In this exclusive conversation, we sit down with Yat Siu, visionary founder of Animoca Brands, to explore how Web3 gaming is transforming the digital landscape.
Yat shares his insights on the power of blockchain technology, NFTs, and digital property rights, and how these elements are helping create a more equitable and creative economy for gamers, developers, and creators alike.
Key Takeaways From This Episode:
- The core principles driving Web3 gaming
- Why true digital ownership changes everything
- Challenges facing decentralized gaming platforms
- Animoca’s mission to build an open, inclusive metaverse
- If you’re a gamer, investor, or creator curious about the next evolution of interactive entertainment, this episode is your gateway into the future.
Quotes To Remember By Yat Siu:
1. Digital ownership and culture in Web3
In this exclusive conversation, we sit down with Yat Siu, visionary founder of Animoca Brands, to explore how Web3 gaming is transforming the digital landscape.
Yat shares his insights on the power of blockchain technology, NFTs, and digital property rights, and how these elements are helping create a more equitable and creative economy for gamers, developers, and creators alike.
2. On volatility and constant change in crypto
“If there’s one thing that’s constant, it’s change. And that’s actually always part of our nature. So I don’t think we can expect that. It’s just much more in our face and much more sort of directed because it happens all the time. And it’s also because we live in a capitalist framework, right?
So from the perspective of capitalism, one of its core features is actually volatility, which I think a lot of people don’t like because they say, ‘Oh, it’s going up and down, whatever.’ But the reality is that when we look at for instance just the employment market, if you were to count and draw on a chart the number of people that get fired every week and hired every week, it wouldn’t be a straight line. It would be totally choppy, right? Because actually that’s what happens. But when you look at a government statistic, it says 2% unemployment, right, for the year.”
3. Web3 gaming adoption:
“So it’s not that you know there’s about 3.4 billion people that play games today all over the world. That’s pretty big right? But that means there’s also roughly 2.8 billion people which is, you know, almost half of the world’s internet that are not playing games. And it is that 2.8 billion that are actually moving into Web3 games.”
“The person who’s playing Axie Infinity or who’s playing a game or Hamster Kombat. They’re not people who play Call of Duty or even Roblox for that matter. There might be a small intersection, but that’s not the majority.”
4. On digital identity and reputation
“I don’t think I actually don’t think the conversation is AI here. I think the conversation is around digital identity. And I think while AI is an element of that, I think digital identity is really at the core of what both worldcoin and what with movers in our case or others are trying to solve which comes down to this question of testing whether you’re real or not and whether you are deserving of something as in your reputation.”
5. On Ethereum
“Ethereum was very cool because of NFTs back in 2021-22. That’s the cycle that it was going into. So, its narrative isn’t captured in the same way. That said, the Ethereum ecosystem is actually, I would say, as strong as ever. When you basically look at all of the L2s attached to it, whether this is polygon or whether this is you know Optimism, Arbitrum and frankly even things like Apechain for instance like they all connect into this ecosystem that helps it grow, right?
So, I do believe that you know those network effects will accrue more naturally and more freely over time does that mean that Ethereum will have the same type of value accrual than certain other monolithic chains. I don’t know that it really matters because for me Ethereum will be the sort of in in that ecosystem is kind of like the ‘granddaddy chain’ as it were and it’s the one that basically forms and people build on it still for value.”
6. About Bitcoin vs. Ethereum
“I think of Bitcoin as our reserve currency of Web3 for the time being. Basically, it’s our gold as it were. the benefit of the Ethereum ecosystem is that people will spend their Ethereum not just because of gas because of this because of that the activity of spending Ethereum is in the culture but the activity of spending Bitcoin is not in the culture the culture of Bitcoin is to hold.
So, if you’re holding Bitcoin and you’re not spending it other than for transactions then your mindset is different it’s kind of like you don’t spend gold you hold gold right the whole value proposition of it so so while I understand why you build on it and there’s an audience that utilizes it, where does a revenue stream come from? And so things like, you know, BRC20, runes and so on are an element of that development.”
Summing It Up
Animoca Brands founder Yat Siu defines Web3 gaming as a radical change in the way individuals engage with the digital world. Web3, as a place where players can own authentic digital items in the form of NFTs and tokens, is a paradigm shift to the traditional gaming experience where entertainment is the fundamental value.
According to Siu, most of the players who have joined Web3 are not the 3.4 billion who already play games but 2.8 billion non-gamers. They are engaged through the ownership of assets, participating financially, and engaging in new types of gameplay where the economic value and culture overlap. He compares this to the emergence of mobile gaming which has grown the industry by establishing a new consumer base and not replacing people who already play consoles.
Siu also believes that early Web3 play-to-earn games such as Axie Infinity attracted people to the idea. However, the space is changing to higher-quality experiences that will become adopted by traditional gamers in the future. He also discussed the lengthy cycles of significant releases of big names, as he anticipates a flood of Web3 games with AAA-quality design to close the divide between casual gamers and smaller players.
More importantly, he also positions gaming as an engine of skill, creativity, and fame. In-game achievements using blockchain can be turned into transferable digital credentials, making gaming a valuable constituent of personal identity, or even economic engagement. Web3 gaming, per Siu, is the engine that will push billions of people into the decentralized economy through the integration of culture, community, and the rights to own digital properties.
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