Animoca's Yat Siu Warns AI Trading Agent Access Can Be Cut Off

Yat Siu warns that AI agents come with an access risk

Yat Siu, chairman of Animoca Brands, says traders can use AI agents to watch markets and trade around the clock, including while they sleep. But he warns that users may be building their routine around a service they do not control, and could lose access at any time.

Siu spoke to Cointelegraph on the sidelines of the Token2049 Singapore conference. An AI agent is a software tool that can act on its own to gather information and carry out tasks, rather than only answering when asked.

What Siu said agents can and cannot do

• Siu said an agent can keep hunting for new information and alert its user to developments they might otherwise miss.
• He used conference planning as an example: a chatbot returns a list of events when asked, while an autonomous agent keeps watching for new announcements and suggests attending when a suitable event appears.
• Siu said his own agent became so focused on crypto trading and investment management that it tried to treat unrelated questions as crypto questions. His suggested fix is to run several specialized agents instead of one general one.
• He said that running an agent does not necessarily give a user an edge. A thousand people asking AI about the same trade could get roughly the same answer, he said.
• Siu said responses differ when users ask follow-up questions based on their own knowledge and concerns, and that an agent can learn a user's preferences over time and trade along those lines.

How Siu describes the human role

Siu said human input continues through the ideas and questions that guide an agent. "By human input, I don't mean human in the loop that approves it," he said. "But the human is the one that ultimately is going to say, 'Wait, you should look at this.'"

The privacy and access trade-off

Siu suggests treating an AI assistant like a third-party adviser. He said users should consider what information an agent needs to answer a question and what can be left out before handing over a document.

He raised personal finances, income and who a person's closest friends are as examples of details an agent would gain permission to know. A trader might spend months teaching an agent which markets to follow and what information to weigh before a decision, and the agent can remember those conversations so the user does not have to repeat preferences.

The risk, Siu said, is that the company running the service still controls access, and an account suspension could interrupt everything at once. He asked users to imagine an assistant that has learned about them over years, only to disappear one morning. "At minimum, you have the right to download your data so that you can basically transfer it somewhere else so that another agent might be able to take over," he said.

Features crypto firms have added for agents

Crypto companies have already given AI agents tools to handle money as well as information.

• Coinbase introduced Agentic Wallets in February, allowing agents to spend and trade crypto within limits set by users.
• Binance launched AI Agent Skills in March, giving agents access to live market data and the ability to place and manage spot orders.

Cointelegraph reported that such tools let users delegate more of the work of following markets 24/7 and potentially catch opportunities during the night without losing sleep.

Regulator flagged shared AI models

The Bank of England's Financial Policy Committee warned in April 2025 that widespread use of similar AI models could lead investors to take related positions during periods of stress and amplify market shocks, according to its financial stability publication.

Survey data cited in the report

Cointelegraph cited two surveys alongside Siu's comments. A 2025 CoinGecko survey found that 14.5% of respondents said they would let AI agents manage their entire crypto portfolio. A 2026 Pew Research Center survey found that 71% of US adults believe increased AI use will make their personal information less secure.

What is confirmed

Siu's comments were made to Cointelegraph at Token2049 Singapore, and the published quotes and examples above come from that interview. Coinbase's Agentic Wallets and Binance's AI Agent Skills are described as launched products. The Bank of England warning, the CoinGecko survey figure and the Pew Research Center survey figure are each attributed to the organizations that produced them.

What is still unclear

Siu's warning about losing access to an agent is a general risk he described, not a report of a specific suspension. He did not name any company, account or service where such a loss of access has occurred. The article does not establish how often agents are cut off in practice, or what rules would apply if a user asks to download their data.

Why this matters for crypto users

If traders rely on agents to trade around the clock, the running of that routine depends on continued access to a third-party service. Siu's point is that users should plan for the day they cannot reach that service, and should treat the data they give an agent as information the operator can hold.

Sources

• Cointelegraph