On July 6th, Ton Foundation CEO Max Crown announced a “groundbreaking initiative” to provide Toncoin with X

We have an “exclusive opportunity” to protect our 10-year UAE Golden Visa.

The program requires applicants to wager $100,000 worth of Toncoins for three years and pay a one-time processing fee of $35,000. After a three-year lockup period, the piling funds were clearly unlocked, during which the applicant reportedly achieved an annual yield of 3-4% (apy) Tokens on their pile.

The Ton Foundation website highlights several important benefits. Includes prompt approval within 7 weeks of document submission, a simple process that does not require you to purchase property or meet income thresholds, and family members (spouse, children, parents) at no additional costs exceeding standard government fees. Staking is done through decentralized smart contracts on Tonblockchain. It claims to ensure transparency and security.

The program claims to provide a capital-efficient alternative to the traditional UAE Golden Visa Route. This means that Ton Foundation typically requires a minimum investment of around $540,000 in real estate or fixed deposits, often linked to non-current assets and longer processing times. The Ton Golden Visa initiative is touted as a faster, more affordable, more affordable, and digital native pathway, in line with the nation’s ambitions to become a global cryptography and Web3 hub.

The announcement immediately had an impact on Toncoin’s market performance. Shortly after the news broke, Toncoin prices rose 12%. At the time of writing, the tokens are trading at around $2.8944, reflecting a 5.36% increase over the past 24 hours. Furthermore, according to Coindesk Research’s technical analysis model, the current 24-hour average trading volume is approximately 251.54% higher than the 30-day average, indicating a growing market interest and activity.

Despite the enthusiasm, the announcement sparked controversy within the crypto community. Coingecko co-founder and COO Bobby Ong praised the partnership as a “amazing story” that could attract whales and provide strong purchasing support to Toncoin, but expressed hope that the initiative is not a temporary scheme.

Conversely, “Joe Hedgedhog” (“@joehedgedhog” on x)The investment partner of Sigil Fund pointed out that this is not an official UAE government partnership, but a third-party law firm that uses Ton as a proxy, and a third-party law firm to assist clients applying for Golden Visa under the Entrepreneur category. He noted that the company may have used cryptocurrency and that staking requirements serve as a token utility sink rather than government mandate.

Further skepticism came from “Ivambi.” (“@ivangbi_ “on x)Head of Strategy and Business Development at Gearbox Protocol, described the announcement as misleading. According to this perspective, the law firm will receive a non-refundable $35,000 fee and attempt to submit an application to the UAE government. This will ultimately determine approval. He argued that Staked Ton balance is just one of several requirements and may no longer be relevant in the updated rules. He went on to say that the lack of approval for Tonstaker blankets means acceptance is uncertain and that the program could function primarily as a marketing tool in conjunction with token utilities.

Changpeng Zhao (CZ)co-founder and former CEO of Binance expressed caution in the announcement of Ton Foundation’s UAE Golden Visa, but highlighted some uncertainty. He noted conflicting information about the legitimacy of the program, including the allegation that a $35,000 fee would be sent primarily to legal agents rather than government, and that the language of the website might suggest misleading the visa guaranteed when soaking $100,000 in Toncoin.

CZ also said Theuae regulators will classify staking as a regulatory activity where Ton may lack a license. Importantly, he pointed out that the official UAE government channels do not currently recognize Staking Toncoin as visa qualifications and instead list standard Golden Visa categories.

In a follow-up post, CZ repeatedly reiterated his careful optimism, highlighting the need to “trust but verify.” He acknowledged the potential benefits of such programs, but emphasized that official government partnerships and announcements are essential to legitimacy. His stance supports innovation and Ton’s founder Pavel Durov, balancing wise skepticism about the current situation of the program.

The UAE Entrepreneur Visa Category, which the programme believes is targeting, is designed for individuals who own economic projects of a technical or innovative nature. Applicants must provide approval letters from a certified UAE auditor confirming the value of the project (AED at least 500,000)local governments examining the innovative characters of the project, and certified UAE business incubators establish proposed activities within the country.

Technical Analysis Highlights

• Prices surged from $2.75 to a peak of $3.06, with a total range of $0.34 (12.4%).
• The rally began suddenly at 7:00am on July 6th, with volume surged to almost 13 million people.
• An extraordinary surge of 57.5 million volumes at 8:00 hours pushed tons to that height.
• Support formed around $2.86-2.89 with bulk purchases.
• The resistance appears at $3.03, suggesting that the token has established a new trading range.
• In the final 60 minutes from July 15th to 16:11, Tonn experienced a significant price surge of 2.4%.
• The dramatic breakout occurred at 15:48 when the volume surged to 1.68 million tokens.
• The token peaked at $2.93 at 15:50, then established a new support level of around $2.90 to $2.91.

Disclaimer: Part of this article is generated with the support of AI tools and reviewed by the editorial team to ensure accuracy and compliance Our standards. For more information, please refer Coindesk’s complete AI policy.

At the Reagan National Economic Forum in California on May 29–30, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon cast a warning about the future of the U.S. dollar’s dominance as the world’s reserve currency. While acknowledging China as a potential threat, Dimon stressed that the real danger comes from within the United States.

“China is a potential adversary. They’re doing a lot of things well. They have a lot of problems. What I’m really worried about is us. Can we get our own act together? Our own values, our own capabilities, our own management,” he said.

Dimon’s remarks reflect growing concern over U.S. fiscal and political management. He warned that excessive government spending and aggressive quantitative easing by the Federal Reserve have set the stage for a potential crisis in the bond market.

“A crack in the bond market is going to happen,” Dimon said. “I just don’t know if it’s going to be a crisis in six months or six years, and I’m hoping that we change both the trajectory of the debt and the ability of market makers to make markets. Unfortunately, it may be that we need that to wake us up.”

He also pointed to ongoing trade tensions, particularly with China, and the unpredictable impact of tariffs, which he said have yet to be fully felt by the economy.

“Considering the accumulation of factors that are bordering on extreme, I don’t believe we can forecast the outcomes accurately. The likelihood of inflation rising along with stagflation seems higher than many anticipate,” Dimon noted.

He added that U.S. trading partners increasingly seek alternative agreements with other countries, potentially accelerating a trend away from the dollar.

Dimon’s comments resonated beyond the financial sector. Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, and head of the DOGE initiative to reduce wasteful government spending, reposted a clip of Dimon’s remarks on social media, adding simply, “he’s right.”

The implications could be profound if the dollar were to lose its reserve currency status. The U.S. would likely face higher borrowing costs, and the global financial system could enter a period of instability. Countries seeking alternatives to the dollar, such as China and Russia, could gain greater influence in international trade and finance.

However, the sheer scale and liquidity of U.S. financial markets, combined with the dollar’s central role in global trade, make it difficult for any other currency to replace it. The U.S. is also exploring new ways to maintain dollar hegemony through digital innovations such as dollar-backed stablecoins.

At the Bitcoin 2025 Conference in Las Vegas last week, U.S. Vice President JD Vance strongly backed stablecoins, describing them as a “force multiplier” for U.S. economic power and emphasizing that the current administration does not view them as a threat to the integrity of the U.S. dollar.

Dimon also acknowledged the resilience of the U.S. economy while insisting that the current moment is critical. He urged policymakers to address issues such as regulation, taxation, immigration, education, and healthcare, and to maintain key military alliances.

Without urgent action to address internal challenges, he warned, the dollar’s preeminence could be at risk, with far-reaching consequences for the U.S. and the global economy.

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Welcome to Slate Sundays, CryptoSlate’s new weekly feature showcasing in-depth interviews, expert analysis, and thought-provoking op-eds that go beyond the headlines to explore the ideas and voices shaping the future of crypto.

Co-founder and executive chairman of web3 gaming unicorn Animoca Brands, few people in crypto haven’t heard of Yat Siu—with the exception of the gatekeepers to the media lounge at TOKEN2049. “They wouldn’t let me in!” he exclaims, a little flustered as we finally meet on the stairway several minutes late. Industry legend or no, the only currency here is a media badge. I enjoy my newfound power for a moment.

I smile and extend my hand. “Lovely to meet you,” I say. “It’s a pleasure,” he replies, handing me his business card with his direct line and mobile number on the front. Despite being one of web3’s most influential people, Yat Siu has nothing of the behemoth egos that accompany many other crypto founders. He isn’t even surrounded by an entourage of executive assistants or PR reps with click-clacking heels, managing to find his own way here instead.

He’s down to earth, humble, and polite, speaking eloquently without losing his thread, and firmly only when necessary (like one of the many times my media colleagues try to interrupt, including Wolf of All Streets Scott Melker attempting to steal Yat away). “I’m actually in an interview now,” he interjects, smiling, “but I believe we have a meeting later.”

From good Asian kid to industry titan

Born in Vienna and residing in Hong Kong, Yat’s journey is the stuff of legends. Son of an opera singer/director mother and instrumentalist father, he grew up studying music at his parents’ insistence, “like a good Asian kid,” despite his passion for gaming and desire to put his energies elsewhere. Yet, music would become a stepping stone on his path to success.

“It’s because of music that I started writing composition software,” he explains, “and that got me into tech. Back then, there was no computer science degree. It was more like just code, and through a free internet service called CompuServe, I got discovered and got a job at Atari.”

Studying at the Vienna Music Conservatory, Yat was “very much in the minority” learning many more lessons besides music composition. Despite speaking fluent German, he was “the only Asian kid in a sea of Caucasians” and frequently suffered what he calls “innocent racism.”

“So your parents run a restaurant?” was the most frequent question he received growing up. “There are a billion Chinese people,” he emphatically states, “we don’t all have restaurants!” Then he smiles as he concedes that most of the other Chinese in the city belonged to the culinary trade.

When neoliberalism goes ‘completely extreme’

Yat’s mother worked on the Eastern side of Berlin at the Komische Oper. “This was the 80s,” he says, “there was still Eastern and Western Europe. The Berlin Wall hadn’t fallen yet.” He would frequently cross the border to visit his mother or travel to destinations behind the Iron Curtain, including Prague in the former communist Czechoslovakia and Hungary’s capital, Budapest.

“The whole area, I witnessed literally what communism was like, that extreme side,” he says. “It gave me a definite impression.”

Yat witnessed both extremes firsthand, in fact, in the “capitalist but not quite” Austria, the “money, money, money” USA, and the “capitalism in overdrive” Hong Kong. “I’ve seen the whole spectrum. It’s like there are no limits at all.” Hong Kong only introduced social security in the year 2000.

“Before that, you had 60 or 70-year-olds still pushing trash carts up the hill. But that’s capitalism unchecked. It’s that extreme side of what happens when neoliberalism goes completely extreme. I think seeing all these things shaped my thinking.”

While he’s no advocate of socialism, it’s not hard to see the failings of a system that can’t protect the elderly and vulnerable. “Maybe there’s a medium,” he says. “We’re still pro-capitalists. We don’t think socialism is the answer, but there has to be a fair form of capitalism, and we think web3 is the answer to that, because through tokenization, we can all be stakeholders.”

Digital property rights and stakeholder capitalism

With an estimated value of $5.9 billion in August 2022, there are over 500 companies in Animoca Brands’ investment portfolio. Despite being a gaming company at its core, Yat’s keen to point out that Animoca is about much more than that. He explains:

“We started with gaming because we’re a gaming studio—and we’re probably the first example of a web2 company going to web3—not a crypto-native company but a traditional gaming company that kind of saw the light.

“We have 573 companies in our investment portfolio, of which 165 or so are in gaming. So obviously, it’s a big point in our portfolio, but it’s not everything we do. Our mission is very much about driving digital property rights, and one of our big things is financial literacy and stakeholder capitalism. Web3 changes the equity and income/outcome because we all become involved and have ownership.”

He gives the example of an Apple product, pointing at my phone, face down on the table, recording our talk. “How many people use Apple and are shareholders in Apple?” he asks, enthused as he sees my brow furrow in thought.

“Using an iPhone, you’re making Apple money, not just because you paid for the phone, but because you’re promoting it. Every time you buy an iPhone, you’re adding to the network value. How many people bought an Apple because you have one? But are you getting paid for that? No. Exactly. Do you get any value for that? Nothing, right?”

To illustrate the point further, he brings up the example of Uber, whose drivers earn modest pay and will likely be replaced by automation in the coming years. “There should be an ESA program for Uber drivers because they’re contributing to the value of the network. If they became shareholders, not only would they be happier, but they would probably be okay when Uber goes to self-driving cars. It’s about how to shape a better society, with long-term sustainability and more sustainable forms of capitalism. We think stakeholder capitalism is the answer and tokenization is the way to do it.”

An early blockchain adopter and internet pioneer

Yat and his team weren’t interested in web3 for Bitcoin or the “financial movement,” he says, but entered the space “because of NFTs” in 2017. “Our studio was involved in helping shape CryptoKitties in the early days,” he explains.

Blockchains were infamously clunky back then, and a surge in transactions would cause heavy congestion, skyrocketing fees, and never-ending confirmation times. Ethereum was pretty much the only choice for a gaming dApp, and CryptoKitties famously brought it to its knees, throwing the omnipresent issue of blockchain scalability into the limelight.

“CryptoKitties clogged the Ethereum chain,” he laughs. “Our company eventually spun out to become Dapper Labs, and we were one of the earliest shareholders. One of the guys who was actually working for us became one of the co-founders. It was all in the family, as it were.”

I ask whether that experience led to any disillusionment with blockchain’s suitability for gaming or whether he had entered the space at the wrong time. “We knew we were early,” he says. “That’s also because of our background.”

As an early internet pioneer in the 1990s, Yat Siu is no stranger to emerging tech, having started one of Hong Kong’s first ISPs. “We’d seen all these congestion issues before. I ran an ISP in Hong Kong that serviced customers on a 64k line—not one customer; I was servicing hundreds of customers.”

My eyes widen. “That must have been quite slow,” I exclaim. “You can’t imagine how slow that speed is! That is slower than 2G!” he laughs. I struggle to imagine how businesses made it work in the days before broadband and fiber-optic.

“I would really define 2017 and 2018 as the beginnings of crypto as a culture movement,” he reflects. “Crypto, in particular, blockchain and Bitcoin, is very much the underpinnings of a financial movement, versus an entire cultural movement that NFTs represent. That’s what attracted us.”

Open fields and blue skies: Growing web3 together

From the early days of crypto to today, Animoca Brands has been pivotal to growing web3. “We realized we needed to help invest in companies to make this happen. So that means we didn’t just invest in gaming companies. We also invested in infrastructure.”

Animoca Brands was one of the earliest investors in OpenSea and projects like Polygon, Flow, and:

“Basically all the L1s and L2s being built up. That’s why we’ve become such a large ecosystem investor. We realized that to grow the space, we have to invest in the companies that can help make it a reality. Of course, the opportunity in web3 is significant because there are so many gaps to fill. Web3 is an open field. It’s almost blue sky everything.

“It’s like shaping the nation,” he continues, “the railroads, the telecom stations, the infrastructure, the roads. One part is not going to work without the other part. We’re still not there yet. Of course, we’re much better than seven years ago, but we’re not there yet compared to where we could be.”

The road to mass adoption

Another of Animoca Brands’ top priorities is onboarding the masses to crypto. With over 3.3 billion gamers worldwide, Yat believes gaming will be the catalyst for reaching a critical mass. However, other important ways to onboard the next billion include investing in education. Just this morning, Yat says, Animoca Brands announced a $10 million investment with Open Campus in a student loan financing platform called Pencil Finance.

“Pencil Finance is a DeFi student loan platform,” he explains. “Why is that interesting? Well, in places like the Philippines and Indonesia, a student loan is like $500, so $10 million will go a long way. That $10 million will onboard students from a student loan perspective. How did PayPal grow? How did Venmo grow? It’s because they offered financial services to students for the first time who don’t have a bank account or don’t have access, and, more importantly, they need money to finance their education.”

I believe this is called big-picture thinking. Nurturing your pipeline of potential customers from a young age and a digital-native upbringing. He continues:

“Why would we, a so-called gaming company, be investing in something like that? Because it onboards young people to web3, right? Which is also a key factor because it sets a foundation for future growth. Are we the only beneficiaries of those customers? No, right? But our 573 portfolio companies may benefit from that, too, because let’s say we’ve onboarded a million students. Those million students become customers of web3. It’s not a zero-sum game. In web3, value flows around.”

Resilience of mind and strength of conviction

Yat is 100% committed to building web3, and few companies have done more to grow the pie than Animoca Brands. Has his conviction been tested over the years in this volatile space with more twists and turns than a Colombian Telenovela?  He pauses:

“FTX set the industry back a couple of years. I mean, that was terrible, right? And it also accelerated the hostile regulatory climate in the U.S. in particular… But you know, it is also a way in which you shake out stuff. At the end of the day, you can’t determine when the earthquakes happen. But when they happen, that’s really the true test.”

“The big thing is just resilience of mind. Can you deal with that stress? Can you deal with the challenges, the community going after you, your staff being unhappy, and your investors coming after you? That is an example of that test of character.”

I nod, recalling the explosions and implosions of 2022 and the multiple ones before those. Yat and I had found our way into crypto at the same time, but crypto years are like dog years, and 2017 may as well have been half a century ago. Yet, Yat has barely a line on his smooth forehead; more a testament to his strength of character than his great Asian skin.

Did he always know he would build a unicorn? Did he always envision Animoca Brands as a titan in the space? He shakes his head profusely before answering:

“No, no,” he replies and pauses for a moment before saying, “When you build companies or do anything in life, I think, there are actions you do and they will take you towards different paths that you can’t predict, and then you just kind of flow with it. That’s how I’ve lived most of my life.”

I have more questions, but I’m conscious of already taking up 40 minutes of his time, which he is incredibly generous with. Plus, Scott Melker is hovering on the sidelines waiting to pounce. One last piece of advice before we close?

“Hesitation or doubt is probably one of the other big factors that hold you back. You may be wrong, and we are wrong many times. But you have to have conviction and go somewhere, and if you don’t, then it’s worse than not doing it at all.”

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