How the prediction was framed
Chamath predicted that over roughly the next nine months from March 2020 there would be:

1. A widely discussed deleveraging of a multi‑trillion‑dollar global credit bubble.
2. This deleveraging would be “violent and messy,” not orderly.
3. The unwind would leave many people unemployed and many businesses out of business.

What actually happened

1. Leverage did not fall; it surged to record highs

Instead of a broad deleveraging of the global credit bubble, 2020 saw an unprecedented increase in public and private debt:

• The IMF estimates that global debt reached about $226 trillion in 2020, jumping 28 percentage points to 256% of global GDP—the largest one‑year debt surge since World War II, driven by both public and private borrowing. (aa.com.tr)
• The Institute of International Finance (IIF) and related reporting show global debt around $281 trillion by the end of 2020, with pandemic responses adding roughly $24 trillion to the global debt “mountain,” pushing total debt to roughly 355% of world GDP. (bnreport.com)
• In the U.S., federal public debt held by the public rose by about $3.1 trillion just from February to June 2020, reflecting massive deficit‑financed stimulus rather than deleveraging. (en.wikipedia.org)
• U.S. non‑financial corporate debt climbed sharply: companies rushed to issue bonds in early 2020, taking total non‑financial corporate debt to over $11 trillion by early 2021—about half of U.S. GDP—another sign of increased leverage, not net reduction. (spglobal.com)
• There was a brief, specific credit‑card deleveraging episode in Q2 2020, with reduced new borrowing and faster pay‑downs, but researchers at the St. Louis Fed describe it as short‑lived and quickly reversed—far from a broad, sustained systemic deleveraging. (stlouisfed.org)

Overall, the empirical record shows net re‑leveraging, not a multi‑trillion‑dollar deleveraging of the global credit bubble during 2020.

2. The dominant narrative was rising debt and massive stimulus, not ongoing “deleveraging”

Policy and media focus through late 2020 revolved around extraordinary fiscal stimulus, central‑bank backstops, and a growing global debt overhang, rather than a drawn‑out deleveraging process:

• The IMF and others characterize 2020 as a period of record‑high debt levels enabled by low interest rates and large central‑bank asset purchases, warning of the challenges of managing this new debt burden. (imf.org)
• Contemporary analyses from mid‑ and late‑2020 discuss the world being “drowning in pandemic debt” and highlight record debt‑to‑GDP ratios, not a major, ongoing deleveraging cycle. (lombardodier.com)

While some official commentary in early 2020 warned that forced asset sales and margin calls could trigger financial deleveraging in specific markets, this was framed as a risk and a short‑term dynamic within stressed markets, not as the sustained, economy‑wide deleveraging of a global credit bubble that the prediction envisioned. (imf.org)

3. Unemployment and business failures did spike violently

The prediction that many people would lose jobs and many businesses would fail did come true, though this was driven primarily by pandemic shutdowns and policy choices, not by a systemic debt‑reduction cycle:

• Globally, the ILO estimated that between April and June 2020 an equivalent of 400 million full‑time jobs were lost, and workers’ global income fell about 10% in the first nine months of 2020 (over $3.5 trillion). (en.wikipedia.org)
• In the United States, the unemployment rate jumped from 3.5% in February 2020 to 14.7% in April 2020, the highest since the 1940s, with over 20 million jobs lost in a single month. (en.wikipedia.org)
• Yelp’s economic impact data show that by August 31, 2020, around 163,735 U.S. businesses listed on Yelp had closed since March, with about 98,000 (roughly 60%) indicated as permanently closed—large‑scale business casualties consistent with his qualitative claim. (cnbc.com)

So the outcome of severe unemployment and many business closures was accurate, but it occurred in an environment where governments and firms increased borrowing massively to cushion the blow, rather than in a prolonged, system‑wide deleveraging of the credit bubble.

Overall assessment

• Core mechanism & framing: Chamath specifically expected a widely discussed deleveraging of a multi‑trillion‑dollar global credit bubble over the ensuing nine months. The data instead show record increases in global public and private debt and a narrative dominated by stimulus, bailouts, and rising debt, not by a sustained deleveraging cycle.
• Consequences (jobs & closures): He was directionally right that the period would be violent and messy in labor markets and for businesses—unemployment spiked and many firms failed—but those outcomes happened despite massive re‑leveraging, not because of a broad deleveraging of the bubble.

Because the central quantitative and conceptual claim—system‑wide deleveraging of the global credit bubble, widely discussed over the next nine months—did not materialize, the prediction as stated is best classified as wrong overall, even though some of the downstream hardships he anticipated (job losses and business failures) did occur for related but importantly different reasons.