Animoca Brands co-founder Yat Siu is positioning the company as a gateway for investors seeking broad exposure to crypto projects and the altcoin ecosystem, as the firm prepares to go public through a reverse merger next year.
“We believe that altcoins, ultimately, over the largest space, are going to outperform Bitcoin as a collective,” Siu told Cointelegraph in an interview on Wednesday.
Siu likened Bitcoin to gold, noting that while no single company surpasses gold’s market capitalization, the combined value of all public companies is “roughly five to six times gold.” Unlike gold, he said, companies—and by extension, digital assets—can fluctuate more dramatically.
“We don’t join crypto because we want to hold Bitcoin,” he added. “We hold Bitcoin as a reserve asset, but I don’t use it.” He argued that altcoins power the crypto economy, underpinning everything from Web3 games to gas fees to DeFi and DePIN systems.
Animoca wants to back the ‘Amazon and Google equivalents’ of crypto
“All of these applications are actually altcoins, in the classical definition,” Siu said, adding that even memecoins fall under that umbrella, “perhaps even more meaningfully” than some utility tokens.
Siu likened Animoca’s investment strategy to the kind of opportunity early-2000s investors had to back a broad basket of the era’s most promising internet companies—names like Amazon, Google, eBay, and Alibaba.
“We feel that we’re pretty well positioned for that,” he said, arguing that the crypto sector is unlikely to produce a single dominant altcoin or project in the way the early internet era produced outsized winners.
Animoca Brands aims to capture future crypto leaders
Siu said Animoca’s wide-ranging portfolio gives it a strong chance of holding stakes in the eventual breakout projects. Gaming remains the company’s largest investment category, accounting for 230 of the 628 companies in its portfolio. It also has growing exposure to infrastructure projects, artificial intelligence, and decentralized finance (DeFi).
He noted that Animoca can invest in and access altcoins at far earlier stages and lower valuations than typical outside investors—and that the company intends to “pass on that benefit” to its shareholders.
It was reported earlier this month that Animoca Brands plans to list on Nasdaq next year through a reverse merger with AI-focused public fintech firm Currenc Group.
