NEW YORK — Animoca Brands wants to become the agent for institutional investors in a growing altcoin market, its co-founder told CoinDesk on Monday.
Animoca announced plans Monday morning to list on Nasdaq through a reverse merger with Currenc Group, pledging to create a conglomerate that will allow institutional and retail investors access to what will essentially become an altcoin index vehicle, similar to Strategy (MSTR) or Sharplink (SBET) – but for a basket of tokens.
Institution-ready altcoins currently make up a quarter of the overall crypto market, said Yat Siu, co-founder and executive chairman of Animoca. The company was founded in 2011, but only entered the crypto world in 2017.
“I think we’re in a unique position to do this,” he said. “If you’re an institution, you know you’re going to buy Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, and then you have all these other altcoins, which is a quarter of the market. You’re like, ‘How can I do that?’ And instead of trying to pick winners, which is almost impossible, you can pick Animoca. That’s kind of how we think.”
By altcoins, Siu is not referring to all tokens outside of the biggest names right now, but rather “institutionally ready altcoins,” tokens with use cases, Siu told CoinDesk Monday afternoon in midtown Manhattan.
“Other tokens undoubtedly have more volatility, but much greater growth potential,” he said. “These are the tokens that people are using and adopting… and it’s going to be very difficult for an investor who wants to have some exposure to the space, to participate in essentially altcoins, because how are they going to know what to choose?”
Animoca aims to answer this question through its investment portfolio. He has invested in more than 600 different companies developing tokens touching a number of different areas, Siu said. According to a snapshot of 100 tokens Animoca has invested in on CoinMarketCap, they range from Web3 gaming to decentralized identity to tokenization of real-world assets, among other areas.
There is still a way to go before Animoca gets there. The company announced a proposed acquisition with Currenc, but the companies must first finalize their documentation, determine the composition of the board of directors, confirm their merger ratio, obtain shareholder approval and obtain approval from regulatory authorities. The companies said in their press release that they were targeting a late 2026 start, a timeline that Siu reiterated Monday: “This entire process, in our estimation, is going to take approximately nine to 12 months.”
If all goes as planned, Siu said, it will “democratize access” to the broader cryptocurrency market.
“Most of the world still doesn’t have crypto and ultimately doesn’t understand crypto yet,” he said. “We are still, relatively speaking, in the minority, because hundreds of millions of people own cryptocurrencies, but there are billions who don’t. Those billions have access to the stock market, or at least ways to participate in that space. And to me, we need to have a vehicle to allow them access to early development of companies that, frankly, have potentially greater growth potential.”
