The real Ethereum bull run isn't price - it's brainpower. 1500% growth in researchers since 2019.
Hard to bet against the collective brainpower of this ecosystem.
Episode 233: Why the Best Investors are Builders with Avichal Garg and Ken Deeter of Electric Capital
@alextapscott@avichal@puntium@ElectricCapital@CMCC_Global
0:00 Introduction: crypto VC evolution and investors as engineers
3:04 Guest intro: Avichal Garg and Ken Deeter of Electric Capital
3:30 AI agents + crypto: inevitable but evolving integration
6:00 Why agents aren’t fully autonomous yet (legal + infra constraints)
10:00 Agents as economic actors and enterprise adoption
13:30 AI inside companies: automation, workflows, and efficiency gains
16:30 Future of companies: smaller teams, greater output
20:00 Explosion of startups and new business models
24:00 Capital shifts: software → infrastructure, energy, real-world assets
28:30 New funding models: crowdfunding, DeFi, and agent economies
32:00 Tokens today: hype vs fundamentals
36:30 Global demand for USD yield and crypto adoption
41:00 Token vs equity debate and regulatory overhang
45:00 Closing thoughts and future outlook
We mapped 501 sources of real-world yield in traditional finance.
Only 34 have any meaningful on-chain presence.
We break down:
- what keeps the other 467 off-chain
- why distribution is the biggest bottleneck
- what needs to be built to bring them on
This week I'm releasing a 1h conversation with @avichal, Co-Founder of @ElectricCapital and Chairman of @crypto_council.
Avichal and I discuss why crypto's institutional moment is earlier than you think, why digital assets will eat gold and silver, and what it takes to survive 15 years of building in this space.
We talk about:
- Why ETH is where Bitcoin was in 2019 and what that means for the next 5 years
- Stablecoin banks vs neobanks why spending on-chain is addictive once you try it
- Solana as the AWS of crypto - computational layer for retail financial transactions
- Why digital gold (BTC) and digital silver (ETH) will eat trillions in market share
- The hundreds of L1s thesis - why we're nowhere near blockchain saturation
- Resisting temptation and separating signal from noise in a hype-driven industry
And much much more….
Out this week!
1/ We @ElectricCapital want to invest in 26 ideas that give users control, privacy, & access.
Why now:
•Trust in institutions is collapsing
•AI centralizes power but lowers build costs
•User-owned tech defends personal freedom
https://t.co/s5QXXDPs1p
👇
1/ We built a live metrics dashboard for @monad to answer the key questions:
- How fast and cheap is it to use?
- What does usage look like?
- Are devs building real apps?
- Is there meaningful financial activity?
Here are key findings 👇🏼
We’re open sourcing our entire developer dataset as Open Dev Data.
This is the same data that powered the Developer Report, now available to everyone to tell their own story!
1/ Announcing Open Dev Data, an open source dataset and tooling stack to measure developer activity across crypto and the decentralized web.
Starting in 2025 we are retiring our standalone annual Developer Report and replacing it with this continuously updated platform. 🧵👇
Delighted to announce @0xren_cf has been promoted to General Partner at @ElectricCapital!
Ren started as an engineer at Electric & has grown into a phenomenal investor and unique thinker.
Founders are lucky to work with him. We are lucky to have him at Electric.
Link below 👇
No matter the chain or ecosystem you need at least 6 months.
First 10 days: ~50% of devs give
After 3 months: ~50% of the remaining 50%
After 6%: ~3% of the remaining 25%
No shortcuts to learning.
Amazing data from @ElectricCapital
1/ You hired the wrong designer.
I know because I’ve lived every angle of this: early Uber, Stripe, Shopify, founding my own startup, managing big design teams.
Most bad hires aren’t bad designers. They’re just the wrong fit for the stage. Here’s the framework I use to get it right. 🧵
⚡️We're deeply grateful for @ElectricCapital's generous donation of $400K in funds and in-kind support.
Electric Capital has been with us from the very beginning, and we admire their unwavering commitment to advancing security across the crypto ecosystem.
🎙️ New @edge_pod
💥 Why ETH Is The Best Way To Bet On The Stablecoin Boom
0:00 - Intro
5:36 - Background on Electric Capital
7:21 - Why write this stablecoin report
9:29 - Outsized demand for stablecoins
10:59 - Ethereum is the chain for stablecoins
15:48 - Value of decentralization on Ethereum
24:02 - ETH as a reserve asset and SoV
27:29 - DATs accelerating demand for ETH
30:27 - Big money connects ETH to stablecoin growth
37:39 - Stablecoin flywheel can't be forked
44:10 - Risks to Electric Capital’s thesis for ETH
48:25 - Role of L2s in ETH stablecoin flywheel
50:41 - Closing
🙏 Special thanks to @MariaShen and @sanjaypshah of @ElectricCapital for joining us!
The best AI projects don't start with viral tweets.
They start with quiet stars from the smartest founders & engineers.
@garythung built SourcePulse to surface that early signal — and a lot more.
1/ Announcing SourcePulse: the fastest way to discover open-source AI projects.
SourcePulse surfaces projects that prolific founders and researchers care about.
If Tobi, the CEO of Shopify (a $160B company!), has time to research and star a project then you should check it out.
1/ 10 years ago, Ethereum was born to rewrite the rules of programmable finance.
Today, ahead of Ethereum's anniversary, we’re thrilled to introduce ETHZilla, a NASDAQ-listed treasury vehicle for Ethereum, by Ethereum.
It will commence trading under the ticker $ATNF.
Stablecoins are the Trojan horse for a new financial internet.
They bring dollars in but will quietly expand demand for programmable, decentralized rails.
Ethereum is uniquely positioned to power this shift.
See the thesis by @MariaShen & @sanjaypshah on why and how ETH captures the upside.
Stablecoins are spreading the dollar faster than any financial tech in history.
And Ethereum is becoming the financial backbone.
For Ethereum’s 10th birthday, we’re publishing our updated @ElectricCapital ETH thesis:
Remaking the Case for ETH 🧵
1/
After many requests, it’s finally here: The Developer Report now updates weekly.
First and foremost, thank you to the community, especially those who go above and beyond, submitting PRs with 20k+ repos. You pushed us to build better classifiers just to keep up!
We also ran into our fair share of GitHub quirks and limits, which called for some creative workarounds.
The result:
- Thousands of repos and ecosystems reviewed and classified
- Smarter ways to surface new projects
- Millions of commits and developers deduped
- Time-based cohorting and slicing
Still a work in progress — feedback, bug reports, and contributions are always welcome (and appreciated).
25,000 devs are building in open source crypto right now.
The Electric Capital Developer Report site now updates weekly, not yearly.
You can now track live dev stats for Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, and more. (1/6) ⬇️
🚨BREAKING NEWS
The White House just repealed the ban on supersonic flight over the US!
@boomsupersonic is the new Boeing.
Let’s gooooo!!!!
https://t.co/cKjvTvDT11
Introducing INFINIT Intelligence:
The AI-powered engine redefining how you navigate DeFi.
It learns from your wallet. Knows your intent. Executes across chains.
From decisions to actions — all in one interface.
Welcome to the era of personalized DeFi.