Chamath’s claim was conditional: if there were severe credit stress or a banking crisis in 2025, being long selected CDS on vulnerable credits would be the best‑performing asset of 2025; otherwise that CDS trade would “lose money.”

1. Trigger condition (severe credit stress / banking crisis) is not clearly met or clearly absent.

   • 2025 did see a sharp but tariff‑driven equity crash in early April, with the S&P 500 and Nasdaq suffering their biggest declines since 2020, but markets largely recovered by May. This episode is generally described as a stock market crash linked to trade policy, not a banking‑system meltdown.
     • (en.wikipedia.org)
   • Credit markets did come under notable stress: CDS spreads on high‑yield and crossover indices jumped to multi‑year highs in early 2025, and Asia/Europe credit indices and sovereign CDS widened materially around the tariff shock, reflecting increased default concerns.
     • (ft.com)
   • However, major official and media sources through late 2025 talk about rising risks and regional bank/CRE stress, not an actual systemic banking crisis. The Russian central bank explicitly said there was no looming banking crisis, and IMF commentary on AI and markets specifically distinguished current stresses from 2008‑style systemic events. (reuters.com)
   • In the U.S., only two small banks failed in 2025 as of late June, far from a broad wave of failures. (en.wikipedia.org)
   • Because terms like “severe credit stress” and “banking crisis” are qualitative, it is debatable whether 2025 meets Chamath’s threshold. Reasonable observers could disagree, so we cannot definitively say the if‑crisis branch of his prediction did or did not trigger.

2. We cannot observe the performance of the specific CDS trade he had in mind.

   • Public data confirm big swings in CDS spreads (which would have made some long‑CDS positions very profitable during the April stress), but spreads partially retraced as markets stabilized. (kelo.com)
   • Without knowing which credits he meant by “vulnerable,” the exact timing of entry and exit, or whether the position was held all year, we cannot say whether his particular long‑CDS trade ended up making or losing money over full‑year 2025.

3. “Best‑performing asset of 2025” is not practically checkable for CDS.

   • Many listed assets in 2025 (e.g., certain AI/tech and defense stocks/ETFs, as well as some high‑beta names) show very high year‑to‑date returns, often 50–200%+ by late 2025. (onedayadvisor.com)
   • CDS trades are over‑the‑counter, highly bespoke, and not reported in a way that allows a clean, market‑wide ranking of “best‑performing asset.” Even if some niche CDS position had enormous percentage returns, there is no public, comprehensive dataset that would let us verify that it outperformed all other assets.

Because (a) whether the crisis condition truly occurred is subjective, (b) the exact CDS instruments and P&L for Chamath’s trade are unknown, and (c) there is no way to rigorously rank that CDS position against all other assets in 2025, the prediction cannot be conclusively scored as right or wrong based on available evidence.