Multicoin Co-founder: Why SOL is the best asset for DAT

By Kyle Samani, Managing Partner, Multicoin Capital; Translated by AIMan@黄金财经. On September 11, 2025, I am pleased to announce that Multicoin Capital, Jump Crypto (the largest cryptocurrency trading firm), and Galaxy (the largest financial group in the cryptocurrency space) have successfully led a $1.65 billion PIPE financing round in Forward Industries (NASDAQ: FORD), which will use the net proceeds to launch the Solana Treasury. Each sponsor has committed over $100 million. I have personally invested an additional $25 million on top of Multicoin's commitment, reflecting my belief in the company's long-term potential.

In addition to the sponsors, the PIPE has received support and participation from several global investment firms and digital asset ecosystem leaders, including:

• Corporate/Enterprises: Big Brain Holdings, Bitwise Asset Management, Borderless Capital, Coinlist Alpha, Cyber ​​Fund, C/M Capital Partners, LP, FalconX, Graticule Asset Management Asia, Jupiter, L1 Digital, ParaFi, Ribbit Capital, RockawayX, and SkyBridge Capital.

• Angel Investors: Cindy Leow (Drift), Guy Young (Ethena), Howard Lindzon (Stockwits), Lucas Bruder (Jito), Lucas Netz (Pudgy Penguins), Robert Leshner (Superstate), Tarun Chitra (Gauntlet), and Tory Green (io.net).

The PIPE financing closed today, and concurrently, I have been appointed Chairman of the Company's Board of Directors. As one of Solana's earliest and most active supporters since leading its seed round in early 2018, I jumped at the opportunity to take on this role. Regarding my position at Multicoin, there are no changes; I will continue as Managing Partner.

As part of the financing close, Saurabh Sharma, Chief Investment Officer of Jump Crypto, and Chris Ferraro, President and Chief Investment Officer of Galaxy Capital, have been granted observer status on the Board of Directors. I am very excited to be working with them.

SOL DAT

Solana has a vibrant, heterogeneous, competitive, and thriving DeFi ecosystem comprised of dozens of established teams. This presents an opportunity for Forward Industries to deploy its SOL capital in the DeFi space, creating a differentiated source of yield for shareholders and further accelerating SOL purchases. While we expect the SOL Treasury to participate in staking and DeFi, we have also identified additional strategies that Multicoin believes the company is well-positioned to explore: 1. First, Multicoin believes that by leveraging the sponsor's deep network within the Solana ecosystem (dating back to its 2018 seed round), the company is uniquely positioned to acquire discounted and locked SOL. 2. Second, beyond obvious on-chain activities like staking and participating in DeFi, the company sees a potentially large and lucrative design space for arbitrage between the cost of capital provided by banks for public companies and the services offered by DeFi. We believe this arbitrage strategy can manifest in a variety of different ways across a wide range of counterparties. 3. Third, given the sponsor's seniority, the size of the company's treasury, and its deep knowledge and relationships within the Solana ecosystem, the company believes the company can leverage these relationships to secure transactions with major Solana protocols and applications to help increase liquidity while also aiming to improve returns for the company's shareholders. Michael Saylor pioneered the Digital Asset Treasury (DAT) corporate strategy, using Bitcoin (BTC) as the Strategy's corporate reserve asset. He defined the company's "North Star" as "increases in BTC per share." Forward Industries is currently seeking to further develop Saylor's model, using Sol (SOL) as the reserve asset for its Digital Asset Treasury strategy. Similarly, Multicoin invested in the company with the expectation that its "North Star" would be increases in SOL per share, with the goal of increasing shareholder value through customized strategies and active management of the company's treasury. We believe Sol is the best asset to support a DAT; it possesses several unique properties that BTC and ETH lack. Sol can generate real returns through staking. SOL's "returns" are derived from organic economic activity and MEV. Multicoin has written about and covered MEV numerous times over the past few years. For Solana, as of September 2025, SOL stakers have earned an average yield of 8.05%, comprised of approximately 6.19% inflation and a real yield of approximately 1.86% from organic economic activity and MEV. This yield is paid to SOL stakers approximately every 2.5 days. While the nominal yield on ETH staking so far in 2025 is approximately 3.21%, 2.81% of this is inflation, leaving a real yield of only approximately 0.41%. We believe this makes SOL a highly attractive asset for DATs as the foundation of a perpetual capital instrument. We believe that the convertible and perpetual preferred structures promoted by Strategy work far better for SOL DATs than for BTC DATs, given the inherent properties of SOL. Companies can use these earnings streams to repay debt in a way that is not possible with BTC DATs. Bitcoin's actual yield is zero.