There is a longstanding debate within the crypto community over which blockchain use case will be the first to usher in widespread mass adoption. For some, the answer is Bitcoin’s (BTC) store-of-value nature, while others believe nonfungible tokens (NFTs) are an underappreciated technology waiting to explode.

However, for Animoca Brands co-founder and chairman Yat Siu, the primary catalyst for mass adoption will be gaming — and we are closer to that future than many realize.

Gaming and the future of crypto mass adoption

“I actually think we’ll see mass adoption in the next 12 to 18 months,” Siu told host Jonathan DeYoung in the latest episode of Decentralize with Cointelegraph, which was recorded in person during the Consensus 2024 conference in Austin, Texas. The Animoca Brands co-founder argued that this timeline is achievable because there are more tools for distributing Web3 applications than ever before. 

Eventually, even legacy players that have historically been resistant to Web3 — such as Apple, Google and Valve’s Steam — will have no choice but to join the revolution. “Once those floodgates open, we’ll get even more mass adoption,” Siu said.

“Imagine what would happen when you suddenly have 100 million or maybe even a billion people on these kinds of networks. They would be, in my mind, completely unbeatable, right?”

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Siu believes that gaming will ultimately be the catalyst for mass adoption because it’s a social activity, which gives it its true power.

“The power of a blockchain comes from its community, which is social in nature,” Siu said. “Regardless of whether it’s a game or SocialFi or even a DeFi system, you know, it’s the social connections that come from that, that actually give it its strength and its longevity. Which comes to the point about why do we think gaming is a mechanism to do that? Because, at root, games is a social network.”

Is the metaverse dead?

Animoca Brands’ Siu also opined on the state of the metaverse, which he proclaimed is “not dead at all,” despite various news headlines in recent months declaring it to be so. “It depends on how you define the metaverse,” he added, saying that Facebook did an incredible job in rebranding itself to Meta to convince the world that “Meta” equaled “the metaverse.”

“When Facebook failed to execute the metaverse in their vision, which we always said wouldn’t work the way that they thought it would, then the rest of the world was like, huh, see, that didn’t work. And so they associated with that,” said Siu. However, the Animoca Brands co-founder sees the metaverse as something much different:

“We think the metaverse doesn’t begin with a virtual world. The metaverse begins with owning your digital property. [...] It’s like building a nation. The foundation of building a nation isn’t actually the fact that you can enter a space, it’s about your community, and it’s about ownership in that space.”

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“That part is thriving,” he added, likening the Web3 space at large to one big “open metaverse,” where opportunities are virtual, but the value is tangible. “To us, that’s the open metaverse, and that’s a thriving space that already [is] $2.5, $2.6 trillion in size.”

To hear more from Siu — including his perspective on memecoins, the importance of financial education, and Animoca Brands’ investment strategy — listen to the full episode of Decentralize with Cointelegraph on Cointelegraph’s podcast page, Spotify, Apple Podcasts or your podcast platform of choice. And don’t forget to check out Cointelegraph’s full lineup of other shows!

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