An interview with Animoca Brands co-founder Yat Siu on the “crypto winter”, raising funds, breaking up Meta and Microsoft's “digital dictatorships”, and more
Bloomberg : Tweets: @pingroma , @ysiu , @cecianasta , @markmilian , @cecianasta , and @animocabrands Tweets: Zheping Huang / @pingroma : Animoca Brands says its goal is to end Big Tech's “digital dictatorship,” but its sway over the web3 space could make it a different sort of gatekeeper. We wrote this article about @ysiu, the crypto winter's night king https://www.bloomberg.com/... Yat Siu / @ysiu : .@business @pingroma 🙏 on writing this fun article on @animocabrands unlike @GameOfThrones the only walls we intend to break down are those of the digital walled gardens we have all become so dependent on through #NFT #blockchain #digitalpropertyrights https://www.bloomberg.com/... Cecilia D'Anastasio / @cecianasta : Our new profile of blockchain investor Animoca Brands and head @ysiu questions what “the capitalist incentive,” in Yat's words, looks like in Web3. https://www.bloomberg.com/... Mark Milian / @markmilian : The crypto winter may have found its Night King https://www.bloomberg.com/... Cecilia D'Anastasio / @cecianasta : Animoca Brands wants to subvert the “digital dictatorships” of tech behemoths like Meta and Microsoft. But Asia's biggest blockchain gaming investor may have become a different kind of kingmaker. New with @pingroma, @_szheng and @betty_hou_1108: https://www.bloomberg.com/... @animocabrands : Why is #metaverse better than Facebook? Check the @business's interview with @ysiu, the co-founder & executive chairman of Animoca Brands, Asia's biggest investor in #blockchain projects with the aim to give people ownership over their virtual properties: https://www.bloomberg.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
Bloomberg's interview lands mid-crypto-winter for the company that rode the boom hardest: Animoca Brands went from an $88M raise at a $1B valuation in May 2021 to a $5.9B mark by September 2022, powered by the same $28B+ wave of 2021 crypto funding that pulled Big Tech engineers into the sector. The thesis then was player-owned NFT items as an exit from platform lock-in.
The winter has since stress-tested that thesis in public: Axie Infinity's economy crumbled and Sky Mavis began downplaying the financial side of its own game, while Binance's Changpeng Zhao navigated a regulatory crackdown under the same conditions. Against that backdrop, Bloomberg's framing cuts both ways — Siu positions Animoca against Meta and Microsoft's 'digital dictatorships', but the profile flags that Asia's biggest blockchain investor risks becoming a different kind of gatekeeper itself.
First-order effects
- Siu must defend Animoca's ownership rhetoric while its portfolio companies' token economies deflate — the Axie collapse showed players' earnings vanishing with token prices, undermining the sell-your-items pitch.
- Fundraising shifts from the 2021 boom to winter terms: a company valued at $5.9B in September 2022 now has to raise against falling marks rather than momentum.
Second-order effects
- Portfolio studios face pressure to follow Sky Mavis's lead and de-emphasize earn mechanics, trading the play-to-earn growth story for retention as token incentives lose purchasing power.
- Rivals and investors will test whether Animoca's web3 influence — its stake across the sector's biggest projects — makes it the de facto kingmaker it claims to oppose, shaping which games get funded and distributed.
Third-order effects
- If concentration persists, the anti-platform movement reproduces the gatekeeper structure it attacks: power over virtual property standards sitting with one large investor rather than open markets — the exact concern Bloomberg raises.
- Regulators watching play-to-earn economics after the Axie unraveling are likely to treat tokenized game assets as financial products, forcing the whole blockchain gaming category to choose between ownership claims and compliance.
The trend: The crypto winter is forcing blockchain gaming's largest backer to reconcile decentralized-ownership rhetoric with its own growing concentration of power, as token-economy collapses and regulatory scrutiny reshape the sector's funding model.