Shan Han: Crypto Lessons, Boom Bust Belief and Funding Students the Web3 Way – E648
"Education is expensive, and in emerging markets many students have limited options; the crypto and DeFi markets offer a single global liquidity pool that lets anyone place capital into one source that can be distributed to underserved places like the Philippines for student loan financing, and real loans have already been originated to fund students in the Philippines and Indonesia with plans to continue scaling." - Shan Han, Portfolio Manager at Animoca Brands
"Fundamentally all on-chain capital is seeking yield and we're bringing a high-quality yield that exists in the real world that's hard to access but we're bringing it on chain and making it investible for people; that is one of the key things we're doing here, and importantly we're simplifying access to it because if you think about it an investor in London who wants to invest in student loans in Vietnam faces multiple steps and might have to put money into a fund that goes into another fund that then gets distributed through probably five intermediaries before the capital reaches the borrower, and at each step there is structural inefficiency and additional cost, so that is the simplification piece on chain." - Shan Han, Portfolio Manager at Animoca Brands
"But what's also exciting is that with blockchain technology you can do meaningful things, such as creating alternative credit by using data points that students already have; in Web2 this raised privacy concerns, but with zero-knowledge proof technology you can take that data, create a ZK-proof, and build new alternative credit scoring models for students who would not otherwise have one, bringing ancillary benefits that are driven by capital and supported by the technology." - Shan Han, Portfolio Manager at Animoca Brands
Portfolio Manager at Animoca Brands and former Chief Investment Officer at Node Capital, Shan Han joins Jeremy Au to trace his path from Hong Kong trading to fintech and Web3, discuss how early crypto grew from ideology, and explain why tokenizing assets like student loans can unlock education across Southeast Asia. They explore how customer urgency validates real problems, how global liquidity reshapes emerging markets, and how regulation and permissioned systems will define the future of crypto. Shan also reflects on leaving hedge funds to build companies that solve urgent needs.