Meta’s $10B metaverse investment is ‘not enough’ according to Animoca Brands’ Yat Siu

The co- founder and executive chairman of Animoca Brands has a lot of thoughts. His company has investments in a number of different web3 companies, such as OpenSea and AxieInfinity. He talked about Meta's take on the metaverse at a tech event.

They said they’re going to spend $10 billion a year to make the metaverse work. Well, here’s the thing — we think $10 billion is not enough for Facebook to succeed. Billions of dollars are transacted in the open metaverse space — actually much more when you consider fungible tokens. Most of the value goes to the end user, so why would I transact on something like Meta — regardless of its visuals — when I have to give half of it to the platform?

Whereas if I use Sandbox, I get 95% of it. It just doesn’t make any sense for me to do that, economically speaking. And because billions of dollars of value are already generated in an open way, why would I surrender that value? So Facebook would have to spend a lot more to incentivize people to go into its platform.

That doesn't mean that he's the wrong person for the job. I think that he got it right in the construction area. He tried to put out a card, so he knows how to use the internet.

The metaverse is something to ask about. People are still arguing about that. Some people think it's online universes, while others don't. Property rights are the key to making a metaverse a true metaverse.

George Washington said that freedom without property rights is not possible with digital. Without digital property rights, you can't have digital freedom. The open metaverse has to begin with a foundation of ownership. He said that the Sandbox stood out.

Animoca brands is larger than The Sandbox. There are over 300 companies in the group. There are thirty subsidiaries. Animoca Brands has a headquarters in Hong Kong with over 1000 employees.

The strategy of Animoca Brands is easy to explain. There are some strong network effects that lead the company to invest in the web3. All boats could be lifted by a rising tide.

The economy activity surrounding the ownership of cars is larger than the sales of cars. He mentioned businesses that don't sell cars.

It wasn't because we hoped that OpenSea would be a decacorn that we made our first check in the first place. We did it because Open Sea had a lot of work. Every company we invest in could sell on Opensea if we pushed that.

If web3 becomes a big thing, Animoca Brands is well positioned to become a key player in the space.