Animoca's Strategic Altcoin Focus
Animoca Brands co-founder Yat Siu has outlined the company's strategy to become a leading vehicle for investors seeking exposure to altcoins and the broader Web3 ecosystem. This positioning comes as Animoca prepares for a potential public listing via a reverse merger next year. Siu's thesis is that altcoins, as a collective, will outperform Bitcoin in the long term by capturing the diverse economic activity occurring across various crypto applications. He drew a parallel between Bitcoin's role in crypto and gold's role in traditional markets, noting that while gold is a dominant store of value, the combined market capitalization of public companies significantly exceeds that of gold, highlighting the potential for a diverse set of growth-focused assets to surpass a single reserve asset.
Siu clarified that while Bitcoin may serve as an effective reserve asset, the majority of real industry activity, including gaming, decentralized finance (DeFi), gas fees, blockchain infrastructure, and even memecoins, takes place through altcoins. For investors aiming to capitalize on the growth opportunities within Web3, relying solely on Bitcoin would mean missing out on a significant portion of the available potential.
Investor Takeaway: Public Market Access to Web3
Animoca Brands is explicitly positioning itself as an investment proxy diversified across altcoins. Should its listing be successful, public market investors may gain access to early-stage Web3 projects that are typically difficult to access through traditional investment channels.
Building a Web3 Equivalent of Early Internet Giants
Yat Siu likened Animoca's current strategy to the venture opportunities present at the dawn of the internet era, when investors could back emerging platforms like Amazon, Google, and eBay. However, Siu believes that unlike the internet's early days, the crypto industry is unlikely to experience a "winner-takes-all" dynamic. Instead, the industry is expected to foster a wide ecosystem of specialized networks and tokens, where exposure to multiple altcoins could yield better results than investing in a single chain or protocol.
He emphasized that these diverse applications are essentially altcoins, including memecoins that power ecosystems or serve specific communities. Animoca's core belief is that a long-tail portfolio, encompassing gaming, infrastructure, DeFi, and emerging Web3 categories, offers the best opportunity to identify and invest in the highest-performing assets. The company has already made investments in 628 projects, with 230 focused on gaming. Other significant verticals include artificial intelligence, decentralized finance, and blockchain infrastructure. Siu highlighted that Animoca's scale of investment allows it to acquire tokens at lower entry points compared to retail or even institutional secondary markets, and the company intends to share this advantage with its shareholders upon going public.
Implications of the Planned Reverse Merger for Investors
Animoca Brands is reportedly pursuing a listing on Nasdaq through a reverse merger with Currenc Group, a company focused on AI and fintech. This listing route is considered a faster and more flexible alternative to a traditional Initial Public Offering (IPO), especially as U.S. markets show renewed interest in select crypto-adjacent companies. A public listing would also provide Animoca with a new capital base to expand its investment portfolio and potentially acquire more Web3 projects at scale.
Siu explained that the company's strategy is to build a diversified treasury of altcoins, mirroring how a technology conglomerate might accumulate early-stage stakes in internet companies. The objective is not to bet on a single dominant blockchain but to invest broadly enough to capture a significant share of future successes across gaming, identity, infrastructure, tokenized experiences, or decentralized compute (DePIN). He reiterated that Bitcoin's role is fundamentally different, serving as a strong collateral and reserve asset, but not the primary venue for the majority of Web3 application development. Siu stated, "We didn’t join crypto to just hold Bitcoin. Its utility is limited for the kind of ecosystem growth we’re investing in."
Investor Takeaway: Public Equity Backed by Web3 Investments
A Nasdaq merger could result in Animoca offering publicly tradable equity that is backed by its early-stage altcoin exposure and one of the industry's most extensive Web3 investment pipelines.
Future Outlook for Animoca and the Altcoin Market
If Animoca successfully completes its U.S. listing, it could establish a benchmark for public market exposure to diversified crypto assets beyond Bitcoin and Ethereum. Its altcoin-centric strategy aligns with evolving narratives in Web3, where application-layer tokens—including gaming assets, L2 governance tokens, DeFi protocols, payment networks, and digital identity systems—are anticipated to outperform larger, more established assets during the next wave of adoption.
Animoca's strategic bet is that Web3 will evolve similarly to the internet era, characterized not by a single dominant network but by thousands of applications with distinct use cases and their own economic models. With hundreds of investments already on its balance sheet, Animoca is positioning itself to capitalize on whichever tokens or sectors experience significant growth. As the crypto market shifts from speculative cycles to more structured investment themes like gaming, user-owned networks, decentralized compute, and AI-Web3 convergence, Animoca Brands aims to be at the forefront of the altcoin opportunity. The success of its reverse merger will likely be a key development for crypto investors in the coming year.