather than four years of sheer hell.
Given the lack of a multi‑year recession and the strong, early return to record highs in both stocks and crypto, the prediction that the post‑2021 downturn would resemble the four‑year dot‑com bust is best classified as wrong.