“The open, true metaverse has to be one in which you have ownership. Without ownership, it’s meaningless.”
A vociferous advocate for an open metaverse, Yat Siu is well known as a crusader for true digital property rights and is among the most prolific investors in the crypto ecosystem. Siu has donned multiple roles throughout his long career, with an unwavering passion for technology that can bring about a positive change in society at large. Siu is known primarily as a serial technology entrepreneur, and his all-around focus and societal contributions have won him laurels as a global leader on platforms such as the World Economic Forum.
Born to musically inclined parents, Siu was enrolled in the Music and Arts University in Vienna to follow in their footsteps. However, in pursuing a faster way to compose music, Siu wrote his own software program that landed him his first job and defined a different career path than his parents had imagined. Siu launched Cybercity as Hong Kong’s first internal and email provider in 1996 and has been a serial entrepreneur ever since, founding companies such as Outblaze, Animoca and Animoca Brands.
Siu’s work over the past two decades has established him as one of the central characters in online gaming, nonfungible tokens and other blockchain applications. Having co-founded Animoca in 2011 as a gaming app company that could cater to the global NFT gaming market, Siu has overseen over 380 investments in the blockchain space, with more than 170 being NFT-based projects that are contributing toward his vision of building an open metaverse. Among his top investments are projects such as OpenSea, The Sandbox, Yield Guild Games, Dapper Labs and Decentraland, with Siu continuing to dedicate most of his time toward driving digital property rights through gaming and NFTs.
Siu was highly critical of irresponsible actors within the crypto ecosystem who stole the limelight in 2022 but believed that a few failures wouldn’t derail the Web3 movement. In fact, Siu used this period to build Animoca Brands’ presence in the Asia-Pacific region, acquiring Australian firms such as game developer Grease Monkey and digital marketing agency BeMedia in 2022. Based out of Hong Kong, Siu doubled down on his company’s investments in this region, motivated by the more welcoming attitude toward NFTs, digital property and play-to-earn games in the Asian market.
In fact, Animoca Brands’ 2022 investments included companies such as Neptune Mutual, Balthazar, Metaplex Foundation, Burnt Finance, Ancient8, TRLab, Kyoko, Pixels and many others. Representing a multi-pronged investment strategy focused on unlocking value within the blockchain gaming and decentralized finance ecosystem, Animoca Brands only intensified its expansion drive in 2022 despite the overarching negative sentiment that clouded crypto markets throughout the year.
Siu was the most active venture capital investor in 2022, with 123 individual deals, investing in projects such as Deviants’ Factions, Engines of Fury, Galaxy Fight Club and Drunk Robots, among others, while also furthering The Sandbox’s partnerships within the NFT ecosystem to maintain its position as one of the leading NFT marketplaces. In his personal capacity, too, Siu made strategic investments in companies such as Versus Systems, an engagement and rewards company that caters to live events, games, shows and apps.
Siu remains confident that the economic activity concerning the ownership of virtual land and other NFTs will surpass nonfungible token sales in the future. Consequently, he is committed to building Animoca Brands into a key player in the Web3 space that espouses digital property rights to establish a foundation of ownership. Siu’s eventual aim is to decentralize everything within the metaverse and would therefore continue his approach of investing in multiple startups and projects that are creating the framework of an equitable online ecosystem.
With Animoca valued at $5.9 billion based on its last funding round in September 2022, Siu has established the firm as one of the world’s leading technology groups in blockchain and gaming in the span of a little over a decade. He will undoubtedly continue his mission to leverage the might of his company’s network and the power of blockchain technology to realize his vision of an open framework that can secure digital ownership rights, with an intricate focus on fostering greater equality for all stakeholders in the metaverse.
