Samani Bets on SOL Flip, Says ETH Only Matters for Stablecoins

Multicoin's Kyle Samani predicts Solana will overtake Ethereum this cycle. SOL needs a 5x rise to top ETH's $293B cap; Solana already leads on 30-day fees.

SShitij GuptaSep 21, 2026

A pop-art comic cover showing a Solana coin on the right overtaking an Ethereum coin on the left, with an upward arrow and a small 5X badge, beside a speech bubble reading SOL FLIPS ETH.

Mentioned

SOL$117.56+7.02%

ETH$2,749.20+4.30%

SOL's $58 billion market cap sits at less than one-fifth of Ethereum's $293 billion, the gap Multicoin Capital co-founder Kyle Samani said Solana will close this market cycle. Samani made the case on Cointelegraph's Trade Secrets podcast on September 21, arguing that "today, no one really uses Ethereum" outside of stablecoins and stablecoins borrowed against Ether as collateral.

For SOL to overtake ETH, the prediction requires roughly a five-fold rise in SOL's market cap, per figures cited in the discussion. Samani said he is "bearish" on Ethereum's ability to accrue value despite it being the largest smart contract network and expects it to gradually lose its position as the default chain for crypto firms consolidating operations. He called Solana "the most functional network."

Fee data already shows SOL ahead

DefiLlama recorded $23 million in Solana fees over the trailing 30 days, ranking fourth across chains. Ethereum printed $12.6 million, ranking sixth. SOL has also surpassed Ethereum in both weekly and monthly fees despite the market cap gap.

Price tape over a month and a year

Over the past month, ETH rose 30% and SOL rose 34%, per TradingView. Over a year, the move reverses: SOL is down 59%, ETH down 45%, against a smaller base for SOL.

Samani's stake in the call

Samani co-founded Multicoin in May 2017 and led some of Solana's earliest investment rounds in 2018. He first encountered permissionless finance through Ethereum in 2016, calling it his "entry into crypto," and has since said he lost faith after becoming dissatisfied with how Ethereum developers handled scaling. He stepped down as Multicoin's managing partner in February after 10 years and joined the US board of crypto trading platform Backpack in September. Multicoin reported $5.9 billion in assets under management in May 2025.

Samani has also publicly cooled on the broader crypto thesis. He reportedly deleted an X post reading: "I once believed in the web3 vision. dapps. I don't anymore...Crypto is just fundamentally not as interesting as many crypto enthusiasts wanted. Myself included."

What would invalidate the flip call

A five-fold rise in SOL relative to ETH, with ETH flat, or a multi-hundred-billion-dollar net inflow into SOL with no comparable demand for ETH. The setup breaks if ETH's stablecoin and lending activity grows as a share of on-chain usage, or if Solana's fee lead compresses back below Ethereum's on a sustained basis.