“…That’s how we see tokenization. It’s the form of digital property that will define the next era. If you don’t have digital property tied to your name, your product, or your company, or if your business isn’t serving that asset class, you’ll be left out. The AI market won’t be accessible to you. AI agents will transact, own, and trade among themselves, and if you’re not tokenized, you won’t be part of that system. And if you try to catch up later, the cost will be enormous. It may simply be too late. Things will have already moved on…”
Even if you’re a complete Blockchain novice, you’ll find yourself enraptured by the mind and vision of the incredible Yat Siu, with whom we recently connected after his keynote session at the 2025 Future of Money, Governance & the Law event in Washington, D.C. But before he was a tech mogul shaping the future of digital ownership, he was a kid straddling two worlds.
Born in the 70s to musician parents in Vienna, Austria, Siu’s childhood was set against the stark backdrop of the Cold War. “I would take the train to visit my mom, and we would cross the border at Checkpoint Charlie,” he recalls. “I literally saw two different worlds. One side was like 1984, and the other was a more capitalist Western society. That contrast definitely shaped how I think about what a world without property rights looks like.”
That early lesson in ownership, or the lack thereof, would become the central thesis of his life’s work. But his journey actually didn’t start with code but rather with music. While people often assume his musical training made him more creative, Siu sees it differently. “Music didn’t necessarily make me more creative,” he explains, “but it taught me two main things: discipline, practice, practice, practice, and pattern recognition.” This ability to see the underlying rules, the rhythm in the chaos, is a skill he believes translates directly from a blues scale to a business model. “That’s what music taught me: how to recognize and anticipate patterns.”
His pivot from music to technology was less a grand decision and more a teenage side hustle. To help with his compositions, he started writing music software on an Atari. “I wrote notation software that felt more natural for me and uploaded it to a pre-internet service called CompuServe,” Siu says. “People shared free software there, and others started sending me money for mine. It was wild.” Soon, Atari offered him a job. He was still a teenager, living alone while his mother, an artist, was on tour. His mom’s reaction was pragmatic. “I think she realized, reluctantly, that I wasn’t going to make it as a musician,” he admits. “Maybe there was some disappointment, but she got over it.”
This outsider status, ethnically Chinese in Austria, a musician in the burgeoning tech world, gave him a unique vantage point. “I was allowed certain exceptions, but I was also excluded in some ways, which meant I could exist outside societal norms,” he reflects. This freedom from conformity became a core part of his worldview, shaping his appreciation for neurodivergent thinking and the innovative power of those who don’t quite fit in.
Today, Siu is the co-founder and executive chairman of Animoca Brands, a company at the forefront of blockchain gaming and NFTs. But to him, it’s not only about video games or digital art but about rectifying the imbalance he first witnessed at Checkpoint Charlie. He argues that in the digital age, our data is our labor, and the tech giants have created a system of “dopamine-driven indentured servitude.” “We live in a digital feudal society today, where the overlords are the tech companies,” he states plainly. “They own the platforms where we exist.”
His proposed solution is blockchain, the technology that enables true digital property rights. He sees it as the foundation for a more equitable internet, where creators and users are compensated for the value they generate. “This isn’t redistribution, we’re not taking something that wasn’t ours,” he insists. “It was always ours to begin with.” He dismisses the hype and confusion around terms like “NFT,” comparing them to the early days of digital music. “People used to call digital music ‘MP3s,’ but now we just say ‘music,’” he says. “It’ll be the same for NFTs. One day we’ll just say ‘digital art’ or ‘digital property.’”
His conviction was put to the test in 2019 when Animoca Brands, then a publicly listed company in Australia, was told to abandon its crypto ventures or be delisted. In a hostile market where crypto was widely seen as a scam, the data didn’t support his vision. He had to rely on something else. “You have to take that leap of faith,” Siu says. “We decided to take that path because we had conviction in it. And really, what would you regret more? I would have regretted not doing it.”
That decision, a form of forced exclusion, ultimately set the company free, allowing it to innovate and grow into the powerhouse it is today. For Yat Siu, it all comes back to the patterns. Whether it’s the rhyme of history, the structure of a symphony, or the cycles of the market, he’s always looking for the underlying code. His current focus is on building a massive, decentralized reputation system, a sort of universal credit score for trust, to make the internet a safer, more accountable place.
When asked what people should do to get involved, his advice is simple and direct, a call to action rather than a lecture. “First, they need to set up a wallet, buy some tokens, and get involved… Think of it as a digital tourism ticket,” he says. “You won’t truly understand it by just reading about it… You just have to do it; otherwise, you’ll never understand.”
Sandra: Thank you so much for sitting down with me Yat. You grew up in a musical family and started your career in that world before moving into technology. How did that background in music shape the way you think about creativity, ownership, and innovation today?
Yat: I was born and raised in Austria. My parents are musicians, which is why they were living there. This was a long time ago, I’m a child of the 70s. Europe was in a very different place then. For those who don’t remember or weren’t there, we still had the Iron Curtain. Europe was split between East and West. The USSR wasn’t just Russia, it was a whole system. My mom worked on the eastern side of Berlin, and I lived in Vienna. I would take the train to visit her, and we would cross the border at Checkpoint Charlie. I literally saw two different worlds. One side was like 1984, and the other was a more capitalist Western society. That contrast definitely shaped how I think about what a world without property rights looks like, although I didn’t realize that until much later. That’s really what communism was like. Today, when people say they want communism or praise Marxism in some circles, especially in America, I think, you have no idea what you’re rooting for. Marx was correct in identifying the problem, which we still have today, but his prescription was completely wrong. Too many people assume that just because he analyzed the situation correctly, his solution must also be right. That’s where the real struggle lies.
Coming back to your question about creators and my background, part of my perspective comes from empathy toward creators, because most creators don’t make much money. There’s a reason for that, and I’ll get to it in a bit. People often ask me, “Since you were a musician, are you creative?” I don’t think creativity has limitations. People tend to box creativity into categories like being an artist or a musician, but I think creativity is about divergent thinking, being able to find different solutions.
You’ve probably heard of the study by Bethany Jarman and George Land, the one that tested divergent thinking in children. It was also part of the work of the late Sir Ken Robinson, my favorite TED Talk of all time. His famous talk was partly inspired by that research. The study was originally done for NASA. They wanted to make sure their scientists were divergent enough in their thinking to solve unexpected problems. When you send someone to the moon, things can go wrong, and there’s no manual for that. You have to be nimble enough to figure it out.
They took that test and gave it to kids at ages five, ten, and fifteen, then to adults. At five years old, 98% of kids scored as highly creative. By fifteen, it dropped to around 8%, and among adults, only about 2%. From my perspective, that explains why only a small percentage of people become entrepreneurs. It ties into Ken Robinson’s conclusion that schools essentially educate creativity out of us. We’re born creative, but systems make us less so over time.
So, when it comes to creativity, I don’t think I’m more creative than others. The real challenge is preserving creativity as you move through systems that tend to suppress it. Music didn’t necessarily make me more creative, but it taught me two main things: discipline, practice, practice, practice, and pattern recognition. Music has rules, and when you understand them, you can predict patterns. That’s why musicians can jam together even if they’ve never met. If you know the blues scale, you can play with others who do, and it sounds cohesive. You’re following shared rules and responding to each other’s patterns.
That’s what music taught me, how to recognize and anticipate patterns. Rhythm is a form of pattern matching, and that skill translates to how I think today. People with mathematical minds often share that ability. There’s definitely a relationship between math and music, and even neurodivergent individuals, especially those with dyslexia, often have incredible pattern-recognition skills. It’s amazing how their minds work.
Sandra: When did you first decide to step away from music, and how did your parents respond to that choice?
Yat: My mom’s reaction was interesting. I grew up in Austria, but ethnically I’m Chinese, and there weren’t many Chinese people in Austria at the time. That actually turned out to be an advantage because it allowed me to look at society from the outside. I was part of it, I spoke the language fluently, but I wasn’t fully “local.” That gave me a kind of freedom. I was allowed certain exceptions, but I was also excluded in some ways, which meant I could exist outside societal norms. And those norms can be restrictive. There are things you can’t or shouldn’t do because of what society expects. But if you’re already on the fringe, you don’t really care. You’re like, “Whatever, I’m already different.”
That’s similar to what happens with many neurodivergent people. They’re often on the fringe because they don’t fit into traditional social structures, and paradoxically, that frees them. They’re not bound by the same rules because those rules never really applied to them.
As for how my mom reacted, she didn’t really know what I was doing. I wasn’t a particularly talented musician compared to some of the kids in Austria. I was average. But I got into composition and started writing music software in the 80s on an Atari to help me, well, cheat a little. Back then, we weren’t even allowed to use calculators in school. Remember how teachers used to say, “You’re not going to carry one around with you”? And now we all have computers in our pockets.
Anyway, I wrote notation software that felt more natural for me and uploaded it to a pre-internet service called CompuServe. People shared free software there, and others started sending me money for mine. It was wild. Then Atari offered me a job because I was writing on their platform. The funny thing was, I was still technically a kid, 13 or 14 years old. Through CompuServe, I got connected to a broader world. Nobody cared about my name or where I came from. They just cared that I could do something useful. That opportunity opened a whole new path for me.
My mom, being an artist, was often on tour, so I spent much of my adolescence living alone. That might sound shocking now, like, “What? A kid home alone?”, but in the 80s, nobody cared. It was normal. The neighbors were around if you needed anything, and that was that.
I started making money around 14 or 15, and my mom said, “Okay, you’re making money, great. I don’t know what you do, but sure.” I think she realized, reluctantly, that I wasn’t going to make it as a musician. Music ultimately comes down to talent, and she probably saw that. Maybe there was some disappointment, but she got over it. And by now, she’s definitely fine with how it all turned out.
Sandra: Do you see your creative and analytical instincts reflected in your children?
Yat: Have they inherited that? I don’t think it’s necessarily genetic. I think it’s more about how you’re brought up. The ability to connect the dots, for example, can be nurtured. My oldest, who is neurodivergent, has an incredible ability to connect ideas and see patterns others might miss, though he has weaknesses in other areas. He’s on the Asperger’s spectrum, and one of the fascinating things about him is how deeply he can focus on a topic.
For instance, when he had trouble understanding social cues, he trained himself by studying people’s facial expressions. He couldn’t interpret tone or inflection very well, but he learned to read emotions through faces. That kind of focused, analytical thinking is incredible. He might have a more analytical mind than my other kids, but all of them were raised with the same principle: freedom. They were given space, and allowed to be bored, which encouraged them to explore and develop their own interests.
Of course, each child has natural propensities and qualities, but I’d say they all have some ability to connect the dots. I believe strongly in an interdisciplinary approach. Because I had a liberal arts background, it was important to me that my kids study history and philosophy. Those were big priorities in our household. It’s probably different from the traditional path of many Asian parents, who often emphasize math and science, which are important too, but I felt math and science are things a computer can increasingly help you with.
Philosophy, on the other hand, trains you to think, and history helps you understand human behavior. To me, history is one of the best ways to see where the world is heading. My appreciation for history has also helped me make more accurate predictions, because at the end of the day, we live in a human world. There’s that famous line: history doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes. That perspective is crucial. So that’s what I’ve tried to pass on to my kids. They’re still young, so we’ll see where it all goes, but hopefully it gives them a good foundation.
Sandra: You mentioned history doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes. Have you seen similar patterns in technology that shaped your conviction about digital ownership and property rights?
Yat: Yes. First comes the philosophical perspective on digital ownership, which is rooted in property rights. Your founding fathers, particularly your first president, said it best. The exact quote escapes me, but George Washington talked about how property rights and freedom are intertwined. You can’t have one without the other.
Having witnessed what true communism is like, where there are no property rights and, therefore, no freedom, I believe deeply in the principle that what I own is my sovereign asset. I should be able to transact freely with it without interference, and the role of government should be to protect property, not to control it. That principle is a big reason why America, and American exceptionalism, are so unique.
In Asia and Europe, the thinking is different. You still have property rights, but there’s more acceptance that the state can infringe on those rights for the sake of the common good. In America, historically, property and individualism have been sacred. That belief is a huge part of the American psyche and a big reason why capitalism works so well here. You have the assurance that if I own something and give it to you, nothing can interfere with that transaction. In other parts of the world, there’s always the risk that a government or central party could diminish or take away that property. That’s one reason America has the biggest capital market in the world.
When you think about freedom, it comes from the ability to create wealth and generate assets. You need to be able to benefit from your work. In technology or art, if you don’t have intellectual property rights, you can’t earn anything from your creations. With IP rights, you can at least earn royalties or income. The next step is to extend that idea so more people can have property rights.
Most of our time is now spent online, and all the data we generate is a form of labor. It should belong to us. I wrote an article about this, the idea that the new labor of our hands is the labor of our minds. We no longer live in a world where physical work defines ownership. It’s now about ideas, creativity, and knowledge. What’s in our minds should, in some way, be our property.
But with AI, everything from our minds is being appropriated for free. The models are trained on our creations, yet we don’t receive anything in return. In school, that would be called plagiarism, but somehow when OpenAI or other tech companies do it, it’s considered acceptable. That’s wild.
The data we generate creates enormous value, but we don’t appreciate it. If Instagram gave you back all your data, you might think, “It’s just photos.” But what’s valuable isn’t the photos, it’s what the platform has built from them: insights about who you are, what you like, where you live, and how you connect with others. That’s what makes the data powerful.
That’s why companies like Apple, Google, and Facebook are worth trillions today. Data compounds endlessly; the more data you add, the more valuable it becomes. It’s not like oil, where there’s a limit to what you can make from it. With data, there’s no ceiling.
As time went on and more data was mined, we got technologies like OpenAI and self-driving cars. But who contributed to that data? We did. That’s why we believe people should have a claim to the value they create. This isn’t redistribution, we’re not taking something that wasn’t ours. It was always ours to begin with.
Some people talk about universal basic income, but I think a better solution is simply to compensate people for the value they’ve contributed to these networks. If everyone stopped using Instagram, it would instantly be worth nothing. So why aren’t users paid for making the platform valuable? You spend time crafting posts, generating attention, and creating engagement that companies profit from. Yet you get nothing. It’s like dopamine-driven indentured servitude.
That’s why I often say we live in a digital feudal society today, where the overlords are the tech companies. They own the platforms where we exist. Blockchain can change that. We need digital property rights because all our property and value are increasingly digital. Without that, we’ll end up in a world where a handful of companies own everything, like having ten landlords own all the land in America. That kind of concentration of ownership would be disastrous.
Having millions of homeowners gives America a stable base that protects its democracy. If we create a framework where digital time, digital assets, and digital worth are recognized as property, we’ll have a fairer system where everyone gets paid for their contributions. It would also break up the oligopolies because they would no longer have complete dominion over us.
That’s why digital property rights are so important, and blockchain is the technology that makes them possible.
Sandra: When you break blockchain down simply, it makes perfect sense. I think some people hear “NFT” or “blockchain” and just glaze over without realizing the power of owning their own data.
Yat: Exactly. Owning your own data and owning NFTs are just examples of owning something digital. Whether you appreciate it or not is up to you, just like whether you like a Picasso or not. The NFT itself is simply proof of ownership, a technological construct, like MP3s were for music.
People used to call digital music “MP3s,” but now we just say “music.” It’ll be the same for NFTs. One day we’ll just say “digital art” or “digital property.” Right now, we’re still in the early development phase. And just like people once glazed over when they heard “MP3,” many do the same now when they hear “NFT.”
Sandra: I think the more we have AI tools that try to imitate art, poetry, and things like that, the more it raises important questions.
Yat: You mentioned AI. There’s the imitation side, but also the proof side. Blockchain provides proof of humanity and proof of authenticity. The most important thing is that if you believe, as we do, that the world is moving toward a more AI-based, agentic future, then the natural asset class and currency AI will use is crypto.
AI doesn’t have a bank account, but it can move crypto, trade tokens, and hold digital assets. Those assets are how AI agents will interact with you. If you don’t tokenize your assets or have digital property, that entire segment of the economy will be inaccessible to you.
It’s not that different from imagining you chose not to go online 25 years ago. Some companies did that. They said, “We’re going to stay a magazine,” or, “The internet’s not that big of a deal.” And what happened? They either had to adapt or they went out of business. The scale of the internet was too massive. It became “you’re online or you’re dead.”
That’s how we see tokenization. It’s the form of digital property that will define the next era. If you don’t have digital property tied to your name, your product, or your company, or if your business isn’t serving that asset class, you’ll be left out. The AI market won’t be accessible to you. AI agents will transact, own, and trade among themselves, and if you’re not tokenized, you won’t be part of that system.
And if you try to catch up later, the cost will be enormous. It may simply be too late. Things will have already moved on.
Sandra: Has there been a mistake or setback that ended up teaching you something valuable or changing the way you think?
Yat: It’s hard for me to pinpoint one specific moment because I’ve had thousands. The point isn’t that there’s just one big lesson, but rather that it’s a continuous process. I’m learning every day. Maybe I’m getting a little better at it, but it’s more like narrowing the curve. In between, you always make mistakes, because, as we said earlier, history doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes. That’s the pattern I look at.
There are a few things that help me make slightly better decisions now, and one of the biggest areas is understanding human behavior. If there’s one thing I wish I had studied earlier, it would be psychology.
Sandra: I’m so fascinated by human behavior. Maslow’s hierarchy is my jam.
Yat: But Maslow’s hierarchy, although not specifically medical or psychological, is a very good example of giving you certain patterns you can look at. For instance, you can ask, “What do humans ultimately want?” They want love, understanding, and community. So as a product or service, you want to target achieving that, and then you have success. If you think about the biggest brands, they’re the ones that sit at the top of that hierarchy, versus the ones that deal on the subsistence level, making sure you have economic gain or at least enough money to survive. Those are important, but they’re viewed as utilitarian.
The Birkin bag example I gave in the TED Talk illustrates this. Once you reach a certain level of wealth, you want to differentiate yourself in terms of social rank. Understanding that as humans, we always somehow want to rank ourselves comes from my experience of living under communism, where we were supposed to have no ranks at all. It doesn’t work, because we create subversions of these hierarchies. Buying things like a Birkin bag or a Bored Ape NFT are ways to distinguish social rank, and that matters. It’s not just saying, “This is who I am against you,” but also, “What community am I in now?”
You don’t buy a Rolex to tell the time. Exactly. Owning one makes you part of a club. You might not know the other person who has a Rolex, but you know you belong to the same circle. That’s how it makes you feel. The second feeling is connection: “You have a Rolex? I have a Rolex.” It builds community around what we own.
If we were totally utilitarian as a species, we’d all wear black because it doesn’t get dirty easily. We’d all wear the same shoes because they’re cheaper to make. But we don’t do that. We care about looking different, expressing ourselves through clothes and hairstyles.
That’s why, when you think about human resources, you can’t hire for uniformity. Every time you try to make people fit into a rigid system, you limit diversity. You either hire people who are like you or build a system that embraces differences, which is what the neuro-inclusive economy is about.
