It’s rare for a public company in crypto to launch a token.
Coinbase, Marathon Digital, Galaxy Digital, and others have all shied away from the move.
But, Yat Siu, co-founder and executive chairman of Animoca Brands, is quick to defend the company’s launch of MOCA Coin on Thursday while it simultaneously explores an IPO.
“There’s no profit sharing, and there’s no claim to profit,” he told DL News of Animoca’s new token.
‘Threw the book’
Animoca’s token launches have gotten the web3 investor and gaming company, one of crypto’s most prolific investors, in trouble in the past.
In 2020, the Australian Securities Exchange delisted the crypto conglomerate, which owns a number of token-issuing entities, including metaverse platform The Sandbox.
The Australian exchange “threw the book” at Animoca and provided a suite of justifications for delisting the company, Siu said.
These included fears that issuing tokens as a publicly traded company may be a form of “double dipping,” or profiting via two channels of separate equities offerings, he added.
For some regulators, including Gary Gensler, chair of the US Securities and Exchange Commission, the majority of cryptocurrencies are unregistered securities.
In other words, they are backdoors to raising money from lay investors without legally mandated financial disclosures.
Utility token
Siu disagreed with the accusation of “double dipping” then, and he disagrees with it now.
His company is exploring a potential initial public offering in Hong Kong, Dubai, or both, in late 2025 or early 2026, he told DL News.
However, MOCA Coin, which has a total value of approximately $140 million, according to CoinGecko, isn’t equivalent to equity, Siu said.
It doesn’t provide holders with anything akin to earnings per share.
Rather, it’s a utility token, he said in a Medium post.
Users in Animoca’s ecosystem of web3 games and applications, which include the metaverse blockbuster The Sandbox, can use it as a means of payment.
They can also use MOCA Coin to vote in a decentralised autonomous organisation, among other use cases, according to the token’s website.
Siu, whose company does not do business in the US, says he understands the point that regulators like Gensler have repeatedly made.
But, ultimately, when it comes to MOCA Coin and the majority of cryptocurrencies Animoca holds on its balance sheet, he disagrees.
“We think it’s different,” he said.
Crypto market movers
Bitcoin is down 2.6% in the last 24 hours to $57,224.
Ethereum is down 2.5% over the same period to about $3,070.
What we’re reading
The rise and fall of a crypto whiz kid: How 25-year-old Kanav Kariya went from president of Jump Crypto to pleading the Fifth — Fortune
U.S. Election Is Crypto’s Make-or-Break Moment — The Information
SEC Drops Paxos Investigation — Milk Road
Front-end Domains of Over 100 Crypto Projects Are at Risk of Attack via Squarespace — Unchained
Coinbase Germany head on the real reason the country dumped $2.3bn in Bitcoin — DL News
Ben Weiss is a Dubai Correspondent at DL News. Got a tip? Email him at bweiss@dlnews.com.