Avichal Garg, X Flame Hall

Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase may no longer need to mention the word “cryptocurrency” in the future, according to Avichal Garg, co-founder of venture capital firm Electric Capital.

Garg predicts that “probably in the next five years” Coinbase “will not really mention cryptocurrencies” as part of its advertising, because people will only know that “you can buy stuff on Coinbase,” similar to how they see Robinhood, a trading platform. He thinks it will be known as just another financial product that investors can buy and profit from.

“The reason I think that is because there’s an adage that people overestimate what they can do in two years and underestimate what they can do in 10 years,” Garg told the magazine.

Over the past few years, Garg has made early investments in several cryptocurrency companies, including NFT platform OpenSea, Lightning Network developer Lightning Labs, and crypto bank Anchorage Digital.

Garg believes the introduction of a spot cryptocurrency ETF this year has helped FTX repair the damage it has done to the cryptocurrency industry’s reputation.

“What the ETF does, I think, is offset the damage that FTX did. I think SBF really destroyed the crypto brand and burned a lot of people,” he explains.

“BlackRock came in and Bitwise pressured the SEC and got this all through and Grayscale won in court — all these little things now put a check mark on the ETF. What’s happened is that now you basically have approval from a big chunk of DC and a big chunk of Wall Street.”

Garg believes that even crypto enthusiasts are underestimating how mainstream cryptocurrencies will become in the coming years.

“Cryptocurrencies are starting to become a kind of substrate that affects a lot of things, and I think a lot of crypto advocates still think of crypto as a separate sideshow,” he explains.

“I don’t think that’s the right way to look at things anymore. I think maybe five years ago we were in our own little corner doing our own thing, but that’s not the case anymore,” he says.

Why is Abichal Garg famous on Twitter?

Garg admits there was no magic formula to growing his 52,800 followers over the years, just slow and steady effort.

“It just happened completely naturally. I was just putting out interesting content and doing podcasts,” he said, admitting that he’s ahead of the curve when it comes to creating quality crypto content on social media.

Garg explained that his follower count “grew a lot in 2018,” because there weren’t many credible people talking about cryptocurrencies at the time.

He admitted that while making “a lot of good investments” has helped fuel his follower growth, he could have gained a lot more followers with a little more effort on social media.

“I could probably get to a few hundred thousand, but that’s not really what I want to do,” he says with a laugh. Garg explains that he’s happy with his current follower count because he doesn’t have to deal with trolls.

“I actually like this 50,000-100,000 follower zone. It’s the sweet spot where I rarely get hate on Twitter. And I don’t get people stalking me and constantly flooding my DMs,” he says.

“It’s actually a pretty sweet spot because a lot of founders who need to know me can find me. If I had a million followers, I think it would be too stressful,” he adds.

What type of content does Avichal Garg create?

Garg is very observant, but he focuses more on industry predictions and vision than on selling his favorite bullshit coins or speculating on their prices. His speculations are more likely to be wrong.

“I don’t talk about price, I don’t talk about market movements,” Garg declared.

“That’s not what I’m talking about,” he added, explaining that he prefers to focus on why blockchain technology and Web3 are “exciting and the negative impacts they have on society.”

Garg says he would rather tell you “why you should care about Solana or NEAR” and “what you can do with them” than make a million-dollar price prediction for Bitcoin.

What type of content does Avichal Garg like?

Like his content style, Garg is not interested in altcoin hype or Bitcoin bullishness, who see every price crash as the last chance before the price soars into six figures.

Instead, he prefers to follow venture capitalists and industry leaders who share his vision for the future of cryptocurrencies.

Billionaire tech entrepreneur and venture capital firm a16z founder Marc Andreessen, former PayPal CEO Peter Thiel, and Paul Graham, co-founder of influential startup accelerator Y Combinator, are some of Garg’s favorite people to follow.

“These are all interesting contrarian thinkers,” Garg said.

According to Garg, Polychain Capital CEO Olaf Carlson-Wee is a “real genius.”

“He’s a really interesting guy. Every time I listen to him talk, I learn something,” he says.

What is Avichal Garg’s prediction?

Despite making it clear early in the interview that he doesn’t like to make price predictions, Garg is then confronted with Flame Hall’s standard question on what he thinks the Bitcoin price will be in the next 10 years.

“The price will determine itself,” he said, declining to give a specific number. Drawing on his own business experience, Garg explains that Web3 is not just about making quick money.

“If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the past 15 years of leading, investing in, scaling and selling companies, it’s that there are many ways to make money,” he says.

“There aren’t many ways to make something durable in the world,” he added. “It’s more interesting to make something that can last 50 or 100 years.”

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Sheeran Lyons

Ciaran Lyons is an Australian cryptocurrency journalist. He is also a stand-up comedian and has worked as a radio and TV presenter on Triple J, SBS and The Project.