For Animoca Manufacturers co‑founder Yat Siu, 2025 can be remembered as “the Trump 12 months,” 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 the whole lot from tariffs to fee cuts.
Trump was imagined to be crypto’s cheat code in 2025. As a substitute, Bitcoin (BTC) is limping into the 12 months’s finish, going through its fourth annual decline in historical past. Memecoin liquidity has been sucked into political side quests, and one of many sector’s longest‑operating builders thinks the market over‑trusted the brand new president.
“If I needed to give it a grade, I might say B-/C+,” Siu stated. Merchants handled Trump as if crypto have been his “first baby,” he says, when in actuality, “we’re in all probability his third, fourth or fifth baby, perhaps even an eighth baby.”
Trump’s priorities (tariffs, commerce wars, fights over the Federal Reserve) hit risk assets hard, and Siu identified that when the president begins a tariff struggle, he’s “not fascinated with what’s going to occur to the worth of Bitcoin.”
He stated crypto’s “Trump commerce” didn’t play out in 2025 and that 2026 will drive the business to give attention to compliance and actual use circumstances. Animoca’s planned reverse-merger itemizing is his wager that public buyers 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 12 months, Animoca needs 2026 to be the 12 months 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 stated, “though we management that.”
The pitch is easy: MicroStrategy has become a leveraged public vehicle for Bitcoin exposure, however there isn’t a equal for the lengthy tail of tokens. “When you’re an investor and also you wish to have publicity to crypto, you positively might want to have your Bitcoin … after which you will have 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 buyers with a solution 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 tasks final 12 months alone, Siu stated, all of that are off its personal stability sheet. Within the 2024 monetary 12 months, 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 investors as 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 Clarity Act and the GENIUS Act, as catalytic moderately than existential.
“The phrase we like to make use of is ‘Tokenize or die,’” he stated. 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 joyful to skate on the sting … however should you’re a longtime firm, whether or not you’re public or non-public, why take the prospect?”
He factors to the way in which giant manufacturers responded when stablecoin guidelines firmed up in Washington, and instantly, 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 12 months.
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 assets (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 take care of Develop, a significant Chinese language asset supervisor, to work on tokenization and entry to token markets for conventional purchasers.
Associated: Animoca eyes stablecoins, AI, DePIN as it expands focus in 2026: Exec
2026: The 12 months of the utility token
Siu believes the subsequent thematic shift is already in place. “The theme of institutionalization of crypto will proceed,” he stated, however 2026 can be about “new retail” getting into below clearer guidelines and with merchandise constructed round use, not simply hypothesis.
Till now, he stated — a development that reached a peak in the course of the memecoin season — a lot was centered on the prevailing crypto dealer and launching tokens and memecoins with platforms like Pump.fun.
In that surroundings, builders might launch a token and never fear about the place the shopper would come from, specializing in narrative as an alternative of product, however now market circumstances are forcing a reset.
The “memecoin insanity” was capped off by Trump and Melania Trump‑branded tokens early this 12 months, as Official Trump (TRUMP) slid greater than 75% from its peak and Melania Meme (MELANIA) dropped round 90% from its peak, with a whole lot of hundreds of small wallets sitting on losses.
That, in accordance with Siu, was “one heck of a vampire assault on the meme group,” leaving a whole lot of retail scorched and sucking liquidity out of the remainder of the market.
As capital rotates away from pure hypothesis, the subsequent wave will rely on 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 12 months of the utility token as a result of everybody will launch a token that has a use case, and we are able to speak about it.”
So, principally, crypto firms are rising up?
“They must, they must … We’re not the one firm going IPO.”
