. The 49-year-old Austrian-born, Hong Kong-based exec isn’t sleeping more than a few hours a night these days but can’t stop himself from jumping into high gear when asked about his blockchain gaming business, Animoca Brands. Sporting a hooded black jacket and half-rimmed glasses, he wildly gesticulates as he expounds on the glorious destiny he sees for gaming decentralization and digital property rights.
“There’s very few times that you can feel like you can help shape an industry,” Siu says. “That’s very different from seeing a rising tide and an opportunity to participate. But here, you could help shape it in the manner that, at least we think, could be a net positive for everyone.
Siu’s passion for technology burned from an early age. Growing up in Vienna in the 1980s, he felt like an outsider because of his Chinese heritage. He found refuge in computers, and the burgeoning internet, to escape his loneliness. Inspiration for what to do next came in the unlikeliest of places. Sick of carrying around a stack of Baby Einstein flash cards to quiz his first child, Siu asked his team at Outblaze to develop a mobile app version. It was downloaded around 20 million times, leading him to create Animoca, an Outblaze subsidiary, to develop games in 2011. Renamed Animoca Brands, it was listed on the Australian Stock Exchange in 2015.
Who the hell is buying NFTs?! Like seriously, I've never met a single person who put real money down on this scheme. It's like investors are just circlejerkin to invent prices and mock demand, I swear.