Google In 1996, Apple In 2010: What Does The 14-Year Investment Thesis Mean For Crypto In 2024?

Mark Yusko, founder, CIO and CEO of Morgan Creek Capital Management, explained how he gained his experience in the world of investing on Benzinga's podcast "The Long Run Show."

Listen to the full interview here.

Despite extraordinary returns from early-stage investments, the most compelling result of Yusko's lengthy investing career might be the 14-year investing thesis he has developed. He maintains that every 14 years an innovation comes along that completely changes the technological landscape.

14-Year Approach: "If you go back to 1954, there was this innovation out in Boston, outside of route 128 around computing and suddenly companies could have computers," Yusko said, referencing Wang Laboratories. 

In 1968, innovation ramped up in Silicon Valley and companies like Intel Corp INTC and eventually Fairchild Semiconductor were formed to make microchips for computers, he explained.

About 14 years later, Cisco Systems Inc CSCO came along. Another 14 years goes by and Marc Andreessen invents the browser, which leads to Google.

"And why it's always 14 years? I don't know exactly, but ... young people invent all the new stuff because they don't know not to and they don't know what they don't know. And so they just go ahead and do it," Yusko said.

Yusko noted he decided to invest $500,000 in Google at the time and years later, his investment was worth $200 million.

"So I now had this aha moment ... I had this epiphany that investing was about long-term investments in infrastructure companies around this cycle," he said.

14 years after search is revolutionized, the smartphone comes along, he said. Apple Inc AAPL introduces the iPhone and the stock falls. It dropped because people thought no one would pay $500 for a phone, but Apple is now the biggest, most valuable company in the world.

Apple didn't make it by releasing the iPhone and forgetting about it. The company created a network effect by turning phones into computers and scaling up sales exponentially, he explained.

See Also: Apple Stock Pulls Back Into This Pattern: Is The Stock Still Headed Over $200?

What's Next: The goal in investing should be to get in front of those massive waves of growth, but how can investors know what's next?

"Whatever the old people like me now say, will rot your brain or is a fad ... anytime those two terms come out, just buy it, tuck it in a drawer and go away," Yusko said.

He told Benzinga that we went from the internet in 1996 to mobile net in 2010. The trust net is next, and according to Yusko, it's coming in 2024.

"When all $700 trillion of assets in the world will be tokenized," he said. "All a token is is an entry on a block. It's an entry on a public ledger. That's all it is. It's not super crazy and exciting. It's really pretty simple, but it's code and we can trust code differently than we can trust people."

Yusko noted that although blockchain technology seems to already be getting a lot of attention, 2024 will likely be the big splash.

"It hasn't even started," he said. "The players have entered the stadium, they're warming up. We haven't even played the National Anthem. And I was like, oh, it's the third ending? The eighth inning? The game hasn't started."