Tushar Jain is the co-founder and managing partner of Multicoin Capital — the hybrid crypto venture/hedge fund he co-founded with Kyle Samani in 2017 — and is primarily responsible for Multicoin’s venture stage investments and deep token economic research; Jain has authored influential Multicoin research pieces on token velocity, fat protocol/thin application debates, DeFi protocol design, and the technical architecture of the Solana thesis that underpinned Multicoin’s most successful investment.
Background
Tushar Jain studied at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business. Before co-founding Multicoin, he worked in financial services and technology investing. He met Kyle Samani and they co-founded Multicoin Capital in 2017, each bringing complementary backgrounds — Samani with startup operating experience and Jain with finance and investment analysis depth.
Multicoin Capital
See the Kyle Samani entry for full Multicoin Capital background. Jain’s specific contributions within Multicoin:
Token Economics Research:
Jain authored several widely-read Multicoin essays on token design:
- “On Token Velocity” — An influential 2018 analysis arguing that tokens with high transactional velocity (rapidly changing hands) have lower price floors than tokens with holding incentives (staking, governance lock-ups, yield accrual). This became a foundational framework for evaluating whether a token has sustainable price support beyond speculation.
- “The Collapse of the EOS Governance Experiment” — Post-mortem analysis of EOS’s delegated proof-of-stake governance failures, including vote-buying cartels and voter apathy.
- Technical infrastructure essays — Multiple pieces on scaling solutions, Layer 1 performance comparisons, and the Solana thesis.
Venture Investment Focus:
Jain leads many of Multicoin’s early-stage protocol investments, including the seed-stage Solana investment and other infrastructure bets. He focuses on identifying protocol-layer investments where token appreciation is driven by network adoption growth rather than speculative excess.
Token Velocity Thesis
The “token velocity” concept developed by Jain argues:
A token has value proportional to its “equation of exchange” demand:
$$MV = PQ$$
Where M = money supply, V = velocity, P = price level, Q = quantity of economic activity.
If a token’s velocity V is high (tokens are immediately sold after earning them), then M (price × supply) remains low relative to the transaction volume Q. Tokens with low velocity — enforced through staking requirements, governance lock-ups, or yield accrual — have better price floors.
This framework influenced the design of many subsequent DeFi governance tokens that added staking and vote-locking mechanisms.
Key Dates
- 2017 — Co-founds Multicoin Capital with Kyle Samani.
- 2018 — Publishes “On Token Velocity” — one of the most-cited crypto economic research essays of the era.
- 2018 — Co-leads Solana seed investment.
- 2019–2021 — Multicoin research essays published on DeFi, L1 scaling, and DePIN.
- 2022 — FTX collapse affects Multicoin portfolio; fund continues operating.
Last updated: 2026-04