Ripple’s $25 million donation to a crypto education fund has reignited conversations about how blockchain projects are building influence through academia—but in the latest episode of Byte-Sized Insight, Animoca Brands’ co-founder Yat Siu says that money alone isn’t enough.
Instead, real-world use cases like student loans backed by DeFi may be crypto’s most convincing value proposition to date.
DeFi student loans
On April 30th, Pencil Finance, a project supported by Animoca Brands and its education arm Open Campus, announced a $10 million student loan financing initiative aimed at providing cheaper, blockchain-backed loans. Siu believes this type of infrastructure investment goes further than symbolic funding.
“What our industry needs a lot more is these kinds of positive-sum use cases that everyone else understands,” Siu said in the interview. “If students can receive better, cheaper and more effective opportunities and interest