Yat Siu has a message for Europe: if you don’t build your own stablecoin infrastructure, someone else’s currency will run your economy. The executive chairman of Animoca Brands delivered a keynote at the Global Digital Asset Forum in Vienna on May 19, laying out what he sees as an existential financial challenge for the continent.
His core argument is straightforward. US dollar-pegged stablecoins are growing so fast that without a credible euro-denominated alternative, Europe could find itself conducting huge portions of its digital commerce in someone else’s currency.
The $33 trillion elephant in the room
Siu pointed to a projection he’s referenced before, including at the World Economic Forum in Davos: stablecoin transaction volumes reaching $33 trillion in 2025. For context, that figure would rival the GDP of the US and China combined.
The vast majority of that volume runs through dollar-pegged tokens like USDT and USDC. Europe, despite having the most comprehensive crypto regulatory framework in the world with MiCA (Markets in Crypto-Assets), has yet to produce a euro stablecoin with anything close to comparable adoption.
Siu framed this as a sovereignty issue, not merely a market competition problem. If dollar stablecoins become the default rails for European digital commerce, the European Central Bank’s monetary policy tools become less effective. Interest rate decisions matter less when a growing share of economic activity operates outside your currency.
Animoca’s play with Standard Chartered
Siu didn’t just diagnose the problem. He also talked about Animoca Brands’ own efforts to address it through a stablecoin initiative co-developed with Standard Chartered. The collaboration is aimed at driving innovation in stablecoins and banking within established regulatory frameworks, including MiCA.
The partnership pairs a crypto-native company with one of the world’s largest banking institutions. Animoca Brands, best known for its investments in blockchain gaming and digital property rights, has been steadily expanding into financial infrastructure. Standard Chartered, meanwhile, has been one of the more crypto-forward traditional banks, with its own digital asset custody and trading operations.
Vienna’s growing ambitions
The Global Digital Asset Forum coincided with the VI3NNA Congress, signaling Vienna’s growing ambitions as a policy hub for digital assets. Discussions at the forum covered stablecoins, tokenization, and the infrastructure needed to support Europe’s digital asset market. The timing was deliberate. MiCA is now fully in effect, and European policymakers are grappling with the next phase: not just regulating crypto, but ensuring Europe actually competes in the market it has regulated.
What this means for investors
Siu’s remarks sit at the intersection of two major themes in crypto right now: the institutionalization of stablecoins and the geopolitics of digital money. If the $33 trillion projection for stablecoin volumes even partially materializes, the companies building the rails for that activity — issuers, custody providers, compliance platforms, and the banks connecting traditional finance to stablecoin networks — are positioned to capture enormous value. The Animoca-Standard Chartered initiative is one bet in that direction.
The risk worth watching is regulatory fragmentation. MiCA gives Europe a head start on clarity, but if individual member states interpret the rules differently, or if the European Central Bank decides to push its own digital euro in ways that crowd out private stablecoins, the landscape could shift quickly. Siu’s argument implicitly assumes that private-sector euro stablecoins are the answer. Central bankers may disagree.