Animoca Brands Launches $10M Crypto Student Loan Initiative

Animoca Brands’ co-founder Yat Siu has highlighted the importance of real-world use cases in driving crypto adoption, particularly in the education sector. While Ripple’s $25 million donation to a crypto education fund has sparked discussions about blockchain projects gaining influence through academia, Siu argues that financial support alone is insufficient. He believes that practical applications, such as student loans backed by decentralized finance (DeFi), offer a more compelling value proposition for crypto.

On April 30th, Pencil Finance, a project backed by Animoca Brands and its education arm Open Campus, launched a $10 million student loan financing initiative. This program aims to provide more affordable, blockchain-backed loans to students. Siu emphasizes that such infrastructure investments are more impactful than symbolic funding. He stated, “What our industry needs a lot more is these kinds of positive-sum use cases that everyone else understands. If students can receive better, cheaper and more effective opportunities and interest rates through crypto student loans, what happens? They’re going to be more pro-crypto.”

Unlike one-time donations, the Pencil Finance model integrates crypto directly into the financing mechanism. This leverages blockchain technology to make lending more transparent, efficient, and accessible. Siu noted, “While money has influence, it doesn’t necessarily change the system for the better per se. The technology… actually provides a way we can onboard people into that.”

Siu also addressed the perception problem that the crypto industry faces, especially among those unfamiliar with financial tools or blockchain-native culture. He believes that educational use cases need to move beyond highbrow NFT art or meme coins and offer something universally relatable. “When you’re sitting at the table and someone’s saying, ‘What is crypto really good for?’—what do we say? Memecoins? Or do we say student loans? That’s something everyone understands,” he said.

Siu emphasized the long-term impact of onboarding students early, both for growing crypto literacy and building a foundation for adoption. “You want to onboard them at the earliest levels and let them understand what’s going on,” he said. “That’s what Apple did with education discounts. It wasn’t about profit at first—it was about future influence.”

While Ripple’s donation is a step forward for awareness and funding support in the education sector, Animoca’s approach aims to make crypto indispensable, not just visible, in education systems around the world. Siu concluded, “We have to show what [crypto] is good for. We’ve got to start from the grassroots.”