Animoca Brands cofounder Yat Siu argues Asia will fuse AI and the blockchain before the West does

Animoca Brands cofounder Yat Siu argues that AI and blockchain are converging, citing a future where potentially 200 billion AI agents transact autonomously using blockchain-based payments. He highlighted growing use cases from Visa, Mastercard, Stripe and Coinbase, while noting that crypto-related equities have weakened over the past 12 months even as AI stocks rally. The piece is primarily strategic commentary, but it underscores a possible long-term catalyst for fintech and crypto infrastructure.

Analysis

The key second-order effect is not “crypto vs AI,” but payment economics versus distribution. If autonomous agents become the primary transacting layer, the winner is whoever controls low-friction settlement rails and identity/authentication, while the loser is the incumbent toll collector on every micro-transaction. That is structurally bearish for card networks’ take-rate over a multi-year horizon, but the impact is likely to start in narrow B2B/agent-to-agent use cases before touching consumer spend, so near-term earnings are still insulated.

The market is probably underestimating the optionality embedded in stablecoin-native and on-chain commerce infrastructure. If even a small fraction of machine-driven payments shifts away from 2%+ card economics, the re-rating could be meaningful for exchanges, wallets, and blockchain infrastructure names that can route settlement, custody, and compliance. The catch is that broad consumer adoption is not the prerequisite; the first real wedge is software agents buying software, data, compute, and API access, where speed and cost matter most and chargebacks are a feature, not a bug.

For V and MA, the near-term thesis is not a collapse but a slow erosion of pricing power. The biggest risk is that they respond faster than expected by embedding themselves into agentic checkout flows and stablecoin rails, preserving relevance while the market prices in disintermediation. What would reverse the bearish sentiment is clear evidence that cards remain the default authorization layer for AI-driven commerce, especially if regulators force strong KYC/AML into every on-chain transaction and make the alternative less seamless.

Contrarian angle: the consensus is likely too focused on the headline threat to cards and too little on the gating function of trust. Autonomous agents create a bigger demand for verified identity, spend limits, fraud controls, and dispute resolution than for raw payments alone. That makes the long-term economics attractive for whoever owns the control plane around agent spending, not necessarily the settlement layer itself.

Key Decisions for Investors

• Short V/MA on a 3-6 month horizon via a paired trade against a basket of stablecoin/crypto infra exposure; thesis is gradual multiple compression as agentic commerce becomes a visible investor narrative. Risk: incumbents successfully plug into the new rails and the market treats this as evolutionary rather than disruptive.
• Buy call spreads on COIN or a crypto-infrastructure proxy for 6-12 months to express the settlement-layer optionality; the trade benefits if machine-to-machine transactions become a legitimate market theme. Risk/reward is asymmetric because current expectations are still anchored to retail crypto activity, not transaction plumbing.
• Favor a relative long in blockchain/payment-enablement names versus card networks over the next 12 months, using a long/short basket to isolate take-rate erosion from broader fintech beta. Look for catalyst windows around major platform integrations with AI agents.
• Do not chase V/MA aggressively lower immediately; instead, use rallies to build a structural short with tight stops if management shows credible agent-ready checkout integrations or stablecoin acceptance expands faster than expected. Near-term earnings support can delay the repricing.