Animoca Manufacturers chairman Yat Siu instructed Consensus Miami 2026 that the metaverse is over as a client vacation spot, and that 100 billion AI brokers will grow to be blockchain’s major customers.
Abstract
- Yat Siu mentioned the pandemic-era imaginative and prescient of people dwelling in digital worlds was improper, and that the metaverse was a proof of idea for AI agent infrastructure moderately than a client product.
- He predicted 50 to 100 billion AI brokers will finally function on the web, outnumbering people and transacting autonomously on blockchain networks.
- Animoca introduced a $10 million funding initiative for builders constructing AI agent purposes by way of its Animoca Minds platform.
Animoca Manufacturers chairman Yat Siu instructed Consensus Miami 2026 on Thursday that the metaverse, because the crypto trade imagined it in the course of the pandemic, was by no means actually constructed for people.
“The place we’re touchdown is that the metaverse, the blockchain-based one, was actually the proof of idea for brokers,” he mentioned. “In different phrases, it was by no means actually destined for people as a major client.”
The remarks mark a clear break from Animoca’s earlier positioning. The agency was among the many most distinguished advocates of the pandemic-era metaverse imaginative and prescient, which assumed customers would spend rising quantities of their social and financial lives in immersive digital environments.
Siu attributed that false impression to the distorting situations of COVID lockdowns, when it appeared distant digital life would grow to be everlasting. “Everybody thought, ‘Oh, we’re going to be at dwelling, and we’re by no means going to journey as a lot anymore,’” he mentioned. “Which, after all, turned out to be fairly the other.”
What comes subsequent: the agent economic system
Siu’s new thesis is that blockchain’s most scalable person base is not going to be people however autonomous AI brokers. “I feel the purpose is that it’s going to be extra brokers than people,” he mentioned, estimating 50 to 100 billion brokers might finally function on the web.
On present inhabitants math, 10 to twenty brokers per human produces between 70 and 140 billion brokers globally. “Blockchain expertise is the perfect monetary system for machines,” Siu mentioned. “We, the people, have been principally the guinea pigs.”
The argument centres on a sensible downside that has restricted crypto’s attain. Roughly 700 to 800 million folks globally personal some type of cryptocurrency, however as crypto.information reported, fewer than 70 million actively use blockchain purposes, largely as a result of the expertise stays too complicated for mainstream shoppers. AI brokers don’t face that barrier.
They work together straight by way of code, require no conventional banking infrastructure, and may transact autonomously on-chain. As a part of the pivot, Animoca introduced a $10 million initiative for builders constructing AI agent purposes by way of its Animoca Minds platform, framing brokers as its subsequent main funding class after the metaverse period closes.
