Cultural Capital: Bitcoin, Identity & The Future of Digital Sovereignty

Yat Siu
Co-Founder and Executive Chairman, Animoca Brands
Founder and CEO, Outblaze

A veteran technology entrepreneur/investor based in Hong Kong, Yat Siu is the co-founder and executive chairman of Animoca Brands, a global leader in blockchain and gaming with the mission to deliver digital property rights to the world's gamers and Internet users, thereby creating a new asset class, play-and-earn economies, and a more equitable digital framework contributing to the building of the open metaverse.

Yat began his career at Atari Germany in 1990. In 1995 he moved to Hong Kong to establish Hong Kong Cybercity/Freenation, the first free web page and email provider in Asia. In 1998 he set up Outblaze, an award-winning pioneer of multilingual white label web services. In 2009, he sold Outblaze’s messaging unit to IBM and pivoted Outblaze to become an incubator of projects and companies to develop digital entertainment services and products. One of those incubated companies is Animoca Brands, which was created in 2014.

In 2017 he set up the Dalton Learning Lab, an afterschool digital lab for skills not emphasized by most education systems, including divergent thinking and design thinking. He is the founder of ThinkBlaze, the research arm of Outblaze investigating socially meaningful issues in technology.

Since 2018, Yat has been an early advocate for the use of blockchain and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) in the gaming industry, which will allow gamers to enjoy true ownership of their own game assets, data, and, consequently, equity. With a clear vision of the potential of decentralized apps and assets, Yat quickly steered Animoca Brands to a leadership position in blockchain, gaming, NFTs, and the open metaverse. Animoca Brands operates a series of NFT-centric subsidiaries and products, and has invested in over 540 blockchain-related companies to build one of the largest blockchain portfolios in the world.

Yat has earned numerous accolades including Global Leader of Tomorrow at the World Economic Forum, Young Entrepreneur of the Year at the DHL/SCMP Awards, and recognition as one of the Cointelegraph top 100 notable people in blockchain.

A classically trained musician, Yat is a member of the advisory board of BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) and a director of the Asian Youth Orchestra.

Erin Redwing is a central figure in the Ordinals community, advancing the protocol's open source development through her work at the Open Ordinals Institute and spearheading Inscribing Atlantis as CEO, where she harmonizes technical innovation with artistic expression on Bitcoin. As a co-host of the Hell Money Podcast alongside Casey Rodarmor, Erin works tirelessly to bring the vibes to Bitcoin. She envisions Ordinals and Inscriptions as a form of modern-day hieroglyphics on the Digital Megalith of our era, a testament to the enduring legacy of human creativity within the vast expanse of digital eternity.

Sébastien Borget is the Co-founder of The Sandbox, a virtual platform where players can create, play, own, govern and monetize their experiences using NFTs & SAND, the main utility token of the platform.

In addition to his role at The Sandbox, Sébastien serves as the President of the Blockchain Game Alliance in 2020, a non-profit organization comprising 600 key members within the industry. His contributions to the crypto and blockchain space have garnered significant recognition, including being ranked #4 on CoinTelegraph's Top 100 Most Influential People in Crypto for 2022: https://cointelegraph.com/top-people-in-crypto-and-blockchain/sebastien-borget