Why altcoins will be bigger than Bitcoin, with Yat Siu, Co-founder of Animoca Brands
Hi, it’s Marc. ✌️
“Capitalism is the superior system broadly. But when left unchecked, it has a lot of problems. And the reason communism and socialism have become more popular is because most people in the world are not participating in the capitalist system.”
That’s Yat Siu, Co-founder and Executive Chairman of Animoca Brands, outlining what drives Animoca Brand’s investment thesis. Animoca has quietly built a $1.4 billion portfolio of over 600 companies. Their bet? That while Bitcoin is the reserve asset, the “Altcoin” economy, representing culture, gaming, and data, will ultimately be the larger asset class
In our conversation, he breaks down why Animoca Brands is looking to go public on the NASDAQ and why “digital property rights” are the only viable path to re-enfranchise the global population into the capitalist machine.
And here is his biggest take:
“No king willingly gives up their kingdom. Spotify won’t decentralize. Facebook won’t tokenize. It’s not innovation from incumbents, it’s creative destruction. A new company will disrupt them, and they’ll have to adapt or die.”
In this episode, we sit down with Yat to unpack the philosophy of digital property rights and the future of Animoca.
About Yat: Yat Siu is a Hong Kong-based technology entrepreneur, investor, and a leading advocate for Web3 and digital property rights. He is best known as the co-founder and executive chairman of Animoca Brands, a global leader in gamification and blockchain with a portfolio of over 600 companies.
He’s been investing in blockchain since the earliest days and is known for his philosophical approach to technology and economics. Before Animoca, he was an early investor in mobile gaming and founded multiple companies.
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🎧 Jump to the best parts
- (00:52) → From Checkpoint Charlie to Web3: Yat Siu grew up crossing between East and West Berlin. He explains how seeing “scarcity vs. abundance” side-by-side shaped his belief that property rights are the foundation of freedom.
- (05:16) → The problem with modern capitalism: Why real estate, compound earnings, and the stock market have become impossible for most people and how QE destroyed the savings mechanism.
- (13:06) → John Locke’s labor theory in the digital age: Why your data and ideas are the new “apples you plucked” and why Big Tech is essentially enslaving creators.
- (30:59) → The Altcoin Thesis: Why Animoca views itself as a leveraged bet on the altcoin market, and why Yat believes the collective market cap of altcoins will eventually surpass Bitcoin’s “digital gold” status.
- (36:30) → From NFTs to digital identity to stablecoins: Why Animoca invests across every layer of tokenization.
- (44:47) → The vision for the next 5-10 years: Why tokenization will make everyone financially literate.
Important Links
- LinkedIn: https://hk.linkedin.com/in/yatsiu
- X: https://x.com/ysiu
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ysiu/
- Animoca Brands: https://www.animocabrands.com/
- Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yat_Siu
🎙️ In our conversation, we discussed:
- Why capitalism is dying (and how to save it): The failure of antitrust, the rise of tech monopolies, and why data (the new oil) needs to be owned by the people who create it, not the platforms that exploit it.
- The NASDAQ Strategy: Why Animoca plans to go public to allow broad retail participation, contrasting with the closed nature of VC funds.
- Where to tokenize: Tokenizing liquid assets (like Treasuries) adds utility. Tokenizing illiquid assets (like real estate) doesn’t magically make them liquid, it just wraps the same problem in a token.
- Digital identity as the killer app: Why privacy ≠ anonymity, and why blockchain needs reputation (what Animoca is building) before it can scale trust.
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My biggest takeaways from this conversation & who to bet on:
1. Altcoins will be larger than Bitcoin
Yat’s most controversial take: Bitcoin is digital gold ($27T today). Altcoins are the entire stock market + private markets ($120T + $250T).
Bitcoin’s job: Store of value, reserve asset, digital settlement layer.
Altcoins’ job: Everything else. Ethereum for smart contracts. Solana for speed. Uniswap for trading. Aave for lending. Animoca’s portfolio for gaming, identity, RWAs.
The math:
- Bitcoin today: ~$2T
- Altcoins today: ~$1T
- Bitcoin future: $10T (institutional adoption, inflation hedge)
- Altcoins future: $20-30T (because Bitcoin’s utility cap is lower)
Why this matters for Animoca:They’re not betting on Bitcoin. They’re betting that as the world tokenizes, the utility layer (altcoins) accrues more value than the reserve layer (Bitcoin).
Think about it: You don’t use gold to build things. You use it to store value. But you use companies (software, payments, manufacturing) to build the economy.
Same logic applies here.
2. We are living in “Digital Serfdom” (And Web3 is the peasant revolt)
Yat draws a fascinating parallel to John Locke’s 17th-century theory of property. In the physical world, if you pick an apple with your hands, that labor makes the apple yours.
In the digital world, our “labor” is our attention, our creativity, and our data. When you post on Instagram or query ChatGPT, you are performing labor. Yet, the platform captures 100% of the value.
“They’re actually the ones who own you now... If Instagram went to you and said ‘do this or we delete your account,’ you would do it.”
The Strategy: The bets to make here are on DePIN (Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Networks) and User-Owned Data protocols. These are the platforms attempting to return the “fruit of the labor” back to the user. If the 2010s were about aggregating data, the 2020s are about reclaiming it
3. Tokenization is the Trojan Horse for Financial Literacy
Less than 10% of the global population owns material equity or property. You cannot care about capitalism if you have no capital.
Yat argues that tokenization financializes passion. It turns hobbies – gaming, collecting, music – into capital assets.
“My mom... has no interest in buying Bitcoin. But she would be interested in buying a tokenized Stradivarius... Not because it’s a token, but because she appreciates the value of a Stradivarius.”
When you tokenize a game item or a collectible:
- Engagement shifts: Users suddenly care about the “economy” of the game.
- Education happens: A kid trading Pokemon cards on-chain learns about liquidity, scarcity, and market dynamics naturally.
So what? Tokenization lowers the barrier to entry for capitalism from “buying a house” or “opening a brokerage account” to simply “playing a game.” This is how you unlock the next billion investors.
Our view
Yat’s argument is philosophically compelling: A free society requires property rights. Tokenization expands property rights to digital assets. Therefore, tokenization = more freedom.
The market mechanics are clear:
- Stablecoins proved the tech works ($300B market cap within 5 years)
- RWAs are proving the use case (treasuries, bonds, equities)
- Thanks to the GENIUS and the Clarity Act, institutions are onboarding
Who wins by the logic of Yat:
- Infrastructure tokens (Ethereum, Solana, Avalanche): benefit from all building
- Service providers (Animoca, Securitize, Ondo Finance): capture fees from tokenization
- Application layer (gaming, identity, DeFi): capture usage
- Distribution (Coinbase, Kraken, Robinhood): customer relationship
Animoca is positioned at the applications layer (through its 600 portfolio companies) and as a public vehicle to bet on the entire stack. Public listing in 2026. $1.4B in portfolio value today. If altcoins are even half-right, this compounds to something meaningful.
Take care,
Marc
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