Animoca Brands Chairman, Yat Siu, believes that incorporating student loans into the blockchain could significantly propel the growth of decentralized finance (DeFi). He suggests this could potentially quadruple the total value locked (TVL) in DeFi, giving the industry a significant boost.
Addressing the crowd at Consensus 2025 in Toronto, Siu drew attention to the underutilized potential of the global $3 trillion student loan market for the crypto sphere. He suggested that moving merely a fraction of this market, say 10%, to the blockchain could greatly stimulate DeFi’s expansion.
“Bringing student loans on-chain can more than quadruple DeFi’s TVL, highlighting that the industry is still nascent,” he emphasized.
Siu also made a case for the use of Web3-based financial tools in the education sector for mass crypto adoption. He reasoned that these tools could be particularly beneficial for the youth and the unbanked.
“Children are the first unbanked demographic. If a student obtains a loan on the blockchain and repays it in the same manner, which is regulated and more efficient, they are likely to adopt crypto for life,” Siu explained, drawing parallels to the rise of PayPal and Venmo.
Siu also made mention of Animoca Brands’ recent investment in Pencil Finance, a startup offering blockchain-based student loans. He outlined plans for expanding into the US market, after initial operations in countries like the Philippines and Indonesia.
Earlier on April 30, Pencil Finance publicized a $10 million student loan financing project to offer more affordable blockchain-supported loans. Siu sees the incorporation of such “positive-sum use cases” as vital for the industry’s growth and believes it could make students more crypto-friendly.
Siu further contended that education is a natural fit for Web3 use cases. He pointed out how platforms like YouTube and TikTok, initially dismissed as entertainment platforms, have become the world’s largest informal learning platforms.
He suggested that by integrating financial infrastructure into educational experiences, Web3 could transform learning communities and reputational networks into capital assets, laying the foundation for a new, decentralized financial ecosystem.
