Animoca Brands co-founder Yat Siu is confident that a series of investments and partnerships could prove fruitful in 2024 as widespread institutional interest in bitcoin (btc) gathers steam.
Speaking exclusively to Cointelegraph at the Next Block Expo event in Berlin, the president of the gaming venture capital firm highlights some 70 investments made in 2023 that are expected to pay off next year.
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Chief among them is a high-profile partnership with The Open Network (TON) blockchain, which was announced on November 28. Siu confirmed that the investment involved the purchase of an undisclosed amount of Toncoin, which was then staked as part of the validator. agreement:
“In fact, we believe it is a tool for mass incorporation into the TON Wallet. There are 800 million users on Telegram using TON. Why not be excited?
Siu also said that Animoca acquisition from casual social gaming platform Gamee in July 2020 will capitalize on its growing presence as a gaming platform on Telegram. He adds that the acquisition was hampered by the inability to monetize the games through the messaging app.
“There were no ads or in-app purchases, and nothing was allowed on Telegram until recently with the TON integration. “They are now commercially viable,” Siu explained.
While Gamee is not yet fully integrated into Telegram, the appreciation of its native GMEE token is a strong indicator of the “excitement of GameFi and its potential on Telegram.”
Animoca also has a keen interest in the broader performance of metaverse projects and non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Siu says that the nft market is recovering thanks to long-term holders who valued the respective projects and the fundamentals behind them:
“A lot of the classic speculators are gone, or there aren't that many because they didn't think they could make much money and because everyone declared NFTs dead.”
He adds that the number of NFTs from various high-profile collections available to purchase on the market is “typically now a single-digit percentage.” This is in stark contrast to the 2021 bull market, where more than half of any given collection was for sale on nft marketplaces.
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Macroeconomic factors also give Siu reason to be optimistic as 2024 looms on the horizon. He points to growing buzz around bitcoin exchange-traded funds in the US, the end of Sam Bankman-Fried's criminal trial and Binance's $4.3 billion settlement with US authorities as key reasons for the positive feeling for the new year:
“Frankly, even the Binance chapter, for me, has been a wonderful conclusion. In a way, we now have clarity for 2024.”
According to Siu, the possible approval of several bitcoin spot ETFs in early 2024 adds to the solid foundation. He btc-price-nears-40k-bitcoin-trader-return-all-time-high” data-amp=”https://cointelegraph-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/cointelegraph.com/news/btc-price-nears-40k-bitcoin-trader-return-all-time-high/amp”>The recent liquidation of $60 million in btc short positions also alleviates downward pressure on the markets.
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