The Bull Case for a Multi Trillion Dollar Altcoin Market

**Avichal Garg** (0:00)
As if you go back to the ICO boom of 2018, people just assumed all these things would happen by 2020 or 2021 And so we just got over our skis. But actually all that stuff will happen by 2028 We're right on track, actually. I think people will wake up in 27 and say, holy moly, all of that stuff that we were talking about in 2017 actually happened. And then people will chase it. And this is exactly what happens with every technology cycle.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:22)
Bitcoin has been chopping sideways at the $64,000 level. Altcoins are showing strength, stalling out, is all of this bullish or bearish for crypto? And what's the difference between a missionary and a mercenary in the world of investing? Hello and welcome to The Milk Road Show, the podcast that's here to ask the important questions like, if the Clarity Act passes, do we hold it in a hot wallet or in cold storage? Today is Monday, July 20th, and today we are joined by Avichal Garg. Avichal is the co-founder of Electric Capital and the chairman of the Crypto Council. Avichal was a leader at Facebook and an early investor in Notion, Figma, Bitwise. He was actually the first investor in Bitwise and a lot of other great tech and crypto businesses. He's going to share a ton of crypto wisdom and alpha with us today. So if that sounds good to you, make sure you like and subscribe, share this episode with somebody who's down bad and needs to be up only. And as a reminder, our Milk Road Pro analysts have been busy in this market. We have made 12 trades in the last week. Yes, really. If you want to see what all of our analysts are trading, join Milk Road PRO today. Link in the description. It's just one dollar to sign up and you can see what's on my watchlist for alt season and a lot of other things. Today's episode is brought to you by Securitize, the regulated rails for tokenization and BitGet, stocks 2 with real liquidity and real dividends. Without further ado, welcome back to the Milk Road Show. Avichal, how are you, sir?

**Avichal Garg** (1:38)
Good. Good. Good to see you. That was a great intro.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:40)
Thank you.
Thank you. I'm getting better at these. I've been getting a lot of practice. Avichal, on a recent podcast you did, I saw that you said that there's a huge difference between missionaries and mercenaries in any industry. I thought this would be a good place to start the conversation today. What's the difference between a missionary and a mercenary in crypto? How do you tell them apart as an investor?

**Avichal Garg** (2:00)
I think they're no different in crypto versus in the other industry. Ultimately, what that framework is trying to get at is that there are people that are doing the thing that they're doing almost irrationally. Even though it's hard, even though the expected value may be low, even though there are other things they could go do in some other industry that might lead to more short-term profits or even appear to be more net gains, they're doing the thing because they believe in it for some fundamental reason outside of money.
That could be personal experience. They grew up in a high interest rate, high inflation regime in some country. It could be their family was scammed at some point and cryptography solves this. It could be that they come from some oppressive regime and they think privacy and cryptography are fundamentally important and useful things in the world. But you need some personal motivation. I think the reason that's important is because a lot of things look small in the short term and actually can end up being very, very big. But the path to getting there is really painful. It's never a straight line. It's very rare that you have a thing where it just works on day zero and then you keep going and it works day after day, year after year.
I think people even forget Facebook did a down round. And so you really have to believe in the thing that you're doing because usually the down round is not going to come when you're worth $15 billion. Usually that pain comes when you're in the early days. And so why are you going to keep going when it doesn't make sense to keep going rationally? Why are you going to keep going when it looks like the thing is going to tie? Somebody has to put it on their back and carry it. And that often happens in Starplane. Founders know this intuitively. We say it all the time. In year one of a startup, it's the intellectual novelty of the thing will carry you. It's going to be awesome when you build it, you ship it and the whole world is going to use it. And that's kind of the mindset that you're in. And then year two hits and you're like, oh my gosh, this was a terrible idea. Like, why did I do this? This is a career mistake. Like, am I going to be employable after this? Like, I raised this money and now these people are counting on me. And like all that stuff kind of hits in year two and year three. And so, you know, really great startups and really great companies are kind of building years two and three when it looks like maybe this was a terrible idea or it's not going the way you thought or you raise too much money and you're under this capital overhang and all this kind of stuff. And somebody's got to kind of carry the thing on their back and push it through. And so then the question is, well, why are you going to do that? Why are you going to deal with all this pain and incur all this pain for years to make the thing work? And almost always, it's 100x easier to do that if you believe in the thing for its own sake and believe in the thing for more than money.