For Animoca Manufacturers co‑founder Yat Siu, 2025 will likely be remembered as “the Trump yr,” not as a result of US President Donald Trump saved crypto, however as a result of the business wager too closely on him and mispriced all the pieces from tariffs to charge cuts.
Trump was purported to be crypto’s cheat code in 2025. As an alternative, Bitcoin (BTC) is limping into the yr’s finish, going through its fourth annual decline in historical past. Memecoin liquidity has been sucked into political facet quests, and one of many sector’s longest‑working builders thinks the market over‑trusted the brand new president.
“If I needed to give it a grade, I’d say B-/C+,” Siu mentioned. Merchants handled Trump as if crypto had been his “first little one,” he says, when in actuality, “we’re in all probability his third, fourth or fifth little one, possibly even an eighth little one.”
Trump’s priorities (tariffs, commerce wars, fights over the Federal Reserve) hit threat belongings arduous, and Siu identified that when the president begins a tariff conflict, he’s “not fascinated about what’s going to occur to the value of Bitcoin.”
He mentioned crypto’s “Trump commerce” didn’t play out in 2025 and that 2026 will drive the business to deal with compliance and actual use circumstances. Animoca’s deliberate reverse-merger itemizing is his wager that public traders need an “altcoin proxy” as soon as US guidelines are clearer.
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Animoca’s IPO as an altcoin proxy
If 2025 was Trump’s yr, Animoca desires 2026 to be the yr public markets lastly get a liquid altcoin proxy. The corporate plans to go public through a reverse merger with Currenc Group, a Nasdaq‑listed fintech, on phrases that would depart Animoca proudly owning 95% of the mixed entity. “Technically, on paper they purchase us,” he mentioned, “though we management that.”
The pitch is simple: MicroStrategy has grow to be a leveraged public car for Bitcoin publicity, however there is no such thing as a equal for the lengthy tail of tokens. “When you’re an investor and also you wish to have publicity to crypto, you undoubtedly might want to have your Bitcoin … after which you’ve got the swath of altcoins, and the way do you get publicity to that?”
Shopping for a base‑layer token like Ether (ETH) or Solana (SOL) offers solely restricted entry, he argues. Animoca’s reply is to place itself as a listed, SoftBank-style aggregator of altcoin upside, offering public market traders with a option to personal a diversified slice of the altcoin and Web3 stack.
The agency has greater than 620 portfolio firms and invested in roughly 100 new initiatives final yr alone, Siu mentioned, all of that are off its personal steadiness sheet. Within the 2024 monetary yr, Animoca reported unaudited bookings of $314 million, and the corporate has been EBITDA‑optimistic (worthwhile on its core operations, earlier than loans and taxes) for 4 consecutive years.
Over time, Siu expects Animoca itself to be absolutely tokenized, reworking the corporate right into a bridge between conventional fairness markets and onchain possession.
Associated: Animoca bets on altcoin upside to lure traders because it plans for IPO
Readability, GENIUS and the “tokenize or die” second
Siu’s wager on an altcoin‑proxy preliminary public providing (IPO) is sensible if the regulatory floor solidifies, and he sees key US laws, together with the Readability Act and the GENIUS Act, as catalytic fairly than existential.
“The phrase we like to make use of is ‘Tokenize or die,’” he mentioned. As soon as firms have a transparent framework for issuing, buying and selling and supervising tokens, he expects a flood of incumbents to enter the market. “Crypto firms are completely satisfied to skate on the sting … however in the event you’re a longtime firm, whether or not you’re public or personal, why take the prospect?”
He factors to the way in which giant manufacturers responded when stablecoin guidelines firmed up in Washington, and all of the sudden, after years of hand‑wringing, “everyone seems to be doing stablecoins.” And he expects the identical sample as soon as the Readability Act formalizes token classification and market‑construction guidelines subsequent yr.
Established issuers will launch tokens tied to their present companies as a result of they lastly have “authorized certainty, which they didn’t have earlier than.”
Right here, real-world belongings (RWAs) and tokenized securities function the bridge, as an business anticipated to develop into the trillions by 2030. Animoca has already began chopping RWA partnerships, together with a cope with Develop, a significant Chinese language asset supervisor, to work on tokenization and entry to token markets for conventional shoppers.
Associated: Animoca eyes stablecoins, AI, DePIN because it expands focus in 2026: Exec
2026: The yr of the utility token
Siu believes the following thematic shift is already in place. “The theme of institutionalization of crypto will proceed,” he mentioned, however 2026 will likely be about “new retail” coming into underneath clearer guidelines and with merchandise constructed round use, not simply hypothesis.
Till now, he mentioned — a development that reached a peak throughout the memecoin season — a lot was targeted on the prevailing crypto dealer and launching tokens and memecoins with platforms like Pump.enjoyable.
In that atmosphere, builders might launch a token and never fear about the place the client would come from, specializing in narrative as a substitute of product, however now market situations are forcing a reset.
The “memecoin insanity” was capped off by Trump and Melania Trump‑branded tokens early this yr, as Official Trump (TRUMP) slid greater than 75% from its peak and Melania Meme (MELANIA) dropped round 90% from its peak, with tons of of hundreds of small wallets sitting on losses.
That, in line with Siu, was “one heck of a vampire assault on the meme neighborhood,” leaving a variety of retail scorched and sucking liquidity out of the remainder of the market.
As capital rotates away from pure hypothesis, the following wave will rely upon merchandise that remedy actual issues for players, creators and types, pulling in customers who by no means considered themselves as “crypto folks” within the first place.
With the Readability and GENIUS acts laying down a path for compliant issuance, he argues that “2026 would be the yr of the utility token as a result of everybody will launch a token that has a use case, and we are able to discuss it.”
So, principally, crypto firms are rising up?
“They should, they should … We’re not the one firm going IPO.”
