Animoca Brands’ Yat Siu makes the case that blockchain is the financial system AI agents actually need

Here’s a question nobody at JPMorgan is losing sleep over yet, but probably should be: when billions of autonomous AI agents need to send and receive money, who exactly is going to bank them?

Not traditional financial institutions, according to Yat Siu, co-founder and executive chairman of Animoca Brands. His argument is deceptively simple. Banks require legal entities to open accounts. AI agents are not legal entities. Blockchain doesn’t care either way.

The agentic economy thesis

Siu’s projection is bold even by crypto standards. He forecasts somewhere between 50 and 200 billion AI agents operating autonomously by 2031. To put that in perspective, Earth currently holds about 8 billion humans. So we’re talking about a world where software agents outnumber people by a factor of at least six.

These won’t be glorified chatbots. Siu envisions agents that code, shop, negotiate, and transact independently, each needing its own financial identity. He reportedly manages over 200 AI agents himself for various tasks including coding and shopping, essentially stress-testing the thesis with his own workflow.

The core logic runs like this: if an AI agent needs to pay another AI agent for a service, it can’t walk into a bank branch with two forms of ID. It needs a wallet. It needs programmable money. It needs infrastructure that treats a software process and a human user with equal indifference. That’s blockchain.

Stablecoins become the obvious medium of exchange in this framework. They offer the price stability of fiat without the gatekeeping of traditional finance. Crypto wallets become the universal bank account that no bank would ever issue.

Animoca’s pivot from gaming to agents

If you remember Animoca Brands primarily as a gaming and NFT company, you’re not wrong. You’re just behind. The firm, founded in 2014, built its reputation on digital entertainment and was a central player in the metaverse hype cycle. It currently manages a diversified portfolio of over 600 companies involved in AI and blockchain.

The company is valued at approximately $5.9 billion, following its peak in 2022.

In February 2026, Animoca launched Hello Minds, an initiative designed to facilitate the deployment of AI agents with persistent identities and on-chain capabilities. Think of it as the plumbing that lets AI agents exist as first-class citizens on blockchain networks, with their own identities, wallets, and transaction histories that persist over time.

A $10 million funding program has been established specifically for developers building agentic applications.

Asia’s regulatory advantage

Siu has also highlighted Asia’s positioning in the race to integrate AI and blockchain. His argument centers on fewer cultural and regulatory barriers compared to Western nations, which could accelerate adoption of these hybrid technologies across the region.

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