Multicoin Capital’s Kyle Samani on Internet Capital Markets

What if markets stopped feeling like a museum and started acting like the internet?

That question kept running through my head as I listened to Kyle Simani map out a future where trading, settlement, and even the way we consume financial news feel native to smartphones and streaming platforms. He blends history, technology, and policy into a single clear thesis: the old scaffolding of capital markets is brittle, and the pieces are finally in place to rebuild it as an internet-native system.

A short history that explains a long grip

He begins by reminding us why the modern securities system exists at all. The laws crafted after the market collapses of the early 20th century—Securities Act of 1933, Exchange Act of 1934, and the Investment Company Act of 1940—were about restoring trust. That mission is still valid today, Simani argues, but the machinery built around it has layered complexity and rent-seeking on top of that trust. The result: slow settlement, high fees, and restricted access.

That historical setup explains why markets still close at 4 p.m. and why a trade can take two days to settle in 2025. It also sets the scene for a provocative idea: if you handed modern engineers the brief to design capital markets today, they would not recreate those intermediaries.

Why the tech finally matters

For years blockchain felt promising and unusable at scale. That tension is gone, or close to it. Simani points to modern chains—Solana gets center stage—as capable of processing vast volumes at tiny cost. When transactions cost fractions of a penny and networks can handle billions of operations a day, the technical objection to moving markets on-chain begins to evaporate.

But the technology is only half the story. He is explicit: the other half is legal and regulatory alignment. 2025, he says with almost a conspiratorial excitement, is the year the stars lined up. Executive actions, new congressional frameworks for stablecoins, and fresh guidance from securities regulators create a permissive environment for on-chain markets.

Regulation as an enabler, not an obstacle

What really struck me is the portrayal of regulators as architects rather than adversaries. Simani cites recent speeches and policy moves that seem intended to integrate on-chain systems into the securities framework. He highlights a concept called a "regulation super app": a front-end that lets you trade non-security crypto, tokenized securities, and traditional securities without caring about differing backends.

That image is powerful because it reframes compliance as interface design. Imagine Robinhood, Coinbase and SoFi converging with permissionless protocols under a single regulated user experience. The friction of licenses, state-by-state approvals, and fractured custody models could fade away.

From slick tech to everyday behaviors

What I enjoyed most was how concrete Simani got about how these changes will show up in ordinary life. Prediction markets woven into news articles. Betting features paired with sports broadcasts that make watching far more interactive. Group chats where friends place micro-bets and trade snippets of portfolios together. He doesn’t present a sterile blueprint; he imagines culture shifting.

The mental image of someone swiping to bet while on the bathroom—yes, that line earned a laugh—makes the point sharply. Finance as a second-screen experience will change how we consume media. And creativity matters: swipe to trade, type to trade, tap to trade. Those interface experiments will define adoption, not the underlying cryptography.

Social finance and new forms of ownership

Another memorable thread: social streams morph into trading floors. Today’s streamers and community traders are a foreshadowing of a new social finance era. Groups can trade the same asset in real-time from a live stream; hosts could bundle access, sponsorships and secondary markets within the show. That flips the gatekeepers and adds a participatory layer to markets.

Prediction markets, he argues, will change journalism itself. If readers can instantly put money on an economic forecast, coverage becomes more than narrative; it becomes market input. That shift could be messy and exhilarating.

AI, money, and a generational pivot

He doesn’t ignore the parallel force of artificial intelligence. If AI is changing how companies are built, internet capital markets will change how they’re financed and traded. The two technologies act as accelerants for one another. Together they create what he calls a generational opportunity—one of those tectonic shifts that looks obvious only in hindsight.

Simani’s historical analogy is blunt: 2025 could be remembered like the Telecommunications Act of 1996. That’s not hyperbole; it’s a framing meant to make you feel the scale of the possible disruption.

What's risky, what's inevitable

The talk is not a naive techno-optimism pitch. He names risks—regulatory missteps, transitional frictions, and the potential for incumbent rent-seekers to slow adoption. Yet his confidence is rooted in the simultaneous arrival of three things: scalable blockchains, enabling rules, and a cultural appetite for new interfaces.

That combination creates a plausible path from experimentation to mainstream utility. If custody, clearing, and settlement can be reduced to software primitives, then trading becomes faster, cheaper, and democratically accessible.

A quiet revolution with noisy consequences

Here's what stood out: this isn’t just about cheaper trades. It’s about recasting finance as an ambient feature of modern apps and media. Markets become the medium, and the medium becomes markets. The idea sounds almost dystopian when stated coldly, but it can also be liberating—particularly for people around the world who want access to dollar-denominated assets but are locked out by legacy rails.

Honestly, I didn't expect the talk to land as much on media and culture as on pure infrastructure. That turn made the prediction feel immediate and human: it’s not only engineers and lawyers who will decide the future, but broadcasters, podcasters, and chat groups.

One reflective thought: rebuilding capital markets as internet primitives will change who participates and how decisions are signaled, and that change will be as cultural as it is technical.