For Animoca Manufacturers co-founder Yat Siu, 2025 will probably be remembered as “the Trump 12 months,” not as a result of US President Donald Trump saved crypto, however as a result of the trade wager too closely on him and mispriced every thing from tariffs to charge cuts.
Trump was alleged 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 facet quests, and one of many sector’s longest-running builders thinks the market over-trusted the brand new president.
“If I needed to give it a grade, I might say B-/C+,” Siu mentioned. Merchants handled Trump as if crypto had been his “first little one,” he says, when in actuality, “we’re most likely 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 danger belongings laborious, and Siu identified that when the president begins a tariff battle, he is “not serious about what is going on to occur to the value of Bitcoin.”
He mentioned crypto’s “Trump commerce” didn’t play out in 2025 and that 2026 will pressure the trade to give attention to compliance and actual use instances. Animoca’s deliberate reverse-merger itemizing is his wager that public traders need an “altcoin proxy” as soon as US guidelines are clearer.
Associated: March 2025 in charts: Trump commerce battle hits Bitcoin, $22M in DeFi hacks
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 mentioned, “though we management that.”
The pitch is simple: MicroStrategy has develop into a leveraged public automobile for Bitcoin publicity, however there isn’t a equal for the lengthy tail of tokens. “If you happen to’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) provides 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 solution to personal a diversified slice of the altcoin and Web3 stack.
The agency has greater than 620 portfolio corporations and invested in roughly 100 new initiatives final 12 months alone, Siu mentioned, all of that are off its personal stability sheet. Within the 2024 monetary 12 months, Animoca reported unaudited bookings of $314 millionand 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 totally 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 slightly than existential.
“The phrase we like to make use of is ‘Tokenize or die,'” he mentioned. As soon as corporations have a transparent framework for issuing, buying and selling and supervising tokens, he expects a flood of incumbents to enter the market. “Crypto corporations are completely satisfied to skate on the sting … however in the event you’re a longtime firm, whether or not you are public or personal, why take the possibility?”
He factors to the best way giant manufacturers responded when stablecoin guidelines had been signed up in Washington, and out of the blue, 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 did not have earlier than.”
Right here, real-world belongings (RWAs) and tokenized securities function the bridge, as an trade anticipated to develop into the trillions by 2030. Animoca has already began reducing RWA partnerships, together with a take care of Develop, a serious 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 12 months 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 probably be about “new retail” getting into underneath clearer guidelines and with merchandise constructed round use, not simply hypothesis.
Till now, he mentioned — a pattern that reached a peak through 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 an alternative of product, however now market situations are forcing a reset.
The “memecoin insanity” was capped off by Trump and Melania Trump‑branded tokens earlier 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 tons of of hundreds of small wallets sitting on losses.
That, in response to Siu, was “one heck of a vampire assault on the meme neighborhood,” leaving loads of retail scorched and sucking liquidity out of the remainder of the market.
As capital rotates away from pure hypothesis, the following wave will depend upon merchandise that clear up actual issues for players, creators and types, pulling in customers who by no means considered themselves as “crypto individuals” 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 will speak about it.”
So, mainly, crypto corporations are rising up?
“They need to, they need to … We’re not the one firm going IPO.”
