The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 16 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Garg: The biggest crypto winners will likely re-centralize in Silicon Valley
“I think you could have the inspiration for ideas come from underserved markets, but I wouldn't be surprised if the really big winners in crypto actually sort of re-centralize around Silicon Valley.”
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.”
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 …”
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.”
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…”
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.”
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 …”
Garg: Edtech founders prioritize quality while mainstream US consumers prioritize cost
“The mainstream market really cared much more about cost rather than quality. And the fundamental sort of disconnect between people who start Education businesses and the consumer themselves is, is fundamentally that. The people who start education businesses t…”
Garg: US edtech growth ramps pale compared to Chinese counterparts
“I don't know the numbers of most of the American companies, but I think they pale in comparison to like Chinese education companies that go from like zero to a billion, you know, an IPO in seven years.”
Garg: Chegg scaled by discounting textbooks, not reinventing learning
“By and large, if you look at Chegg, the way they got to where they are is they didn't reinvent digital learning, they just made textbooks cheaper.”
Garg: $50M to $100M edtech businesses are worthwhile despite VC scale bias
“And I think, especially in Silicon Valley, there's too much of a, Lens of, well, if it's not a billion dollar outcome or if it's not a ten billion dollar exit, it doesn't matter. And there are lots of motivations that people may have. And so the first step, I …”
Garg: Programmable money payment rails like Lightning Network will get built out
“Or the big one, the other big one I'd add basically is, is programmable money. I think like payment, the payment rails will all get built out. Things like lightning network and plasma or zero fee payment networks that are coming up. And I think the merchant si…”
Garg: Early crypto dApps will be ports of existing products
“I think the early ideas will look like ports of stuff that we're used to.”
Garg: Crypto founders will re-aggregate towards value-add early-stage investors
“So I think what we're gonna see is a lot of people returning to that idea of, oh, well I could get money from five different places, who can actually add value to my company for the next three to five years and help me build this company? So I think we'll see …”
Garg: High school edtech will take longer to transform than early education
“I think there are gonna be pockets of pretty substantial change in the next five years. And some, I think, will just take a while longer. Like, I actually think high schools will take a bit longer than some of these others just because of the phase shift, righ…”
Garg: Education and healthcare struggle because their ROI horizons span decades
“There are two parts of education, which is kind of like healthcare that I think make it really hard. One is the long ROI cycle, right? It's just like, it pays off in 20 years, and us, like, humans are just bad at that, right? We, we're, that's why healthcare, …”