Kyle Samani's Exit Scam, Is There More to the Story?
Original Title: "Kyle Samani's Exit from the Scene, Is There Another Story?"
Original Author: Azuma, Odaily Planet Daily
It has only been a few days since Multicoin Capital co-founder Kyle Samani announced his exit from the scene, and the goodwill he has built up in the crypto industry over the years has been quickly eroded.
Burning Bridges After Crossing the River Is Truly Disgusting
Objectively speaking, Kyle Samani has made a positive contribution to the cryptocurrency industry over the years, whether it is tangible support for early projects (not discussing motivation, only function), or narrative guidance and ideological preaching at the level of consciousness, which has directly or indirectly influenced the industry's direction of progress.
From a consequentialist perspective, Kyle Samani has indeed achieved "great results" in the crypto industry that ordinary people can hardly imagine. So, whether Hasseb Qureshi says he is the "best investor in the industry" or Mable says he is a "top player," it is quite reasonable.
· Note: Hasseb Qureshi is a partner at Dragonfly Capital, who once said, "Investing is like a sport, and Kyle Samani is the all-time high scorer, unmatched by anyone"; Mable is a former partner at Multicoin Capital, co-founder of Trends, who wrote a popular article after Kyle Samani's exit, "The game is still on, just Kyle's version is over".
However, it is precisely because of this that Kyle Samani's frequent display of a "ugly face" after his exit has become even more disgusting.
First, on the day of his exit, Kyle Samani replied to Stix founder Taran, saying, "Cryptocurrency is not as interesting as many people (including myself) once imagined. I used to believe in the vision of Web3, believe in DApps, but now I don't. Blockchain is fundamentally an asset ledger, they will reshape finance, but that's about it, there won't be much more impact."

This post was quickly deleted by Kyle Samani... Well, apparently this was a true thought that Kyle Samani had never revealed before, but knowing to delete the post at least means he knows that "burning bridges after crossing the river" is not decent.
Unfortunately, he did not stop there. On February 8, Kyle Samani once again took aim at the industry that had once propelled him: "Hyperliquid embodies almost every downside of cryptocurrency. The founder fled his own country to start it, openly facilitating crime and terrorist activities, keeping the system closed-source and permissioned."

While being outspoken has always been a controversial label attached to Kyle Samani, this time his illogical and clearly fact-defying "senseless rant" was evidently baseless. Moreover, having positioned himself as an outsider to the community, this statement seemed even more out of place. Previously, Kyle Samani's outrageous remarks could at least garner some group support based on his stance (like siding with Solana and long-term criticisms of Ethereum). However, this time, he stood outside the industry, completely denying the entire crypto space.
Unsurprisingly, Kyle Samani's actions have triggered industry-wide anger.
It is understandable when those who have lost money in the crypto world criticize it, as people often need to vent their emotions; but Kyle Samani, who clearly amassed immense wealth in the industry and climbed the social ladder, has now hypocritically turned to criticize it immediately after announcing his exit, which is hard not to find insincere and disgusting.
Frankly speaking, this is a typical case of "biting the hand that feeds you" — Kyle Samani wants to take away the benefits the industry has provided while eagerly distancing himself from it. How can anyone expect to gain such a big advantage?
A Strange Sense of Disharmony, Is There a Hidden Agenda Behind the Exit?
Another highly discordant point is that Kyle Samani chose to target Hyperliquid this time, while on the other hand, Multicoin Capital has been consistently increasing its bet on Hyperliquid.
Right in the same week as Kyle Samani's exit announcement, on-chain analyst MLM detected several large transactions suspected to be Multicoin Capital addresses buying significant amounts of HYPE.
Crypto Banter founder Ran Neuner also discovered that in Multicoin Capital co-founder Tushar Jain's investment themes for the next five years revealed over the weekend, Hyperliquid was prominently featured as the representative project for the third theme of "Financial Globalization," whereas DePIN, which Kyle Samani has been extremely bullish on, was not mentioned at all.

Ran Neuner has proposed a hypothesis that Kyle Samani did not resign voluntarily, but rather had a falling out with Tushar Jain, was eventually forced out, and had to leave the crypto industry only due to non-compete restrictions...
While this speculation lacks any factual evidence, it seems to better explain the earlier inconsistencies and Kyle Samani's sudden change in attitude—would you rather believe that a seasoned mind in the crypto industry suddenly realized the industry's futility, or that Kyle Samani simply turned his back out of resentment and an inability to profit from the industry anymore?
Whether out of faith in the industry's future or residual recognition of Kyle Samani's past achievements, I would emotionally lean towards the latter possibility. As for the truth of the matter, it may only be revealed one day in the future when no one cares about this anymore.
Does the Crypto Industry Have No Future?
Over the past few years, we have seen too many talents flow from the crypto world to the AI world, but when iconic figures like Kyle Samani choose to exit, it deals a heavy blow to the entire crypto industry's confidence.
So does the industry really have no future? This is clearly not a question that can be answered from a personal perspective. After Kyle Samani's departure, several other prominent opinion leaders, equivalent to him, have explained with their own logic why they continue to be optimistic about the industry's future.
Tushar Jain's faith remains strong, and the eight core investment themes announced by Multicoin Capital still focus on the crypto world.
Haseeb Qureshi believes that Kyle Samani's departure is the most authentic sign of the industry's maturation, as pioneers and settlers are often not the same group of people, a rule dictated by human nature — "I still remain very bullish on cryptocurrency. I know it sounds strange to say this in a volatile market because people are running out of patience for dreams that won't be fulfilled for another ten years. The era of dreamers is over, but the era of doers is coming, which is neither good nor bad in itself."
Chris Dixon, a partner at a16z Crypto and a pioneer of the Web3 concept, analogized the development pattern of the internet to refute Kyle Samani's view that cryptocurrency can only reshape finance — "Infrastructure and distribution networks often precede new application categories. The internet did not begin with social media, streaming, or online communities but with packet switching, TCP/IP, and basic connectivity. It was only after billions of people were online that entirely new cultural and economic categories emerged. Cryptocurrency is likely to follow a similar path. A reasonable guess is that we need to onboard billions of people through financial applications like payments, stablecoins, savings, and DeFi before meaningful adoption can be seen in media, gaming, AI, or other potentially more distant fields."
The future is created by humans, and as long as more people hold the same consensus, the flame of the crypto narrative can be reignited.
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Before using Musk's "Western WeChat" X Chat, you need to understand these three questions
The X Chat will be available for download on the App Store this Friday. The media has already covered the feature list, including self-destructing messages, screenshot prevention, 481-person group chats, Grok integration, and registration without a phone number, positioning it as the "Western WeChat." However, there are three questions that have hardly been addressed in any reports.
There is a sentence on X's official help page that is still hanging there: "If malicious insiders or X itself cause encrypted conversations to be exposed through legal processes, both the sender and receiver will be completely unaware."
No. The difference lies in where the keys are stored.
In Signal's end-to-end encryption, the keys never leave your device. X, the court, or any external party does not hold your keys. Signal's servers have nothing to decrypt your messages; even if they were subpoenaed, they could only provide registration timestamps and last connection times, as evidenced by past subpoena records.
X Chat uses the Juicebox protocol. This solution divides the key into three parts, each stored on three servers operated by X. When recovering the key with a PIN code, the system retrieves these three shards from X's servers and recombines them. No matter how complex the PIN code is, X is the actual custodian of the key, not the user.
This is the technical background of the "help page sentence": because the key is on X's servers, X has the ability to respond to legal processes without the user's knowledge. Signal does not have this capability, not because of policy, but because it simply does not have the key.
The following illustration compares the security mechanisms of Signal, WhatsApp, Telegram, and X Chat along six dimensions. X Chat is the only one of the four where the platform holds the key and the only one without Forward Secrecy.
The significance of Forward Secrecy is that even if a key is compromised at a certain point in time, historical messages cannot be decrypted because each message has a unique key. Signal's Double Ratchet protocol automatically updates the key after each message, a mechanism lacking in X Chat.
After analyzing the X Chat architecture in June 2025, Johns Hopkins University cryptology professor Matthew Green commented, "If we judge XChat as an end-to-end encryption scheme, this seems like a pretty game-over type of vulnerability." He later added, "I would not trust this any more than I trust current unencrypted DMs."
From a September 2025 TechCrunch report to being live in April 2026, this architecture saw no changes.
In a February 9, 2026 tweet, Musk pledged to undergo rigorous security tests of X Chat before its launch on X Chat and to open source all the code.
As of the April 17 launch date, no independent third-party audit has been completed, there is no official code repository on GitHub, the App Store's privacy label reveals X Chat collects five or more categories of data including location, contact info, and search history, directly contradicting the marketing claim of "No Ads, No Trackers."
Not continuous monitoring, but a clear access point.
For every message on X Chat, users can long-press and select "Ask Grok." When this button is clicked, the message is delivered to Grok in plaintext, transitioning from encrypted to unencrypted at this stage.
This design is not a vulnerability but a feature. However, X Chat's privacy policy does not state whether this plaintext data will be used for Grok's model training or if Grok will store this conversation content. By actively clicking "Ask Grok," users are voluntarily removing the encryption protection of that message.
There is also a structural issue: How quickly will this button shift from an "optional feature" to a "default habit"? The higher the quality of Grok's replies, the more frequently users will rely on it, leading to an increase in the proportion of messages flowing out of encryption protection. The actual encryption strength of X Chat, in the long run, depends not only on the design of the Juicebox protocol but also on the frequency of user clicks on "Ask Grok."
X Chat's initial release only supports iOS, with the Android version simply stating "coming soon" without a timeline.
In the global smartphone market, Android holds about 73%, while iOS holds about 27% (IDC/Statista, 2025). Of WhatsApp's 3.14 billion monthly active users, 73% are on Android (according to Demand Sage). In India, WhatsApp covers 854 million users, with over 95% Android penetration. In Brazil, there are 148 million users, with 81% on Android, and in Indonesia, there are 112 million users, with 87% on Android.
WhatsApp's dominance in the global communication market is built on Android. Signal, with a monthly active user base of around 85 million, also relies mainly on privacy-conscious users in Android-dominant countries.
X Chat circumvented this battlefield, with two possible interpretations. One is technical debt; X Chat is built with Rust, and achieving cross-platform support is not easy, so prioritizing iOS may be an engineering constraint. The other is a strategic choice; with iOS holding a market share of nearly 55% in the U.S., X's core user base being in the U.S., prioritizing iOS means focusing on their core user base rather than engaging in direct competition with Android-dominated emerging markets and WhatsApp.
These two interpretations are not mutually exclusive, leading to the same result: X Chat's debut saw it willingly forfeit 73% of the global smartphone user base.
This matter has been described by some: X Chat, along with X Money and Grok, forms a trifecta creating a closed-loop data system parallel to the existing infrastructure, similar in concept to the WeChat ecosystem. This assessment is not new, but with X Chat's launch, it's worth revisiting the schematic.
X Chat generates communication metadata, including information on who is talking to whom, for how long, and how frequently. This data flows into X's identity system. Part of the message content goes through the Ask Grok feature and enters Grok's processing chain. Financial transactions are handled by X Money: external public testing was completed in March, opening to the public in April, enabling fiat peer-to-peer transfers via Visa Direct. A senior Fireblocks executive confirmed plans for cryptocurrency payments to go live by the end of the year, holding money transmitter licenses in over 40 U.S. states currently.
Every WeChat feature operates within China's regulatory framework. Musk's system operates within Western regulatory frameworks, but he also serves as the head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). This is not a WeChat replica; it is a reenactment of the same logic under different political conditions.
The difference is that WeChat has never explicitly claimed to be "end-to-end encrypted" on its main interface, whereas X Chat does. "End-to-end encryption" in user perception means that no one, not even the platform, can see your messages. X Chat's architectural design does not meet this user expectation, but it uses this term.
X Chat consolidates the three data lines of "who this person is, who they are talking to, and where their money comes from and goes to" in one company's hands.
The help page sentence has never been just technical instructions.

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