Animoca’s Yat Siu Says AI Agents Will Make 2026 the ‘Year of Utility’

The era of speculative mania is transitioning into the era of the automated on-chain economy, according to Animoca Brands co-founder Yat Siu.

In an interview with Korea Times, Siu declared this week that AI agents and blockchain will work in tandem behind the scenes while we get on with our lives, positing fascinating and ubiquitous use cases for blockchain that few talk about.

Siu argued that the convergence of artificial intelligence and blockchain infrastructure has reached a tipping point. The friction of gas fees, private keys, and complex bridging is about to disappear behind a layer of autonomous software.

The implication is that we will soon all be using AI and blockchain without knowing it.

Key Takeaways

• AI as the New Power User: Yat Siu posits that AI agents will replace humans as the primary on-chain executors, managing transactions and wallet security autonomously.
• The End of Complexity: By abstracting away seed phrases and gas fees, AI Agents remove the technical barriers currently preventing mainstream adoption.
• 2026 Inflection Point: Animoca forecasts a ‘Year of Utility’ where valuation models shift from speculation to functional usage within the Open Metaverse.

Yat Siu Believes This Year is Vital

Siu’s thesis is blunt: the speculative cycle is losing steam in favor of infrastructure that actually works.

While the market has fixated on price action, builders have been quietly integrating AI to handle the heavy lifting. Siu suggests that cryptocurrency/blockchain is a “natural foundation” for AI agents, as these autonomous digital entities require a permissionless, borderless medium of exchange.

Ultimately, Siu’s argument is that legacy banking is too slow and gated for AI; blockchain is the only rail fast enough for machine commerce.

“Tokenize or die” has been a rallying cry for Animoca, and the firm believes that businesses failing to adopt these Web3 standards will face the same obsolescence as pre-internet retailers.

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Agents Are Solving the UX Nightmare: Yat Siu

For years, blockchain usability has been the industry’s Achilles’ heel. Users are expected to manage alphanumeric strings, approve complex smart contracts, and understand gas topology. Siu argues that human users should never have to touch these layers.

In his vision, AI Agents act as the intermediaries. A user expresses an intent (“buy this asset” or “enter this game”), and the agent executes the necessary chain of transactions.

There are massive risks ahead, however. Recently, an AI crypto agent made a six-figure error that the market ironically rewarded, demonstrating that while the tech is nascent, the autonomy is real and needs careful guardrails.

In spite of the risks, AI integration with blockchain is critical for maintaining a scalable and useful abstraction layer. If digital property rights are to scale to billions of users, the management of those rights must be automated.

Animoca’s portfolio, which spans over 600 Web3 investments, including its own property, the metaverse game The Sandbox, is positioning itself for this automated future where digital assets are the cogs actively turning the wheels of the financial infrastructure.

Why is 2026 Pivotal to Onboarding The Next Billion Users?

Why is 2026 the specific target for this breakout? The timeline correlates with maturing infrastructure and potential regulatory clarity.

Siu has pointed to the potential progression of legislation like the U.S. CLARITY Act as a trigger for mass corporate tokenization. Institutional capital requires legal certainty, and autonomous agents require robust, finality-focused blockchains.

This infrastructure is visibly growing on chain. Ethereum developers are currently locking in upgrades like FOCIL to secure the consensus layer for higher throughput. These technical improvements are the bedrock required to support millions of AI agents transacting simultaneously without clogging the network.

If the regulatory landscape in the U.S. and Asia, particularly with Japan’s crypto master plan and Hong Kong’s Web3 push, aligns with this technical maturity, 2026 becomes a plausible window for mass utility.

Animoca’s potential plans for a public listing in Hong Kong or the Middle East further underscore their confidence in this timeline.

The question is no longer whether AI agents can navigate the blockchain. The technology exists. The question is whether the regulatory and liquidity layers can stabilize fast enough to support them by 2026.

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