Multicoin Capital Co-founder Kyle Samani Announces His Largest Personal Angel Investment in Backpack
Kyle Samani, co-founder of Multicoin Capital, announced on platform X that his largest personal angel investment to date has been made in Backpack, totaling approximately $4 million, completed in two tranches.
On September 2, Backpack officially announced Samani's addition to the Backpack US board of directors; he previously stepped down from his daily management role at Multicoin in February 2026 but retains an advisory relationship and serves as chairman of Forward Industries (Nasdaq: FWDI), which implements a Solana treasury strategy.
Backpack CEO Armani Ferrante stated that Samani's experience in building decentralized finance networks and promoting clear and feasible crypto regulatory frameworks makes him an ideal candidate for the board; Samani himself noted that the future of global capital markets is not about DeFi versus TradFi, but rather about combining institutional-level risk control with on-chain efficiency and transparency.
Samani has had a working relationship with Ferrante for about six years, and he pointed out in the announcement that Backpack is about to launch significant products that will reshape on-chain and off-chain transaction forms; Backpack has launched the world's first 24/7 trading feature for real US stocks, covering assets like SpaceX, Micron, SanDisk, and SK Hynix, and supports 1:1 conversion of tokenized equity on Solana with DeFi compatibility.
The board has previously included individuals such as former SEC acting chairman Michael S. Piwowar and former CFTC commissioner Mark Wetjen; Backpack claims to serve users in 150 countries with a cumulative trading volume exceeding $450 billion, positioning itself as a compliance-first platform connecting crypto and traditional financial markets.
This move brings early institutional capital and regulatory experience from Solana into the US licensed brokerage and tokenized stock space; driven by events, Backpack's US expansion gains incremental governance and network resources, while traditional brokerages and purely on-chain trading venues face competition from hybrid models, with funds shifting from individual angel allocations to licensed infrastructure.
Samani also serves as a board member of Zama and continues to invest personally in the crypto space; this board seat further binds his Solana ecosystem depth with the US compliance framework.
Source: Public Information
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Samani co-founded Multicoin Capital with Tushar Jain in 2017 and heavily invested in Solana early on, maintaining his position during multiple network interruptions and recoveries; he later shifted to Forward Industries to promote the publicly traded Solana treasury strategy, and after stepping down from daily management at Multicoin in February 2026, he redirected his personal capital and governance efforts towards projects like Backpack.
In terms of funding, he initially entered Backpack with a $1 million angel investment, followed by an additional $3 million, forming a total of $4 million as his largest single angel allocation, while participating in US entity governance through his board seat; the motivation is to capture cross-opportunities in tokenized stocks and on-chain trading infrastructure under the US regulatory window, leveraging his Solana network and advocacy resources to accelerate product rollout.
Similar cases include ongoing allocations by funds like a16z and Multicoin into Solana ecosystem infrastructure and trading layers, as well as platforms like Robinhood and Coinbase promoting tokenized assets and 24-hour trading; the current phase is one of expansion towards the integration of traditional brokerage licenses and on-chain settlement infrastructure.
Essentially, this represents a restructuring of the industry chain: combining institutional-level risk control, licensing, and on-chain transparency with programmable settlement, shifting stocks from a single traditional exchange timeframe and custody system to a hybrid structure that allows for 24-hour trading and entry into DeFi collateral, altering the distribution of capital between brokerage, clearing, and on-chain protocols.
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The place where the largest personal bets occur is often the structure that the founders believe in the most.
Licensing combined with on-chain efficiency is closer to a scalable path than simply choosing sides.
A board seat serves as a second layer of leverage beyond capital, used to lock in direction rather than just buying price.