Yat Siu, chairman of Animoca Brands, is warning that users who rely on AI agents to trade around the clock should plan for the possibility that those bots could be cut off at any time. The caution lands as autonomous trading tools increasingly operate while users sleep, making round-the-clock market access a selling point — and a single point of failure.
The 24/7 trading pitch and its hidden catch
AI trading agents are marketed on a simple promise: they never stop. They can monitor markets, execute trades and rebalance positions at any hour, including while their owners are asleep or offline. That continuous operation is pitched as an edge in markets that don't close. But Siu's warning points to the other side of that convenience — access to the bot itself isn't guaranteed.
If a user's connection to a trading agent is severed, they aren't just losing a tool. They're losing the ability to react to whatever the agent was managing. And because the agent trades 24/7, the window when a user is unaware of a disruption could be hours long.
Why access can disappear
Siu didn't specify what could cause a loss of access. The warning was framed broadly: users should assume it can happen, not treat it as a remote edge case. That could cover platform outages, account issues, service changes or any other interruption that leaves a user locked out of an agent they've come to depend on.
The chairman's point isn't that AI trading agents are inherently unsafe. It's that the dependency cuts both ways. The same automation that lets users step away from their screens also means they may not notice when the automation stops working for them.
Planning for a bot you can't reach
Siu's advice is to plan for the possibility of losing access. In practice, that means users should think about what happens to their positions if their agent goes dark — and whether they have a way to step in manually. It also means treating constant availability as a feature to verify, not a given.
The warning carries weight because Animoca Brands is a prominent name in the sector, and Siu's comments put a spotlight on operational risk that often gets buried under the enthusiasm for automated trading. For users who've outsourced decisions to a bot, the question isn't whether the bot can trade while they sleep. It's what they'll do if they wake up and can't reach it.
Siu didn't offer a timeline for when such disruptions might occur or which platforms are most exposed. His guidance was preventive: assume access can be lost, and prepare accordingly. Users who haven't mapped out a fallback now have a reason to start.
