Avichal Garg (Managing Partner at Electric Capital) argues that tribal knowledge around scaling startups will keep dominant crypto winners centered in Silicon Valley.
Insight
Garg: ICOs are essentially a gambling use case
“In some sense ICOs are kind of the gaming use case, right? It's kind of like a gambling, it's a gambling use case, right? And like, that's actually kind of what's happening is people are just gambling as real money.”
Opinion
Garg: Privacy tokens like Monero have real utility unlike speculative ICO tokens
“I think private, privacy tokens are actually a thing. Like if you talk to a lot of people, hey, if XYZ thing went away, would you care about it? They're like, yeah, it would be kind of unfortunate if that went away, or I'd lose a lot of money because I was in …”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Garg: Mainstream dApp adoption is probably 7 to 10 years away
“I think it's probably like seven to 10 years out for most of these. I think we're really, really early in most of these cases.”
Opinion
Garg (2018): US regulators have been measured and smart about crypto
“I actually think the US government Has been really, really smart about this and pretty measured and sophisticated, because I think they understand there's a lot of potential for innovation here and a lot of value to be created and they don't want to crush that…”
Opinion
Garg: The biggest risk in crypto is state adoption for surveillance
“I think the bigger and scarier potential risk is that governments fully embrace crypto in the wrong way.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Garg: Crypto will go mainstream via invisible blockchain infrastructure
“At some point in like the next five years, it's not going to be that you're a crypto company, it's that you offer some value to the people who use your product, and it just so happens that you sit on top of blockchain, or you use crypto economics, or whatever …”