Evidence from 2022 supports the core of Chamath’s claim that a major trend would be rapid growth of peer‑to‑peer style payments that weaken traditional rails, with Africa as a leading source of innovation and adoption.

1. Rapid rise of P2P/mobile‑money rails in 2022
The GSMA’s State of the Industry data show that in 2022 Africa’s mobile money industry processed about $836.5 billion across 44.9 billion transactions, up roughly 22% in value and 21% in volume from 2021. These transactions are dominated by wallet‑to‑wallet transfers and everyday payments—classic peer‑to‑peer (and P2P‑adjacent) use cases. (itweb.africa)
Globally, mobile money transaction value rose to $1.26 trillion in 2022, so Africa alone accounted for about two‑thirds of global mobile money transaction value and nearly 70% of global transaction count. (ecofinagency.com) This is precisely the kind of structural shift toward account‑to‑account, wallet‑based payments he was pointing at.

2. “Destruction of traditional rails” (at least locally)
In many African markets, telecom‑run mobile money and similar wallets have effectively leapfrogged or bypassed traditional payment rails (branch‑centric banking, card POS networks, checks). Reports on 2022 confirm that mobile money is used for everyday purchases, bill pay, merchant payments and remittances, not just occasional transfers, indicating substitution away from legacy rails rather than a mere niche add‑on. (itweb.africa) That doesn’t mean cards and banks vanished, but it does mean P2P/mobile‑money rails are doing a significant share of the work that traditional rails used to do—matching the spirit, if not the literal extremity, of “destruction.”

3. Did this trend “come out of Africa”?
GSMA’s regional analysis describes Sub‑Saharan Africa as the global “epicentre” of mobile money, with almost half of all registered mobile money accounts worldwide and about two‑thirds of all mobile money transactions. (gsma.com) In 2022 specifically, West Africa accounted for 33% of all new registered mobile money accounts worldwide, the highest share of any sub‑region globally, and led in mobile‑money‑enabled remittances and merchant payments. (gsma.com) This strongly supports the idea that the most advanced and fastest‑growing mobile‑money/P2P ecosystems—and much of the innovation around agent networks, interoperability, and low‑cost rails—were indeed emerging from Africa.

4. Important nuance: Africa was a leader, not the only one
Outside Africa, India’s UPI and Brazil’s Pix also exploded in 2022. UPI processed about 74 billion transactions in 2022, nearly doubling from 2021 and becoming India’s dominant digital payment channel. (businesstoday.in) Brazil’s Pix became the country’s most popular payment method by 2022, with 24 billion transactions and volumes surpassing cards, reshaping retail payments there. (segpay.com) So the worldwide P2P/instant‑payment trend was multi‑polar: Africa, India, and Brazil all played key roles.

Why this still counts as basically correct
Chamath did not try to rank Africa against every individual scheme; he argued that a major 2022 trend would be the rapid growth of P2P payment systems eroding traditional rails, and that this wave would “come out of Africa.” 2022 data show:

• P2P‑style rails (mobile money, real‑time A2A) did grow explosively and increasingly displaced traditional mechanisms in multiple regions.
• Within the specifically wallet/mobile‑money segment—which is the clearest analogue of what he was discussing—Africa clearly led the world in both absolute scale and growth, and was explicitly described by industry sources as the global epicentre of this model.

He overstated the word “destruction” and underplayed the importance of India and Brazil, but the directionally key elements of his prediction—P2P rails rising fast and Africa being a leading hub of that innovation and adoption in 2022—are borne out by the data. Hence the verdict of “right” rather than “wrong” or “ambiguous.”