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This article is part of our Consensus HK 2026 Coverage
For many professionals, the path to success is linear: climb the corporate ladder, secure a stable salary, and avoid unnecessary risk. But for Jonah Lau (LinkedIn, X), the Head of Portfolio at Animoca Brands, the path to web3 required the exact opposite: quitting a prestigious job as a corporate lawyer, taking a massive pay cut, and learning to code from scratch.
“I actually started my career as a corporate lawyer almost 10 years ago… and what I really wanted to do was build, as opposed to facilitate transactions,” Jonah shared in an exclusive interview with BitPinas at Consensus Hong Kong.
That desire to “build” led him to leave the courtroom for a coding bootcamp, eventually landing him at the forefront of web3. Now, he oversees the investment portfolio of one of the most prolific venture capital firms in the digital asset space as he scouts for the next generation of founders like him who are ready to break the mold.
The Leap: Taking a 90% Pay Cut for the Future
Jonah’s entry into this industry was a hard pivot. Can you imagine taking a massive pay cut to steer your future from an established path to something uncertain?
Based in Hong Kong, the then-lawyer saw Silicon Valley giants reshaping the world and realized he didn’t want to be on the sidelines facilitating other people’s dreams:
“I took the leap of faith. I decided to quit my job as a corporate lawyer, took a coding bootcamp, and I actually took almost a 90% pay cut at the time to become a developer”
Jonah Lau, Animoca Brands
This technical foundation paved the way for his entry into crypto at the perfect moment. He joined Crypto.com as its first product manager when the company had just 50 employees. He rode the wave of its meteoric rise and watched the team grow to over 3,000 staff by the time he left.
That experience of hyper-growth set the stage for his current role at Animoca Brands, where he moved from building products to empowering the builders themselves.
The Animoca Thesis: Reimagining Economies
Animoca Brands is famous for the sheer size of its portfolio. To the outside observer, it can seem like they are invested “everywhere.” But according to Jonah, there is a singular, unifying thesis behind every check they write.
“The core ethos at Animoca is we really look for ways to reimagine economies,” Jonah explained. “Web3 is a perfect canvas for thinking about how future economies might operate.”
Whether it’s gaming, education, or finance, Jonah’s team looks for founders who are solving “old world problems” where traditional economic models have failed.
“We really back founders that… can think of innovative ways to solve old market problems… where inefficiencies in the economy haven’t been solved yet.”
Jonah Lau, Animoca Brands
To illustrate this philosophy, Jonah pointed to two key projects he is personally steering: Open Campus and Pencil Finance.
Portfolio in Action: Solving Real-World Inefficiencies
For many university students in the Philippines, atleast those who resort to taking a loan to finish their studies, financing an education means accepting interest rates that range from a painful 10% to a crippling 100%.
“When we heard this, this was a problem that was just too big for us to ignore,” Jonah told this writer.
The solution they built is Pencil Finance, a project incubated by the Open Campus. By using blockchain as a liquidity layer, they aim to connect global crypto capital with local students. The goal is to drive down costs and democratizing access to education financing.
To ensure regulatory compliance and sustainability, Pencil Finance does not lend directly to students. Instead, it acts as a liquidity layer for licensed local partners, such as Bukas in the Philippines.
“Whether it’s Tether or USDC available on-chain, that gets off-ramped to our local lenders, and our lenders will work with universities to make sure the loan is administered correctly.”
Jonah Lau, Animoca Brands
The Bigger Vision: Tokenizing Your Degree
Pencil Finance is just one piece of a much larger puzzle: Open Campus, an “education operating system” powered by the EduChain blockchain.
Jonah said the ultimate mission is to tokenize academic achievements as Real World Assets (RWAs). Every exam passed, diploma earned, or course completed builds a student’s on-chain reputation.
“We want to build a blockchain where academic achievements actually become tokenized Real World Assets. All of these little micro-moments… they all count towards a student’s reputation.”
Jonah Lau, Animoca Brands
He envisions a future where students carry a digital passport of their academic history. This rich data set can be used to prove their skills to employers or secure lower interest rates on loans based on their verified track record.
With partnerships already signed in Vietnam and India to roll out verifiable credential systems in schools, Open Campus is moving quickly to make this vision a reality.
For Jonah Lau, it’s critical to help students at the most critical juncture of their lives, just as he once helped himself by taking a leap of faith.
“It’s a pretty tough spot to be in… trying to land your first job,” he concluded. “We’re helping students right when they need it the most.”
This article is published on BitPinas: Interview: From Corporate Law to Animoca Brands: Why Jonah Lau Took a 90% Pay Cut to ‘Reimagine Economies’
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