Animoca Brands: 2025 Highlights & 2026 Strategy with Yat Siu

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Cryptic
@Cryptic_Web3Feb 6, 2026

The Spaces explores how digital ownership, AI agents, identity, and tokenized assets are converging into the next phase of the open internet, centered on Animoca Brands’ strategy. Guest Yat Siu recounts Animoca’s origins with CryptoKitties and a conviction in tokens as the backbone for user property rights, noting market cycles come and go while infrastructure endures. He details the launch of Animoca’s cloud-based agentic AI with wallet capabilities and persistent memory, explaining why AIs need verifiable identities (via Moca ID) to transact safely at scale. The discussion challenges "NFTs are dead" narratives, citing hundreds of millions in monthly sales and highlighting real-world assets like vaulted Pokémon cards and prediction markets as utility-led adoption where users don’t care about the blockchain label. Strategically, Animoca is prioritizing IPO readiness, institutional products, RWAs, and deeper AI integration, alongside a partnership to pursue a regulated stablecoin in Hong Kong. Yat frames success as executing through volatility by focusing on utility, inclusivity, and long-term value creation, while cautioning against leverage and emphasizing vigilant, verifiable systems in an era of AI-driven misinformation.

Cryptic Talks: Digital Ownership, AI Agents, and Animoca Brands’ 2025–2026 Strategy

Participants

  • Host: Cryptic Talks (host name not explicitly stated; moderates and frames the discussion)
  • Guest: Yat Siu — Co-founder and Executive Chairman, Animoca Brands

Conversation Overview

A wide-ranging discussion covering Animoca Brands’ origin and conviction in digital ownership, the role of AI agents with wallets, the necessity of verifiable digital identities, the state of NFTs and RWAs in 2025, institutionalization (including regulated stablecoins), and Animoca’s near-term priorities (IPO readiness, institutional products, AI focus). The session had intermittent technical glitches but delivered a consistent long-term vision: utility and infrastructure matter more than price cycles, and ownership is moving from platforms to individuals.

Origin Story and Conviction: From CryptoKitties to a “Better Internet”

  • Yat’s entry into crypto began with CryptoKitties in 2017 via studio investment and participation in building it. The pull wasn’t Bitcoin speculation but the token-based ability to grant gamers genuine digital property rights.
  • Animoca realized blockchain is infrastructure for a stakeholder-based internet, enabling broader financial inclusion and a more equitable capitalist structure.
  • Animoca has invested in 620+ portfolio companies. Despite not being a fund, it is a major balance-sheet investor helping the ecosystem advance and endure.
  • Market cycles are familiar: end of 2018 saw Bitcoin around ~$3k; post-FTX, ~$15–16k. Painful yet recurrent, reinforcing long-term thinking.

The Long Game: Digital Future, AI Acceleration, and Surviving Cycles

  • Yat’s thesis: the future is certainly more digital. Blockchain solves online ownership, inclusion, and verifiability better than alternatives, and AI can accelerate onboarding.
  • Animoca announced an agentic AI service roughly 12 hours before the talk (referenced in the discussion as “Animal Command(s)”/“animal combines”). These AI agents have wallets and can transact, trade, and coordinate tasks, with memory and messaging capabilities (e.g., via Telegram).
  • Playing the long game means continually innovating and surviving through cycles. Focus on utility over speculation.

Builders, Bad Actors, and Vigilance

  • NFTs are not “dead”: in a down month, NFT sales still exceeded ~$320M (CryptoSlam, last 30 days). That volume indicates ongoing building and usage even in adverse markets.
  • Distinction between builders (long-term, utility-focused) and bad actors (short-term extraction via FUD, manufactured misinformation, AI-generated fake images/messages). Some profit from short positions by sowing fear.
  • Vigilance is required: rely on verifiability and identity; anchor decisions to conviction and long-term value creation.

AI Agents Need Wallets and Verified Identity

Why wallets?

  • Agents will transact in digital assets; crypto’s verifiability and trustless architecture suits agent-to-agent interactions.

Why identity?

  • Anticipated billions of agents necessitate verifiable digital identities to determine credibility and provenance. Without unique identifiers, name collisions (e.g., multiple “Yat” agents) cause misattribution and risk.
  • Anecdote: An employee asked an AI “Yat” for guidance; it responded as if it had spoken to Yat Siu, but it had consulted a different “Yat” agent. Identity verification is essential.

Identity infrastructure: Mocha ID

  • Mocha ID is presented as an identity layer (on its own chain) using ZK proofs. It secures data on-chain and enables selective disclosure (release only necessary information to specific parties).
  • Includes a reputation score to signal trustworthy behavior while preserving privacy when desired.
  • Used by companies like SK Telecom; supports verifying whether an agent truly represents a specific person or entity.
  • Analogy: email handles once helped verify identities, but spoofing made them insufficient. Stronger cryptographic identity is required for agents and humans online.

LLMs, Creativity, and Agentic UX

What LLMs are (and aren’t)

  • LLMs simulate intelligence by predicting text from vast corpora; they are excellent distillers and “listeners,” not inventors of unprecedented knowledge.
  • True “new” invention is not expected from current LLMs; insights often feel novel because they mirror and synthesize human inputs clearly.

Workflows and collaboration

  • In closed workspaces (5–6 people + AI), agentic systems surface the most coherent ideas across communications (emails, chats), elevating quality over loudness.
  • This reduces personality bias in meetings; the AI highlights factual, well-supported contributions.

Push vs. pull interfaces

  • Traditional AI/search (e.g., “pull” to ChatGPT-like interfaces) requires users to query.
  • Agentic AI (e.g., the newly announced Animoca service) can “push” updates, follow up proactively, and request inputs — changing UX from reactive querying to collaborative co-working.

2025 Adoption: Utility Over Hype

RWAs: Pokémon cards lead NFT trading

  • Top 2025 NFT trading volumes came from Pokémon cards. Physical cards were vaulted and wrapped as NFTs, enabling fast, secure trading with provenance.
  • Users mainly valued speed and ease; they didn’t need to care that blockchain powered it. Platforms like Courtyard leveraged NFT tech to avoid rebuilding heavy legacy infrastructure (databases, custody, security) from scratch.

Prediction markets: Polymarket

  • Polymarket (on Polygon) scaled because blockchain provided reliable monetary rails (stablecoins, security, throughput). Many users don’t care about the chain; utility dominates.
  • Analogy: we stopped saying “MP3s” and just say “music.” Similarly, users will increasingly use services without focusing on the blockchain brand.

Institutionalization and Regulated Finance

Regulated stablecoin (Hong Kong)

  • Animoca formed a JV with Standard Chartered to pursue a regulated stablecoin license in Hong Kong (details constrained due to licensing).
  • Strategic rationale: institutions enter via stablecoins and RWAs; token economies require credible, compliant monetary primitives.

Partnerships and tokenization as onboarding

  • Collaborations include Nuva on the Artery platform and Grow Financial in China.
  • Tokenized Stradivarius violin (earlier experiment) illustrates onboarding: people uninterested in Bitcoin may engage with tokenized assets they care about (collectibles, instruments), learning crypto by owning.

Near-Term Priorities (Q1 and beyond)

  • IPO readiness is the top priority (a “merger currency group” is referenced as critical to that process).
  • Institutional products: RWAs and joint ventures to meet institutional demand.
  • Continued ecosystem investing: Animoca keeps funding teams building in tougher markets where durable companies often emerge.
  • AI focus: multiple AI investments and internal agentic AI development; gaming remains core, with tokens central to emerging AI economies.

Success Metrics and Execution Risks

  • Risks: market volatility undermines confidence; overfixation on token prices can distract from utility and durable value. Excess leverage has historically exacerbated unwinds and reputational damage.
  • Success indicators: product execution, practical use-case traction (NFT/RWA trading, identity adoption, agentic AI usage), institutional engagement, and resilience through cycles.
  • Strategic posture: design for real-world utility and inclusivity; ensure infrastructures (identity, stablecoins, RWA rails) are credible and compliant without sacrificing decentralization principles.

Closing Guidance from Yat Siu

  • Do not use leverage; it amplifies unwinds and fragility.
  • Play the long game: plan to survive and grow through cycles, aiming for an inclusive financial future where users become stakeholders in the networks they help build.
  • Focus on utility and literacy: the goal is a better, more democratic financial system achieved through participation and ownership.

Notable Highlights and Numbers

  • 620+ portfolio companies invested by Animoca Brands.
  • NFTs: ~$320M in monthly sales in a down market; prior months peaked around ~$500M.
  • Bitcoin markers: ~$3k (end 2018), ~$15–16k (post-FTX).
  • New agentic AI service announced ~12 hours before the Space; memory, wallet, and messaging capabilities.
  • Mocha ID: ZK-proof identity layer used by SK Telecom; selective disclosure and reputation scoring.

Practical Implications

  • Agent economies: agents will need wallets and cryptographic identities; crypto becomes the default transactional rail for agent-to-agent commerce.
  • Tokenization meets people where they are: RWAs bridge the gap by packaging familiar assets into programmable ownership.
  • Institutionalization is a proving ground: regulated stablecoins and RWA platforms can scale utility while enforcing better design through compliance.
  • UX evolution: agentic “push” interfaces may reshape knowledge work, surfacing clarity and timing rather than novelty, improving collaboration outcomes.