TradFi Gatekeeping and the New Financial Regime
A growing clash between traditional finance (TradFi) and decentralized finance (DeFi) is playing out in the markets, and Multicoin Capital co-founder and managing partner Kyle Samani isn’t mincing words. Founded in 2017, Multicoin Capital is a thesis-driven investment firm that invests in crypto assets, tokens, and blockchain companies.
In a recent conversation with TheStreet Roundtable, Samani pushed back hard against the idea that the MSCI (Morgan Stanley Capital International) was considering removing companies holding more than 50% of their treasury in digital assets from its indices. Such a move is an attempt by "boomers" controlling TradFi to gatekeep finance at a time when blockchain-based finance is rapidly evolving, Samani said.
"The boomers that control TradFi are fighting against the new regime. It just seems kind of silly."
Samani addressed the MSCI's argument that these firms are functioning primarily as crypto holders and lack any real operating businesses. He took the example of Michael Saylor's Strategy (Nasdaq: MSTR), the leading Bitcoin (BTC) treasury company, and argued that if the shareholders think it’s a bad idea to hold crypto assets, they should sell their shares, and the MSTR stock's price should go down. But that's not how it is. Shareholders have bought MSTR, and the stock is "super liquid," he underlined.
"The MSCI index committee is choosing to go out of their way to say, [we] don't care what capitalism says, we don't care what shareholders are doing, we are going to use our expert judgment and overrule these other people."
Forward Industries: Beyond a Solana Treasury
Samani said such concerns are “irrelevant” for Forward Industries, which received a $1.65 billion private investment in public equity (PIPE) from Multicoin Capital, Galaxy Digital (Nasdaq: GLXY), and Jump Crypto in September 2025 to establish a Solana (SOL)-focused digital asset treasury.
Looking ahead, Samani said Forward Industries’ strategy goes well beyond simply holding SOL. In the next six years, Forward Industries is not going to hold only a pile of Solana, he said.
"We're going to be a diversified holding co, holding a bunch of very interesting cash flow producing businesses, obviously that are relevant to Solana and the crypto, but that we're going to have all of these operating businesses underneath.”
Ethereum's Tokenization Lead: Misunderstood and Fragile
As tokenization emerged as one of crypto’s dominant narratives, Ethereum (ETH) continues to lead in headline market share. But Samani argued that Ethereum's tokenization lead is generally misunderstood.
“The largest player in tokenization today is BlackRock,” he said, referring to the BlackRock USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund (BUIDL). Launched in March 2024, BUIDL is BlackRock's (NYSE: BLK) first tokenized fund issued on a public blockchain. The fund invests in U.S. dollars, U.S. Treasury bills, etc.
Samani underlined the extreme concentration of BUIDL ownership among the top 10 holders, such as Ethena and MakerDAO, who control over 85% of all the BUIDL shares. But these holders, Samani explained, are largely chain-agnostic as they don’t care where they hold their assets. He even claimed that Ethena plans to move most of its Ethereum-based BUIDL holdings to Solana. It just shows how "fragile" Ethereum’s tokenization lead is, he remarked.
Solana vs. Ethereum: A Choice for the Future
For asset managers like BlackRock, Samani argued, the real question isn’t which blockchain currently hosts tokenized funds—it’s where the next wave of users will come from. Tokenization, Samani emphasized, remains in its earliest days, and headline market share figures don’t tell the full story.
Nonetheless, he chose Solana over Ethereum because the former is cheaper, faster, and more widely used on a daily basis. Samani asked firms like BlackRock, Fidelity, or Hamilton Lane, which are aiming to offer their projects to retail users globally, to opt for Solana because that's where retail investors are using the blockchain every day.