Many of you – particularly those who are new to the crypto space – will understandably have felt quite overwhelmed this last year particularly if you follow the mainstream narrative and negative headlines surrounding crypto & DeFi’s demise.
Word of the crypto winter has spread far and wide, but, for those that understand the nuances of the industry, this actually represents a great investment opportunity, and the downturn we’ve seen is just par for the course in any nascent space.
You only have to look at the work today’s guest has been doing to understand that Crypto and DeFi, spirited by a booming blockchain gaming market, is going to be big business over the next decade. So, trust me when I say, now’s the time to get educated and get involved!
I’ve been very fortunate of course, as I’ve been able to sit down with some of the most significant figures in the world of crypto, blockchain, Web3, and Game-Fi. Someone who is at the forefront of all that is good in the industry is today’s guest, Yat Siu.
Yat Siu is an entrepreneur, investor, and business leader and I’m delighted to welcome him back to London Real. The best part is, this time we get to do it in person, right here at London Real studios.
Yat has been the leading light in technological innovation when it comes to the online gaming space for the last 10 years and as Chairman and co-founder of Animoca Brands, he is forging new ground in game development, and the complex and often misunderstood world of NFTs.
For Yat and Animoca the business model is simple – to deliver true digital copyrights to all, while investing in companies that share similar values and the common goal to bring more equity to the future of games, while radically changing the future of how we live, play and work for the better.
As a young boy, Yat showed early promise, developing software on an Atari ST, before the company actually approached him with an offer of work. He was just a teenager, but it signalled a lifelong love affair with technology and its potentiality that grows stronger to this day. On moving to Hong Kong in the mid-nineties Yat set up Hong Kong Cybercity, the first free web page and email provider in Asia.
From here, he founded the company Outblaze, a pioneering digital media development company that has been a global leader in Web 2.0 products ever since and offered the earliest version of cloud computing services. At Animoca he and his team developed gaming apps on the emerging smartphone market and racked up over 50 million downloads.
Yat was named World Economic Forum Global Leader of Tomorrow and in 2009 won the Young Entrepreneur Award at the Hong Kong Business Awards. He is a Member of the Board at BAFTA and the Asian Youth Orchestra and we are delighted to have his insight and expertise on London Real.
Yat has come a long way and while many others have been keeping their powder dry during these lean last few months, Yat and the team at Animoca have been on something of an investment blitz. Yat’s focus is very much on you, the user, and to ensure ownership over virtual properties by breaking up the empires of Meta and Microsoft, which he describes as “digital dictatorships”.
“The investors who are participating in this believe in this vision… a more decentralised, distributed property rights framework is actually one that provides better prosperity. And so unless you’re the monopoly unless you’re the power, then it’s to everyone’s benefit that we see this world happen rather than have one that is controlled by the few.”
Animoca is changing the world and Yat’s vision is relentlessly moving the needle forward. With a couple of significant and successful raises already this year, and a ton of investment ongoing, Animoca and Yat are making a mockery of the cold crypto forecasts and mainstream doom-mongering.
Animoca is forging a new world of digital entertainment. They were named in the Financial Times list of high-growth companies and the standard bearers in their contributions and conversations around the meaning and potential of an open metaverse. Recent analysis values Animoca at just shy of $6 billion, but for Yat, that’s just scratching the surface.
I can’t wait for this one and trust me, if you’re in the crypto wilderness, concerned about your investments, a fan of traditional gaming, or just keen to learn more about blockchain, this episode is a must-see. Yat is an incredibly charismatic and engaging individual who is empowering innovation across the globe.
He believes in openness and democracy as we build a brave new future with shared ideals. His goal is to establish true digital property rights for everyone. After all, to own your data is to own your future and with that comes freedom, something you might have heard me talk about, on occasion!
