YouSaid · the spoken record

Nikhil Kalghatgi

lines on the record: 102
first: 2018-04-10
most recent: 2018-04-10
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Kindest thing. My wife for marrying me is the answer that I have to give, and it is the most honest answer for sure. You know, you should come out with Cindy and I at some time. We'll come and visit you. The truth is that I wouldn't be here without her, for sure. I hope other folks have a chance to meet her too.”
2018-04-10 · Invest Like the Best · Nikhil Kalghatgi – Moonshot Investing - [Invest Like the Best, EP.82] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Have money in one account, and then you send it, and seconds later, it's there. It is unbelievable. I have done this now with CPAs in front of me and lawyers in front of me, and my parents in front of me, and every time they're like, I don't understand. How is it over there? It's like, that's it. It's done. And that feeling is contagious, intoxicating.”
2018-04-10 · Invest Like the Best · Nikhil Kalghatgi – Moonshot Investing - [Invest Like the Best, EP.82] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Exchange of capital and data faster than we've ever done before. Now, are we there today? No. But we're talking about the promise and the vision. Not necessarily what's been done today. Have you ever sent cryptocurrency and had that magical moment where”
2018-04-10 · Invest Like the Best · Nikhil Kalghatgi – Moonshot Investing - [Invest Like the Best, EP.82] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Cryptocurrency is allowing for hyper product velocity and allows for individuals and businesses to transact at speeds that have never been seen before.”
2018-04-10 · Invest Like the Best · Nikhil Kalghatgi – Moonshot Investing - [Invest Like the Best, EP.82] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And for that, I think it'll serve its purpose for years to come. The other aspects of cryptocurrency around destabilizing governments and it'll replace currency. I think that's a farce. I don't think it will come to fruition in my lifetime is my guess. And those are elements that I can live without. And that's partly why I'm in cryptocurrency is because I think it actually can fit in today's universe.”
2018-04-10 · Invest Like the Best · Nikhil Kalghatgi – Moonshot Investing - [Invest Like the Best, EP.82] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Exactly. So I see there being, I see the evolution of the original vision of Bitcoin, the founder's original vision has become a Frankenstein, relatively speaking, to the original paper. And that means a few different things. I guess in the world of allowing forks, allowing for evolution, this was a feature of Bitcoin, not a problem. And so that's why I think things like Bitcoin Cash have come out and all these other Bitcoin killers or whatever you want to call it. I think it's great for the ecosystem. I think it's really, really hard to measure Bitcoin on its original thesis. I think today Bitcoin is great. I think it's amazing digital gold. I think it will become a store of value. I don't think it's a store of value today, but I think it is the closest thing we have to a cryptocurrency that's a store of value.”
2018-04-10 · Invest Like the Best · Nikhil Kalghatgi – Moonshot Investing - [Invest Like the Best, EP.82] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's community is very, very slow to adopt and evolve, which as you can tell, many of the rest of the cryptocurrency community is not like that. Ethereum's whole ethos and many others move fast and break things.”
2018-04-10 · Invest Like the Best · Nikhil Kalghatgi – Moonshot Investing - [Invest Like the Best, EP.82] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Bitcoin has failed in many of its original ambitions. It may still be the biggest, may still be the best, it may still be the strongest, but its community judged by Bitcoin.”
2018-04-10 · Invest Like the Best · Nikhil Kalghatgi – Moonshot Investing - [Invest Like the Best, EP.82] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The original founders or founder of Bitcoin has not really used their Bitcoin at all. It's been locked up for a while. My suspicion is that they or him or her have moved on to other areas of cryptocurrency, and I would not be surprised at all if one of those areas is actually in direct conflict with Bitcoin itself. Think another cryptocurrency that is extremely in contention with Bitcoin, which would suggest, if true, that there's tens of billions of dollars that could bet against Bitcoin and stay within the cryptocurrency world. That would be a shock to the system.”
2018-04-10 · Invest Like the Best · Nikhil Kalghatgi – Moonshot Investing - [Invest Like the Best, EP.82] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Than anyone else Satoshi is rolling in his grave. Here's a Couple of scenarios that could play out that would be I think mind blowing for the cryptocurrency community. We had this idea that decentralized and these banks aren't necessary and we can send money around without them and all that sorts of stuff and that was all in the original Bitcoin paper. Hasn't really played out to Sav's point. What we have seen is.”
2018-04-10 · Invest Like the Best · Nikhil Kalghatgi – Moonshot Investing - [Invest Like the Best, EP.82] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For the institutional investors become investors themselves. And that's a really nuanced change. What does that mean? What's a product that institutional investors distribute to retail investors? Well, that would be things on your e-trade and things that are mutual funds. And it could be people's retirement funds. And maybe that's actually people trading ETS. So I think we're going to see some of these products come out and retail investors are going to have a new class of regulated products. I think that's going to be great for the ecosystem for sure instead of a few products limited just to qualified purchasers and things like that.”
2018-04-10 · Invest Like the Best · Nikhil Kalghatgi – Moonshot Investing - [Invest Like the Best, EP.82] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Nothing, right? So, and can we make assumptions? Okay, now we can see the shift is moving from retail investors into institutions based on data. This is a rabbit hole that I'm in right now. And it's very hard. I'm not at the end of the tunnel. I don't have conclusions for you at this point in time. My best guess is that I have changed my philosophy since about six months ago And then the first half of 2018, institutions are in. The phrase the herd is coming has been bandied about. Well, you know what I think? I think retail investors are great. I think we're going to continue to have a ton of retail investors come in. I just think that instead of it being retail institution, it's retail products distributed by institutions for retail investors for the retail investors become principal investors themselves.”
2018-04-10 · Invest Like the Best · Nikhil Kalghatgi – Moonshot Investing - [Invest Like the Best, EP.82] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Can we go and do fundamental research and understand okay? Can I buy my way into some of that data? Can I become an equity owner in some of these exchanges, extrapolate it around the world, and make assessments of the average account sizes, the growth rate, how much is coming in through exchanges? Can I become an investor or partner with some of the OTCs and understand, okay, this is the amount of capital coming in, the amount of capital coming out, can we do fundamental research on, okay, these are the wallet analyses. These are the wallets that are on exchanges. These are the wallets that are of miners, these are the wallets of speculators, these are wallets of people actually transacting and bucket them. And now we can understand, okay, well, these are the ones that are kind of money going in and out on exchanges. They don't really count. These are the ones that are people that are whales, that are holding on a long period of time. That would mean very little of that is new money coming in. They made maybe a billion dollar account, but their cost basis was...”
2018-04-10 · Invest Like the Best · Nikhil Kalghatgi – Moonshot Investing - [Invest Like the Best, EP.82] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Exactly Exactly. That, I think, is really a rabbit hole that I've gone down and probably the most interesting rabbit hole that I've seen is The one that we chatted about at dinner where we're trying to identify the amount of capital is coming into a sector. I don't mean just through estimations. I mean, can we”
2018-04-10 · Invest Like the Best · Nikhil Kalghatgi – Moonshot Investing - [Invest Like the Best, EP.82] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Hash graph and companies like it are kind of like blockchain 2.0 and they solve a lot of the core issues people have with blockchains that they're slow and that you have to wait and transactions as a result are kind of in this purgatory period before they're officially approved instead of being instantaneous. So it's an evolution of blockchain tech. That's like one area. The second area that I'm really excited by is the ability to have hyperliquid markets in asset classes that are a little bit less liquid. Whether that's people talk about real estate or people talking about data itself and all of a sudden”
2018-04-10 · Invest Like the Best · Nikhil Kalghatgi – Moonshot Investing - [Invest Like the Best, EP.82] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Investors, which is pretty game changing in terms of the credibility that the sector is earning at this point in time. And of course, you're seeing state-sanctioned cryptocurrencies from a handful of places, none of which are America or the UK, but I still think those are pretty important demarcation points in the evolution of the credibility of cryptocurrency.”
2018-04-10 · Invest Like the Best · Nikhil Kalghatgi – Moonshot Investing - [Invest Like the Best, EP.82] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Where we're focused. You've got all of the blockchain technology efforts focused on financial services as kind of one big bucket for sure. You've got the non-financial services blockchain focused buckets, which in my mind are going to be very spotty in terms of success. They're spotty primarily because that's like trying to predict what from the internet is going to be successful five years from 1994. I don't think we really knew that it was going to be Amazon and Google and whatever else in 1994's time. So you will find that some of those applications, the non-financial ones in particular, will be, I don't know, will there be a billion dollar company a few years from now that's not an exchange and I don't know what it is today. I have heard that there's a central bank now that has adopted cryptocurrency. There are endowments that have adopted cryptocurrency.”
2018-04-10 · Invest Like the Best · Nikhil Kalghatgi – Moonshot Investing - [Invest Like the Best, EP.82] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's actually after talking about Chris, the second group that I learned a lot from the cryptocurrency world was the largest mining group outside of China and became very close. We've traveled the world, all that kinds of stuff. And they have now expanded their business significantly well outside of mining. So the diversification of cryptocurrency wealth creation strategies is Very hard to understand. The most successful players in the ecosystem today are not making money with a one trick pony. They are expanding horizontally very, very, very quickly.”
2018-04-10 · Invest Like the Best · Nikhil Kalghatgi – Moonshot Investing - [Invest Like the Best, EP.82] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You've got a seven hundred maybe eight hundred billion dollar sized asset class that doesn't need to evolve in order to scale. It could handle that today for the most part. It doesn't need to have a high frequency number of transactions or anything. It doesn't need to scale as is the criticism of most blockchains, which inherently is an advantage. If they don't need to scale, then all of a sudden Bitcoin seems poised to be around for a while, and therefore miners will be around for a while. So I think those two are linked. They're tied to the hip at least for the foreseeable future. In my mind, miners have geographically shifted a tremendous amount ever since China has put regulations around it. And I think many of them have stayed pretty quiet for the most part. I happen to know some of the largest miners in the world.”
2018-04-10 · Invest Like the Best · Nikhil Kalghatgi – Moonshot Investing - [Invest Like the Best, EP.82] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I don't know which blockchain types are going to be most popular ten years from now. There's a theory that miners focused on proof of work will be around forever because Bitcoin will be around forever. I don't know if I buy into the idea that any cryptocurrency that's around today is going to be around forever, but I can say for the foreseeable future, meaning some years, miners are a critical part of the infrastructure for sure because we've got a blockchain and an ecosystem that's been around for almost a decade now. Never been hacked. It's a very robust ecosystem. That never been hacked is not a throwaway line. That's super, super important to understand that the Bitcoin blockchain has never been hacked itself and is so robust even with a relatively limited number of contributors. The idea that if ten percent of the world's gold moves into Bitcoin,”
2018-04-10 · Invest Like the Best · Nikhil Kalghatgi – Moonshot Investing - [Invest Like the Best, EP.82] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Forces are at play Miners are a critical part of the ecosystem today because they are incentivized to perform the consensus mechanism within a blockchain's value proposition. There's multiple different types of blockchains. You've got proof of work, proof of stake, and there is now, I don't know, too many different permutations beyond that, some of which have significantly increasing popularity. In one type, In proof of work, miners are most popular. That's Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, and a whole host of others.”
2018-04-10 · Invest Like the Best · Nikhil Kalghatgi – Moonshot Investing - [Invest Like the Best, EP.82] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“These folks. I want to maybe I'm an investor in some of these exchanges. Maybe we partner up with folks like SBI Holdings like we have to get access to some of the greatest liquidity pools in the world for crypto, which is of course Japanese investors. Maybe there's an opportunity to do such extraordinarily large trades that the crypto foundations are the only people in the world that could be possibly doing those. Maybe we actually need to partner up with core developers that work on what's coming out next for protocols and help them build it such that the whole community can get access to the next feature that creates liquidity in the market. Guess what? You're first in line to use that feature to try out that feature. Instead of being just one of a thousand people to have access to it. So it's not like a one trick pony. You have to constantly be working at it.”
2018-04-10 · Invest Like the Best · Nikhil Kalghatgi – Moonshot Investing - [Invest Like the Best, EP.82] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Was yellow flagged by the exchange. Not yellow flagged, but degraded, I guess. You know what I mean? And I was like, well, this is not ideal. This is going to severely limit our ability to do things. So what can you do? They made a mistake. That's okay. It happens. But still, it's our problem to deal with. And you have to get on the phone with the CEO of a company that, I would say, doing three and a half billion dollar run rate that I had never spoken to before at 9 p.m. on Thanksgiving to for him to flip a button on his software effectively. And you need to have the ability to not just call up, but you have to have leverage. Straight up leverage in order to get folks to do exactly what you need to do. And in the case of taking that strategy out to a more holistic strategy, I like to partner with”
2018-04-10 · Invest Like the Best · Nikhil Kalghatgi – Moonshot Investing - [Invest Like the Best, EP.82] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In the US? Exactly. That's a very different problem set, right? I don't anticipate that happening, but I could imagine there being other scenarios upon which exchange is shut down for sure. So you need redundancy. You need redundancy across exchanges. You need redundancy across mechanisms to get out. You have OTC relationships. Here's a real world example. We were about to launch one of our products, and it was Thanksgiving. Literally Thanksgiving. I have to make sure I don't disclose anything I can't. Put it this way. One of our accounts.”
2018-04-10 · Invest Like the Best · Nikhil Kalghatgi – Moonshot Investing - [Invest Like the Best, EP.82] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So that is what we in the industry would call a bad scenario. That might be a technical term. So if exchanges are shut down due to regulation, that's a bigger and very different issue than if they're shut down due to liquidity. If they're shut down due to regulation, then the question becomes, why are they being shut down? If the government says Bitcoin is illegal to own, look, like gold was for decades.”
2018-04-10 · Invest Like the Best · Nikhil Kalghatgi – Moonshot Investing - [Invest Like the Best, EP.82] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We've got some that are higher frequency and small, we've got some that are larger and analog. But the piece that connects them all is that we focus on liquidity and security as our core tenets in every single thing that we do. And as a result of doing that, we want to be the most institutionally oriented asset management firm for crypto. It's very simple. We are most secure, most liquid. If we can offer a product that people walk socks and axe and feels like a normal product for investors, I think we'll work with regulators, all that kinds of good stuff, as opposed to doing a more fly-by-night operation. We've got folks around the table that have hand decades in asset management, and we take a very, very conservative approach to an asset class that is very avant-garde.”
2018-04-10 · Invest Like the Best · Nikhil Kalghatgi – Moonshot Investing - [Invest Like the Best, EP.82] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Coventure crypto. So I'm the CEO of Coventure Crypto. We've got a Variety of strategies in cryptocurrency. There are passive ones, there are active ones, they are ones that will be public, publicly available, and some that are private”
2018-04-10 · Invest Like the Best · Nikhil Kalghatgi – Moonshot Investing - [Invest Like the Best, EP.82] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And if I can increase my liquidity, disproportionately more so than other folks, then I can handle a greater drop in the market. And if I can handle a greater drop in the market, I just created an opportunity to trade against.”
2018-04-10 · Invest Like the Best · Nikhil Kalghatgi – Moonshot Investing - [Invest Like the Best, EP.82] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Liquidity is the greatest risk to cryptos. And so if you can do everything in your power to address that, I think you are creating a long-term, medium-term infrastructural advantages. So that's really where it started out. At that dinner, we're talking about $5 billion coming in at most. And I began thinking, well, if only a few billion dollars came in and it came in roughly around this time, then people would be willing to let the price drop down to this level before the market has that liquidity freeze moment. So to me, all these questions about capital coming in, the amount of capital coming in are, yes, a good way to value relative assets if I know $100 billion is coming in, I got a pretty good sense that the price of cryptocurrencies is going to go up. But for me, it's actually the opposite, or I should say the inverse. I want to know at what point is there a liquidity freeze when prices go down? That's the problem I'm trying to solve for.”
2018-04-10 · Invest Like the Best · Nikhil Kalghatgi – Moonshot Investing - [Invest Like the Best, EP.82] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I began a exercise to figure out, okay, if I know in my deepest part of my heart that liquidity is the greatest challenge for cryptocurrencies, then how do we solve that? So the first part of this question is, how do we know that liquidity is a big problem? Well, look at 2008. People looked around the room and they said, hey, everything's going to hell in hand basket. Where are you moving your money? How are you adjusting? What are you going to do if and when the banks shut down in three months? Implicit in those questions is the idea that you can get out, that there is liquidity inherently even in an extreme down market. That is crazy. In cryptocurrencies, people will be asking where were you when the exchanges shut down? And there was no liquidity when you couldn't get access to your capital. So inherently, you can.”
2018-04-10 · Invest Like the Best · Nikhil Kalghatgi – Moonshot Investing - [Invest Like the Best, EP.82] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But again, if you look at it, we say, okay, there's three to five billion dollars of capital that's come in. Why is this number important? It's really important because if we can understand the entry point, the average entry point of investors, we can understand the tolerance. Is that liquidity is the kingmaker. If you can source liquidity, better, cheaper, faster, structurally incentivized for your firm, you have a very clear medium term advantage. And for the record, there's no long term advantages in crypto today. It moves too fast. Mediums as far as we can get.”
2018-04-10 · Invest Like the Best · Nikhil Kalghatgi – Moonshot Investing - [Invest Like the Best, EP.82] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Coming on dramatically increasing. Okay, so for the foreseeable future, we can see more retail investors coming in. That's good news and bad news. For the reasons we just discussed, I think it's great that they're supplanting the market. I think it's bad because they're maybe less sticky than larger investors. So how do we Move away from retail investors and allow the rest of the investing community into this. It's hard. Last year we were in a pretty much permanent state of euphoria, and I was looking around the room and I was thinking I can't be the only one thinking that this is too good to be true. And the only person at this dinner not smiling. You were though. I was like, this is not right. I got investors saying, how can I short? And I'm thinking, this is crazy town. Prices are way overvalued.”
2018-04-10 · Invest Like the Best · Nikhil Kalghatgi – Moonshot Investing - [Invest Like the Best, EP.82] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So that's a really important concept to understand in order to look at what happens next. Retail investors generally are much more fleeting than institutional investors. They're more susceptible to information flows in the media and things of that nature. They respond quickly. In an unregulated and underregulated environment, you'll see the number of on-ramps for retail investors increase through private funds, as we've seen through explosions in the asset management sector. And I think you will find public vehicles come available very soon, maybe not in the US right away, but eventually unless I eventually, I mean, you know, in the next year. So I still see the on-ramps for maybe 180 global exchanges and probably 360 by this time next year. I still see the number of retail investors.”
2018-04-10 · Invest Like the Best · Nikhil Kalghatgi – Moonshot Investing - [Invest Like the Best, EP.82] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Play it out. Yeah, play it out for me. Never in the history of time has there been a financial liquid financial asset class Entirely driven by retail investors, let alone one at $400 billion of size or whatever the price is today.”
2018-04-10 · Invest Like the Best · Nikhil Kalghatgi – Moonshot Investing - [Invest Like the Best, EP.82] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, they're actually below, you know, suggesting there's room. The bottom is not hit yet. Who knows? What I can say is I take a very medium to long-term view on the sector.”
2018-04-10 · Invest Like the Best · Nikhil Kalghatgi – Moonshot Investing - [Invest Like the Best, EP.82] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A dramatic increase in the amount of capital coming into the sector. What we are finding right now is hype is dramatically increasing the interest, but in my experience in every other sector that I've been in that's gone from zero to zero in terms of hype, that stuff goes away just as fast as it comes. And I think we've seen this a few years ago in cryptocurrencies, dramatic spikes in prices, dramatic that correlate with Google trends and things like that. And we saw that in December. And if you look at all that data right now, you're seeing the Google Trends searches, et cetera, are below.”
2018-04-10 · Invest Like the Best · Nikhil Kalghatgi – Moonshot Investing - [Invest Like the Best, EP.82] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In my mind, if you're trying to value cryptocurrencies fundamentally, you're going to struggle. And it's going to be really, really, really hard. That doesn't mean they're worthless or that they are impossible to value. I just think that many of these are young startups. And how do you value young startup? There's sort of standard practices that are used, heuristics that are commonly used. What's a high price? What's a low price? Depends how much money you're raising. All these kinds of things come into play. And the market bears the price that the market bears. Right now, that price is, I think, at a premium. We've seen it come down a lot. I have my own analysis of how to value cryptocurrencies. I think there's probably still room for it to drop. I do think over the medium to long term, with the amount of capital coming in from institutions over the next one to three years and retail investors over the next one year, you will see.”
2018-04-10 · Invest Like the Best · Nikhil Kalghatgi – Moonshot Investing - [Invest Like the Best, EP.82] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, there's no question that traders in hype are not users. And it's very easy to conflate the two. That being said, I heard your question, and I'm going to change it. So you ask for a near to midterm, but I think you have to think long term when it comes to cryptocurrencies. This sector moves so, so, so fast, faster than any sector I've ever seen before. Product velocity. Yeah, the product velocity across this sector is stupidly fast. And maybe that's because there are, you know, so many engineers working on this problem at the same time. And it's open source and people can push out. And forking is encouraged. And all the other elements that define cryptocurrency inherently is a fast moving industry.”
2018-04-10 · Invest Like the Best · Nikhil Kalghatgi – Moonshot Investing - [Invest Like the Best, EP.82] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Enough parties to get critical mass to support an industry infrastructure. Same thing happened in the internet boom. Same thing happened when the top talent from MIT would go to financial services for hedge funds. Some people go there for the wrong reasons, but you do need all the service providers in there. You need the infrastructure in there. You need all these elements to kind of come together to make it possible to build what I intend to be the largest asset management firm for cryptocurrency.”
2018-04-10 · Invest Like the Best · Nikhil Kalghatgi – Moonshot Investing - [Invest Like the Best, EP.82] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Again, baste into what my passions are, and then apply the lens of what kind of investor am I, a market sky. And I look at the market and I'm like, this is an underregulated environment which makes it easier for a young startup like business to play in. I'm very excited about regulation coming in. But again, I look for every angle that is beneficial to me. And, you know, the fact that Goldman Sachs and Big Banks are forced to hesitate is an advantage for me. So, you know, I see $400 billion of retail investors.”
2018-04-10 · Invest Like the Best · Nikhil Kalghatgi – Moonshot Investing - [Invest Like the Best, EP.82] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Like that. To me, this is a whole world of notches. This is a sector where I can do what I love to do, which is build financial or I can this is a sector where I can do exactly what I love to do, build financial firms. And I can build financial firm faster, bigger than I could have ever imagined compared to venture capital or compared to even private equity, at least for me personally. It's a best fit scenario. So that was a realization.”
2018-04-10 · Invest Like the Best · Nikhil Kalghatgi – Moonshot Investing - [Invest Like the Best, EP.82] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Somewhere in this range of the smartest people on the planet who are leaving Facebook and Google, who are math Olympiads, who are leaving multimillion dollar a year guaranteed paychecks to focus their life on an industry in its infancy. That is unbelievably intellectually challenging, which I drive a lot of happiness from. And obviously many of them do as well. There's a clear correlation between my happiness and the amount of reading and learning that I do on cryptocurrency. So yes, happiness because it's a mechanism for learning how to learn. And it's not just the next shiny object for me. It's not like how space exploration and fish farms and genetics and whatever other diamond manufacturing, all these weird obscure sectors where I've gone deep into, this is not just another notch or anything.”
2018-04-10 · Invest Like the Best · Nikhil Kalghatgi – Moonshot Investing - [Invest Like the Best, EP.82] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Have you left being like, oh my God, this is the greatest things in sliced bread. And it's not just drinking the Kool-Aid. It's cold, hard logic. And you recognize this is an industry where I don't know what would you say 100,000 computer scientists? At least 50,000.”
2018-04-10 · Invest Like the Best · Nikhil Kalghatgi – Moonshot Investing - [Invest Like the Best, EP.82] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, it was on us. He's been involved with the company. And fortunately, it took me a few years to come around. I say fortunately because I had great experiences along the way, I don't regret anything of the sort. But it allowed me along the way to have many more touch points in the industry, firsthand experiences, seeing miners, seeing protocol development, seeing exchanges. And I say seeing, I mean, either being an investor in, being an observer in, being an advisor to them, either myself or our Savnit. And that's a lot of firsthand accounts seeing it grow. And really cryptocurrency comes back to my original passions that we spoke to, happiness and productivity. You might be thinking, how in the world cryptocurrencies have anything to do with happiness and productivity?”
2018-04-10 · Invest Like the Best · Nikhil Kalghatgi – Moonshot Investing - [Invest Like the Best, EP.82] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Said the word blockchain back then. I didn't really understand it. I was really deep in the throes of investing in other moonshots. Wasn't of the frame of mind even to be able to value what cryptocurrencies could be. That was Chris Larson who founded with that company Ripple and he's a very, very successful serial entrepreneur. He was by that point already, but I think now even more so. And I didn't invest. Whoops You miss some the partner I ended up working with did my current partner Savnitz.”
2018-04-10 · Invest Like the Best · Nikhil Kalghatgi – Moonshot Investing - [Invest Like the Best, EP.82] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I'm a hardcore capitalist without question, and I originally did not value cryptocurrencies in the way I do now. Circa 2012, I want to say there was an entrepreneur that I was introduced to, who I met, I flew out to sea, came with rave reviews, and he said, hey, Nikhil, this is a distributed ledger. And I'm like distributed what? I have never heard. God bless you. Did you cease? And he said, yeah. It's been 45, 50 minutes just explaining the real basic concept of what a distributed ledger is. And I didn't get it. 2012. Keep in mind, like nobody.”
2018-04-10 · Invest Like the Best · Nikhil Kalghatgi – Moonshot Investing - [Invest Like the Best, EP.82] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You are really, really great at that. If you look at the last week of your time spent, what is it that you have done that you've done pretty much every week for every year of your existence? And for me, that was organizing events and it was collecting people. And I've always held these kinds of things, whether it was in middle school or high school or whatever it was. And I've just been a collector of unicorn people. Exactly. And that's always been something I've done. It's not a job. I mean, if it was, probably wouldn't pay that much. But I love it and it's a part of my existence. And I have turned that into a way to manufacture serendipity. And events is, a lot of people can throw events. But can you curate experiences? That's a much trickier leveling up of events.”
2018-04-10 · Invest Like the Best · Nikhil Kalghatgi – Moonshot Investing - [Invest Like the Best, EP.82] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They were given a gift. That's a great way to manufacture a relationship. Trips all the time. Some of them have led to putting in a lot of money into some of these companies, co investments, profits, quite a literal profits that I can draw a direct line to some of these meetings. Manufacturing serendipity, I mentor a group of folks. I don't really know what the benefit is going to be initially, but invariably the base cases I get to access a network that I otherwise would never be able to access. 21-year-olds that I have no, you know, I don't hang out with 21-year-olds normally. They're on my social circle, but incredibly valuable from a recruiting standpoint, from understanding what's going on. If you invest in consumer products, I don't anymore very much. But ironically now, cryptocurrencies are consumer products for Antonio Rolls. So I do unintentionally. If you're out there and you want to manufacture serendipity, the best thing you can do is figure out what your passions are, figure out what it is that”
2018-04-10 · Invest Like the Best · Nikhil Kalghatgi – Moonshot Investing - [Invest Like the Best, EP.82] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Serendipity should be further defined Really serendipity related to your goals. And it has to be directly relevant and just undefinable. So to me, when I try to manufacture serendipity, it's a set of actions that I regularly take where I don't know what the exact outcome is going to be, but I know one of the outcomes is going to be. I know one of the outcomes is going to be positive. So when we decided to do this neckersummit thing, I didn't know it wasn't going to come out of it, but I knew something good was going to come out of it. At the very least, worst case scenario, I get to invite people to an extraordinary place, even if they can't come and they decline.”
2018-04-10 · Invest Like the Best · Nikhil Kalghatgi – Moonshot Investing - [Invest Like the Best, EP.82] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, just will it to happen. And sometimes it does involve going and showing up to a four star general who was fighter pilot, astronaut of the whole bit, you know, has the ear of you name the president or former president and saying, hey, listen, I know he's only got 15 minutes between some meetings at some point today and work outside of his office, camp out, do the whole, do whatever is you got to do in order to get that meeting. And guess what? When you get the meeting, drill into exactly what it is you want to talk about for 15 minutes, just that one thing, let them know you own that conversation. You have a clear objective, if that's what you want. And fortunately, most of my stuff ended up being very, very personal sorts of objectives and stuff they wanted to talk about. I was pretty lucky in that result.”
2018-04-10 · Invest Like the Best · Nikhil Kalghatgi – Moonshot Investing - [Invest Like the Best, EP.82] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source