Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Crypto, a daily Bloomberg I heard podcast,
Speaker 1: and I'm Stacy Marie Ishmel, Managing editor of Crypto for
Speaker 1: Bloomberg News. It's Thursday, October six. How do you go
Speaker 1: from video game studio to major crypto VC investor in
Speaker 1: the space of a few short years. That's exactly the
Speaker 1: path that Anamoca Brands has been on. Since its founding
Speaker 1: in two thousand fourteen. Anamoca has expanded well beyond making
Speaker 1: mobile games into owning and operating a portfolio of investments
Speaker 1: and acquisitions that includes more than three hundred different finance,
Speaker 1: gaming and social media companies. Yeahs, Anamoca's co founder has
Speaker 1: as a result, become one of the most influence chill
Speaker 1: people in technology. Bloomberg reporters Jumping Juang thinks we can
Speaker 1: digitalize your ownership of your tokens and assets in a
Speaker 1: way that everyone will has to property ownership and their
Speaker 1: data is not controlled by a centralized company. Joins me
Speaker 1: now to chart the path of Anamooka and its founder
Speaker 1: from indie game studio to crypto conglomerate. So good to
Speaker 1: have you on the show. Why don't you introduce ourselves
Speaker 1: to our listeners. Hey, everyone, excited to be here. I
Speaker 1: jumping Juan and I'm covering Asia technology and the crypto
Speaker 1: out of Hong Kong. Lots going on in Asia technology
Speaker 1: at all times. You have a pretty busy beat, but
Speaker 1: lots going on, particularly as it relates to crypto and blockchain,
Speaker 1: especially in terms of a company called Anamuka Brands. Why
Speaker 1: don't you just tell us a little bit more about Animoka,
Speaker 1: about their founder and why they've been in the news
Speaker 1: so often recently. Yeah, So Animoca is like Asia's biggest
Speaker 1: blockchain and webstree gaming master and this is its current status.
Speaker 1: But it started like about a decade ago, and before
Speaker 1: it's pivot into crypto, it was a sort of a
Speaker 1: dying mobile game developer out of a based in Hong Kong,
Speaker 1: and the company was making those casual mobile games. But
Speaker 1: back in uh the company made its first investment in
Speaker 1: Crypto Kiddies, which was the world's first like popular and
Speaker 1: f t collection. So that was its like entry point
Speaker 1: into crypto and ever since then it's been buying a
Speaker 1: lot of like promising startups and projects in the crypto space,
Speaker 1: and uh till this day, it's still doing so even
Speaker 1: now we're in the middle of a cryptal in the
Speaker 1: last year. Last summer, I think the company first reached
Speaker 1: the unicorn status by reaching one billion US starar valuation
Speaker 1: in a fundraising around led by Sequoia, and now the
Speaker 1: company is valued as six billion US stars. So it's
Speaker 1: just in the matter of twelve months. That's a lot.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's a lot. It's a very large valuation.
Speaker 1: It is a very short amount of time to achieve
Speaker 1: that valuation. How is this happening? Like, who is the
Speaker 1: person behind this? Right? So Yasu is the founder and
Speaker 1: the mastermind behind all the pivot into crypto. So Yassu
Speaker 1: it's not your typical tech bro like. He talks like
Speaker 1: softly and he is a father of three kids. Um
Speaker 1: and he always wear those sports where like the hoodie
Speaker 1: and as like athletic pens. It can be just some
Speaker 1: and that's jogging on a Hong Kong trail. That someone
Speaker 1: you can run into in a morning job. But apart
Speaker 1: from its her, he's like very soft like appearance in
Speaker 1: the way he speaks. He has strong message for the
Speaker 1: big tech that is he wants to use his company
Speaker 1: and it's all subsidiaries. The tokens. He hoped to sort
Speaker 1: of revolutionize the Internet of today because today's Internet it's
Speaker 1: pretty much controlled by a couple like big players like
Speaker 1: mad Amazon, Microsoft or Tensent. But with blockchain, yes do things.
Speaker 1: We can digitalize your ownership of your tokens and assets
Speaker 1: in a way that everyone will has to property ownership
Speaker 1: and their data is not controlled by a centralized company.
Speaker 1: Now there's an interesting tension that you're describing, right, which
Speaker 1: is that his you know, his whole thing is about
Speaker 1: decentralization and how blockchain will give users and customers like
Speaker 1: back the value that they currently provide to these big
Speaker 1: tech companies. But Anamoca is now so big and has
Speaker 1: invested in so many different types of companies, not just blockchain,
Speaker 1: not just gaming, that they are kind of becoming a
Speaker 1: sort of a centralized force in their own in their
Speaker 1: own right. Yeah, they're sort of a gamekeeper in the
Speaker 1: website space because they're so influential. And we talked to
Speaker 1: some startup funders or crypital entrepreneurs. They sort of feel like, hey,
Speaker 1: if we don't get the investment from Animal, does does
Speaker 1: that mean we're missing out? And at the same time,
Speaker 1: like yas it is trying to build the ecosystem, right,
Speaker 1: Like it's trying to plug its portfolio companies into a
Speaker 1: bigger internet blockchain system. For example, like one of its
Speaker 1: subsidiaries is making game aims for the board Ape collection,
Speaker 1: which is the one of the top empty collections. Things
Speaker 1: like that. That approach will make people ask if I'm
Speaker 1: not one of Animoca's investees, or if Animoka doesn't home
Speaker 1: token to my crypto project, will I'll still be part
Speaker 1: of the future that Yatu is envisioning. There's a big
Speaker 1: question mark around that. Well, there's another question mark about
Speaker 1: how sustainable is this future at all? Right, so they've
Speaker 1: got this extremely concentrated crypto exposure in addition to having
Speaker 1: like crypto on its own balance sheets in the middle
Speaker 1: of what's turning out to be a pretty protracted crypto winter,
Speaker 1: is Yatoo all worried about this? Right now? We're talking
Speaker 1: looking at like crypto games like Ax and they sort
Speaker 1: of pioneer the play to earn model, right, but it
Speaker 1: doesn't really work during the down cycle. So once the
Speaker 1: token price shop, if players are here for the money
Speaker 1: but not for the fun, they will actually leave the game.
Speaker 1: So we've seen that with cryptal kids, and we've seen
Speaker 1: that with XI and will constantly happen as long as
Speaker 1: like players are here for the for the money. Yes,
Speaker 1: to acknowledge that that problem actually for for his industry,
Speaker 1: and he's sort of arguing that he's spending more time
Speaker 1: to build a higher quality Triple A games, which may
Speaker 1: take a couple of years to come to the market.
Speaker 1: When we interview him, he showed us some demos trailers
Speaker 1: for a couple of blocking games. They're buildings. They look
Speaker 1: similar to some of the more popular or better produced
Speaker 1: games here in here in the in the traditional council market,
Speaker 1: like for nine or uh there's another space shooter game
Speaker 1: which looks actually pretty cool. If those, like more serious
Speaker 1: games turned out to be a big hit, then it
Speaker 1: will sort of part of the issue. Yes, he actually
Speaker 1: thinks it's a good time to deploy more capital because
Speaker 1: thunders studing money and Yasu has a big watch hast
Speaker 1: so well just the company and him will just go
Speaker 1: out and keep finding those bargaining investments. But I want
Speaker 1: to go back to something that you said about the
Speaker 1: potential for blockbuster games. It's not particularly controversial to point
Speaker 1: out that most blockchain games right now are just not
Speaker 1: fun and they are, as you just said, really environments
Speaker 1: in which people are there for the money as opposed
Speaker 1: to for the game, and the money is declining. Actually
Speaker 1: Infinity again being an example of this, the fund is
Speaker 1: not necessarily rising. What do we think is the patients
Speaker 1: of potential blockchain gamers if those like you know, Blockbuster
Speaker 1: Fortnite equivalence are two to three years away. M M.
Speaker 1: I think the issue will be like for companies like
Speaker 1: in mon Card and the making Websta games, they shouldn't
Speaker 1: be only targeting the crypto gamers or the cryptal traders.
Speaker 1: They should be targeting the way bigger like game or market.
Speaker 1: So if there's a day when Xbox player or a
Speaker 1: ps PS five player that will be drawn to a
Speaker 1: webstree game without noticing there's even a blockchain element to it,
Speaker 1: then that will be a big successful animoca. So I
Speaker 1: guess it's less about the patients for for cryptal enthusiasts
Speaker 1: because they have the basic knowledge of the tokens and
Speaker 1: that they will go through all the troubles of like
Speaker 1: creating a wallet and linking into the game. But if
Speaker 1: anamoca scame can can be naturally integrated to the blockchain
Speaker 1: technology without letting gamers know, then you can have a
Speaker 1: much bigger user adoption. I think that the challenge right
Speaker 1: now is you can get a much bigger user adoption.
Speaker 1: But like the time Horizon seems further away, is it
Speaker 1: that animal Okay is using other parts of its portfolio
Speaker 1: to kind of subsidize that potential couple of years between Okay,
Speaker 1: we are where we are with the existing blockchain games,
Speaker 1: but in you know, like our version of Fortnite is
Speaker 1: just around the corner, Like, how are they bridging this
Speaker 1: gap in the meantime. I think one of animals biggest
Speaker 1: cash causes called Sandbox. That's a blockchain based huge GC
Speaker 1: content platform similar to rob blocks or Minecraft. So what
Speaker 1: Sandbox is doing is it's been doing a lot of
Speaker 1: like those virtual lends sales. Two big brands like Nike
Speaker 1: or even some of the local banks in Hong Kong.
Speaker 1: They're spending huge money on just buying lands on a
Speaker 1: virtual space which has yet to have much happening. Because
Speaker 1: at the same time, game developers or even like indi
Speaker 1: like game music enthusiasts are they're using the in game
Speaker 1: tool to try to build those in game minigame on
Speaker 1: top of the sandbox platform. That's happening while they're doing
Speaker 1: the land sales, so as you can see, like they
Speaker 1: have a sort of quick and a medium way to
Speaker 1: make money. Meanwhile, they're letting their players in their ecosystem
Speaker 1: to try to provide more content to fill the gap.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back with more from Bloomberg Reports up
Speaker 1: in Huang. What are some of the non crypto parts
Speaker 1: of the Anamoka portfolio. Oh, yeah, they have some games
Speaker 1: from the web twobe error, like like some power Ranger games.
Speaker 1: So it's sort of the fighting and raising games that
Speaker 1: they have published during the mobile game boom back like
Speaker 1: ten years ago. But they're they're sort of just letting
Speaker 1: those games to dept their own life, meaning they're they're
Speaker 1: not putting extra resources into them. And at the same
Speaker 1: time that they're looking at their portfolio or i mean
Speaker 1: gaming portfolio and also profolio companies to see which are
Speaker 1: the ones we should pick out and let them make
Speaker 1: like blockchain game or turning like existing mobile games into
Speaker 1: block chinking by adding a layer of the token economics.
Speaker 1: Anamoka is clearly particularly as it relates to you know,
Speaker 1: other investors and funders in the region, one of the
Speaker 1: biggest out there. And when it comes to you know,
Speaker 1: folks who if you if you don't live in China
Speaker 1: or Japan or Singapore, and you might be less familiar
Speaker 1: with them. They've been compared to like an Andrews and
Speaker 1: Horowitz or an A sixteen C. Do you see them
Speaker 1: as potentially getting kind of a similar reputation outside of
Speaker 1: Asia where it's like folks who are based in New
Speaker 1: York in or in Silicon Valley are looking to Anamoca
Speaker 1: as a potential funder in the way that they look
Speaker 1: to some of these you know, big US based venture
Speaker 1: capital firms. Now, yeah, I think that's happening because right
Speaker 1: now I'm traveling in the States and just spend a
Speaker 1: couple of days in the Bay Area. So the Webstree founders,
Speaker 1: at least the ones I met was they recognize and
Speaker 1: Marca is a big player and people are flying to
Speaker 1: Singapore to Hong Kong to meet them because they're big,
Speaker 1: Like there's a crypto event happening in Singapore, and the
Speaker 1: founders want to get any more money even if they're
Speaker 1: based in the States. And as a matter of fact,
Speaker 1: and Marka did acquire a like local game studio called
Speaker 1: nWay here in San Francisco a couple of years ago.
Speaker 1: So yeah, actually it's making in rows into not only
Speaker 1: Asia but also the bigger Western market. I think one
Speaker 1: key difference between Marca and a VC from like a
Speaker 1: six thc Is and Morca is actually, yes, it's a
Speaker 1: game assment house, but it's also trying to do something
Speaker 1: like a house. It's an operations company which grounds so
Speaker 1: many games studios, right, But that may go back to
Speaker 1: our earlier point that it still wants to would the
Speaker 1: world of gamers with its own creation of the next
Speaker 1: block pasture titles which happened to have a blockchain animent
Speaker 1: to it. Right. So a kind of a comparison would
Speaker 1: be like if Facebook slash matter we're one of the
Speaker 1: biggest investors in other social media companies while also being
Speaker 1: Facebook slash matter, Yeah, exactly, and actually in Asia that's
Speaker 1: tencent right in the in the process of your reporting,
Speaker 1: you know, you, because you've you've been reporting on for
Speaker 1: a very long time, you have managed to kind of
Speaker 1: convey the appropriately crypto levels of what seems to be
Speaker 1: boundless enthusiasm and confidence that yet to an other folks
Speaker 1: associated with anim have in terms of the future, But
Speaker 1: what are their big plans, Like what's what's the five, ten,
Speaker 1: fifteen year horizon. Mm hmm, that's a good question. I
Speaker 1: wish I asked you asked you like, what's your five
Speaker 1: year plan? Just like the Chinese government love five year
Speaker 1: economic plan. But he was sort of saying like he
Speaker 1: wished to take the company public in the next two
Speaker 1: or three years, but depends on the market situation, because
Speaker 1: I feel he's grown to a stage that he needs
Speaker 1: to let investors away out because people have been backing
Speaker 1: him since like twenty eighteen and the you know VC
Speaker 1: or p from they need to cash out. The easiest
Speaker 1: way will be through an I p O. But that
Speaker 1: that's his like plans in the financial markets. But back
Speaker 1: on the operation side of things, I think it's just
Speaker 1: like keep acquiring up and calming blockchain startups or acquiring
Speaker 1: that some internet startups that's already big in their own
Speaker 1: niche and then through the acquisition and morca give them
Speaker 1: a new play in blockchain. So a case of that
Speaker 1: will be it's acquisition of an education company called tiny Tap,
Speaker 1: which connects online tutors with with like school kids. So
Speaker 1: there are content platform but now they're moving their content
Speaker 1: to blockchain, so yeah, and Moca will just keep buying.
Speaker 1: It's sort of also like the VC play like it's
Speaker 1: a number of game right. Sometimes you fail sometimes the startups.
Speaker 1: The startups will grow big, but you only need to
Speaker 1: have a couple of wings to be successful. Well Time Hotel,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for joining us. Really appreciate you
Speaker 1: being on the show. Thanks Stacy. You can find more
Speaker 1: of his reporting on the Bloomberg terminal, on Bloomberg dot
Speaker 1: com or on Twitter. He's at ping Roma. That's p
Speaker 1: I N G R O m A. On the next
Speaker 1: episode of Bloomberg Crypto, we'll catch you up on what's
Speaker 1: been you guessed it yet another busy week in crypto.
Speaker 1: We'll talk regulation, markets and why there are almost no
Speaker 1: crypto CEOs left. This is Bloomberg Crypto, a daily podcast
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Speaker 1: supervising producer of Bloomberg Crypto is Vicky Vergelina. Our senior
Speaker 1: producer is Janet Babin. Our producers are Mohammed Baruke and
Speaker 1: Sharon Barriro Deafto wonder At is our engineer. Original music
Speaker 1: by Leo Sidran. I'm Stacy Marie Shmal. We'll be back tomorrow.