I don't think he was being condescending.I can see how you may feel that way because what he said should be obvious. But let me try and explain what he meant (hopefully you wouldn't consider this condescending too).
The unit PRICE of a coin is IRRELEVANT. What is relevant is the MARKET CAP compared to your guess/prediction of what that market cap will be in the future.
BTW this applies to almost anything sold in shares not just crypto.
Here are some examples of how to think of this :
Bitcoin just had a market cap of $300B (which is a lot considering VISA is worth $255B) - Total available coins is 16M - so the unit price was 19K
To expect Bitcoin to go to $50K each is to expect it to be worth $800B
Ethereum has a market cap of $70B , total available 100M coins, unit price $700, and market cap will need to get to $500B for those coins to be worth $5K.
Ethereum at 500B and Bitcoin at a Trillion don't sound totally crazy given what they have done and can do.
Now let's look at a some called "cheap" coin that their high supply can fool people
Ripple has a market cap $40 BILLION (compared to PayPal which is worth $75B) - total available is 40B coins - unit price $1. To expect the price to go to $10 means to expect Ripple to be worth $400B - not impossible but quite ballsy. BTW I OWN RIPPLE SO I DO HOPE IT GOES UP.
But if Bitcoin had as many coins as Ripple it would be worth $7.50 !
Dogecoin has a market cap of $400M, total 110B coins that's why it's coin price is $0.0036. If you are predicting Doge will hit $1 you are telling us it will hit a total market cap of $100B, so don't be surprised if people laugh at that.
Hope this helps understand what the brother was saying.