- Report Reveals the World’s Top 50 Financial Institutions are Rapidly Embracing Digital Finance.
- Despite conservative public stances, global financial leaders have already built digital product offerings to enable digital monies, commodities, and assets.
- Among the top 50 financial institutions globally, more than 50% already support use of digital wallets, custody and/or trading, and more than 40% support digital monies, such as CBDCs and/or stablecoins.
- In China 100% of top institutions have digital wallet and digital yuan enablement.
- US institutions have surprisingly high levels of adoption, with some leaders emerging while other US players appear to be falling behind.
Blockchain Coinvestors, a leading blockchain venture fund-of-funds and coinvestment program with a combined portfolio of more than 1000 blockchain enterprises and crypto projects, including more than 80 blockchain unicorns, today unveiled its bi-annual Institutional Digital Finance Adoption Report which tracks digital finance adoption, by service offering, among the world’s 50 largest financial institutions ranked by assets under management (AUM).
Many will be surprised to see for the first time that most of the world’s 50 largest financial institutions – managing a total of more than $123 trillion AUM – are already active in digital finance and well advanced with regards to adoption:
- Over 50% already provide or support digital wallets, custody and/or trading.
- Over 40% already support digital monies, such as CBDCs and/or stablecoins.
“Don’t listen to what they say, watch what they do,” said Matthew C. Le Merle, CEO and co-founder of Blockchain Coinvestors. “The most important financial institutions in the world made good use of the 2022/2023 crisis in crypto and blockchain to prepare themselves for an inevitable future of digital monies, commodities and assets.”
Local adoption varies by digital finance offering, but some regions are notably further ahead:
- In Asia, 100% of major Chinese banks are already live with digital wallets and digital yuan support while 50% of Japanese banks have live offerings.
- Despite conservative public stances, about 35% of American institutions in the top 50 already support most digital asset services and nearly 70% support digital commodities, following the launch of recent US BTC ETFs.
- In Europe, institutions trail closely behind with ~10-30% of major players supporting at least some of the digital finance activities depending on country.
“Having served as CFO of BGI (now Blackrock) and as a board director of public financial institutions for more than 20 years, I was not surprised by the facts once we went out and got them,” said Alison Davis, Chairman and Co-Founder of Blockchain Coinvestors. “The inevitability of digital finance, and the tremendous consumer benefits it brings are obvious, and the only way for financial institutions to maintain positions of leadership is for them to embrace and deploy new financial innovations including those enabled by blockchain technology.”
Blockchain Coinvestors relies upon data from sources including Lexis Nexis, S&P Global and WTW to maintain a database of the world’s leading financial institutions. To track digital finance adoption progress, we review a variety of public sources and gather information from our regular conversations with CEOs, industry leaders and government officials.
Blockchain Coinvestors is the best way to invest in blockchain businesses. Its vision is that digital monies, commodities, and assets are inevitable and all the world’s financial infrastructure must be upgraded. Its mission is to provide broad coverage of early stage blockchain investments and access to emerging blockchain unicorns. Blockchain Coinvestors’ investment strategies are now in their 10th year and are backed by 400+ investors globally. To date it has invested in 40+ pure play blockchain venture capital funds in the Americas, Asia, and Europe and in a combined portfolio of 1000+ blockchain companies and projects including 80+ blockchain unicorns. Blockchain Coinvestors’ first fund of funds ranks in the top decile amongst all funds in its category on both Pitchbook and Preqin. Headquartered in San Francisco with a presence in London, New York, Grand Cayman, Zug and Zurich, the alternative investment management firm was co-founded by Alison Davis and Matthew Le Merle.
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