Raghav Chopra
In recent times, the conversation around blockchain and Web3 has been dominated by an obsession with asset prices. News cycle watches every dip, every rise, like a hawk, fascinated by the number of zeroes being added or removed. Yat Siu, founder of Animoca Brands, isn’t one of them though. For Yat, the real story, and value, lies elsewhere.
“Generally speaking, I think a lot of the attention has been on asset prices, right? More than it has been on digital identity. But I think digital identity is a framework to help, frankly, increase asset prices. Why? Because you need to build economies on trust, reputation. And if I don’t know your identity, I don’t need to know your name, but I need to know whether you’re trustworthy, whether you have a good reputation. And if I do, then I can do more business with you. Which means the value of the ecosystem can appreciate. So, as a foundation, reputation and trust is important. And digital identity is a solution.”
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Digital ownership is the key to building value
Yat, frames digital reputation as the missing infrastructure. Out of half a billion people in crypto, only around 10 percent are active on chain. The majority are still drawn by speculation, but, he believes this small but growing cohort is where the true transformation begins.
“I can build businesses, I can expand my work, I can be more creative. I can have more access, I can have more opportunity by going on chain. And that’s where digital reputation starts to grow. So as more people own crypto, move on chain, digital reputation and digital ID is going to be much more important. And they need that infrastructure for that.” he explains. It is in this shift, from holding tokens to using them, that ownership and trust become critical.
Ownership is fundamental. It is the foundation on which value is created and secured.
“The framing of any kind of property rights is the foundation of capitalism. If you don’t have a property ownership, then you can’t have capitalism, which means you can’t make money. But a lot of people take it for granted. They don’t assume that the ownership of the house is unsecure. Potentially. They just say, oh, the house is mine, obviously, because that’s mine, right? But it’s not the bricks. It’s the law and the system that allows you to do that.”
Blockchain will be the ecosystem for the digital world
Blockchain, he argues, is that system for the digital world. From the intangible IP rights that gave birth to tech giants like Apple and Google, to the invisible networks that determine real estate value, much of what society considers valuable is already virtual. Blockchain simply extends that logic at scale.
Siu is particularly excited by what he calls the trillion dollar attention economy.
“The attention economy is powered by advertising. It’s worth over $1 trillion a year. But as an industry, how many industries are trillion dollars a year? And that’s driven by Facebook, Google, Apple. You never had a way in which you could own advertising and attention as a commodity. And that’s what tokenization allows you to have now, the ability to own a piece of that network. And that means that even if it’s a meme coin, as silly as it may be, it has attention and that brings value.”
U.S. going crypto friendly will push global adoption
With the US turning increasingly pro-crypto and moving toward stablecoin adoption, Siu believes other nations face a simple choice: adapt or be left behind.
“If you are a country that wants to do business with America and they want to send you stablecoins… and you don’t know how to receive it, you’re screwed. You’re completely isolating yourself from this new market of commerce. The US has become as pro crypto as ever, right? Which means that not just because of genius act and stablecoin, but also the fact that everything’s going to tokenize in America and this is also how people are going to do business. So, if you are a country that wants to do business with America and they want to send you stablecoins, or they want to do business with you and send you some crypto and you don’t know how to receive it, you can’t do business with them because there’s no regulation in this country.”
The opening of these markets, he adds, could unlock billions of people across Africa, South America, and Southeast Asia who have been excluded from the banking system.
Mass adoption of crypto is inevitable
The near future, Siu argues, will not only see the ecosystem’s value grow into the trillions but also its reach. He predicts that crypto adoption could reach one billion people within the next year, with at least 100 million engaging on chain.
“I think we have to distinguish. There are two things. One, the growth of the market, the number of users joining will be faster than ever. I actually think in terms of actual people who own crypto, we might hit a billion people by the end of the year, or at least within 12 months. Now, that doesn’t mean they’re all on-chain, but it also means, as a result, we’re going to have hit our first 100 plus million people that are doing some on-chain activity. The value of the ecosystem will grow over $4 trillion, $6 trillion, $8 trillion, which means the consumer will have more choices, more businesses will run, more people will get employed.”
