{"id":30793,"date":"2026-05-07T10:51:11","date_gmt":"2026-05-07T10:51:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/30793\/"},"modified":"2026-05-07T10:51:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-07T10:51:11","slug":"the-metaverse-isnt-a-place-why-animocas-yat-siu-says-the-future-is-100-billion-ai-agents","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/30793\/","title":{"rendered":"The metaverse isn&#8217;t a place: Why Animoca\u2019s Yat Siu says the future is 100 billion AI agents"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The crypto industry may have fundamentally misunderstood the metaverse, according to Animoca Brands chairman Yat Siu, who argues that the next phase of virtual economies would arrive not through VR headsets or immersive digital worlds, but through fleets of AI agents transacting across blockchain networks behind the scenes.<\/p>\n<p>Siu said the metaverse maybe coming to us rather than being a place that humans go to, during his keynote at <a href=\"https:\/\/consensus.coindesk.com\/agenda\/event\/-keynote-animoca-brands-161\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Consensus Miami 2026<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>For Animoca, this marked a distinct pivot from the pandemic-era vision of the metaverse it once championed, in which users were expected to spend increasing amounts of their social and economic lives in immersive virtual worlds. <\/p>\n<p>Siu now says the more consequential shift may be AI systems operating in the physical world on behalf of humans, handling transactions, bookings, coordination and commerce in the background while blockchain networks function as the infrastructure connecting those agents.<\/p>\n<p>Instead, Siu argued the next phase of the internet may revolve around AI systems operating continuously in the background of everyday life, handling tasks such as bookings, payments, scheduling, and online transactions on behalf of users.<\/p>\n<p>He said consumers could eventually rely on dozens, or even hundreds, of AI agents to coordinate their digital activities, with blockchain networks serving as the financial and identity infrastructure connecting those systems.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think the point is that it\u2019s going to be more agents than humans,\u201d Siu said, predicting there could eventually be \u201c50 to 100 billion agents roaming essentially on the internet.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>That shift, he argued, could also solve one of crypto\u2019s longest-running problems: onboarding ordinary users.<\/p>\n<p>While an estimated 700 million to 800 million people globally now own some form of cryptocurrency, Siu noted that fewer than 70 million actively use blockchain applications because crypto remains technically intimidating for mainstream consumers.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMy mom\u2019s not going to be using MetaMask,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s hard for her.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>AI agents, however, may interact naturally with wallets, smart contracts, and decentralized finance systems because they operate directly through code, he argued. <\/p>\n<p>Unlike humans, agents would not need traditional banking infrastructure and could transact autonomously on-chain.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBlockchain technology is the ideal financial system for machines,\u201d Siu said. \u201cWe, the humans, were basically the guinea pigs.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The broader argument reflected a growing narrative within parts of the crypto industry that blockchain\u2019s most scalable users may ultimately be autonomous software agents rather than humans. <\/p>\n<p>In that framework, wallets, tokens, decentralized identity systems, and on-chain payments become machine infrastructure powering an emerging \u201cagent economy.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As part of that push, Animoca announced a $10 million investment initiative for developers building AI agent applications through its Animoca Minds platform.<\/p>\n<p>If Siu\u2019s vision materializes, the next major wave of blockchain adoption may not come from millions of new human users learning to navigate crypto wallets, but from billions of AI agents transacting autonomously with one another behind the scenes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The crypto industry may have fundamentally misunderstood the metaverse, according to Animoca Brands chairman Yat Siu, who argues&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":30794,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[405,7537,6318,4193],"class_list":{"0":"post-30793","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-agentic-ai","8":"tag-ai-agents","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence-agents","10":"tag-consensus-miami-2026","11":"tag-metaverse"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30793","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30793"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30793\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30794"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}