Animoca’s Yat Siu says student loans can supercharge DeFi growth

Bringing student loans onchain would increase the total value locked (TVL) in decentralized finance (DeFi) by more than four times, supercharging the industry, according to Yat Siu, chairman of Animoca Brands.

Speaking at Consensus 2025 in Toronto, Siu pointed to the $3 trillion global student loan market as an untapped opportunity for the crypto industry. He said moving even 10% of that market onchain could significantly boost DeFi’s growth.

“You basically more than quadruple TVL in all of DeFi,” he said, underscoring how the industry is still in its early stages. 

Siu said that Web3-based financial tools for the education sector could drive mass crypto adoption, especially among the young and unbanked.

“The first unbanked are the kids,” he said. “If a student receives a loan onchain and pays it back onchain — which is regulated, better, faster, cheaper — they become onboarded for crypto for life.” 

Siu compared the situation to how PayPal and Venmo scaled by offering essential services to underserved users. He suggested that student loans could serve as crypto’s entry into the mainstream.

The executive also highlighted Animoca Brands’ recent investment in Pencil Finance, a startup providing crypto-native student loans. Siu said the project operates in the Philippines and Indonesia, and plans to expand to the US. 

On April 30, Pencil Finance announced a $10 million student loan financing initiative to provide cheaper, blockchain-backed loans. 

Siu previously said in an interview that the industry needs these “positive-sum use cases” that everyone understands. He said students would be more pro-crypto if they had more opportunities through crypto loans. 

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Siu also told the Consensus audience that education is a natural use case for Web3. He highlighted YouTube and TikTok, platforms that are often dismissed as entertainment applications. Siu said these social media apps are now the largest informal learning platforms in the world. 

He said everything is tied to education and that Web3 could do something similar. “Education is actually fundamental, something we do all the time,” Siu said. 

He suggested that by integrating financial infrastructure into educational experiences, Web3 could turn learning communities and reputational networks into capital assets, forming the basis of a new, decentralized financial ecosystem.

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