Financial firms are expected to invest as much as $1 billion in blockchain this year

Rage Comment : Greenwich Associates is a leading global market intelligence and consulting service provider. It recently interviewed 134 major market participants and estimated that financial companies' investment in the blockchain field will reach $1 billion this year based on the company's annual budget. Although the hype around blockchain has continued, and various new financing and exploration activities have been emerging, financial institutions have been slow to apply technology. But it is clear that blockchain is suitable for the capital market and has been proven.

Translation: Annie_Xu

It is expected that financial and technology companies will invest more than $1 billion in blockchain in 2016, successfully introducing it to the capital market.

According to a recent survey by Greenwich Associates, most respondents said that blockchain will change the market in the next five years. The 134 respondents, including executives from banks, exchanges, blockchain technology companies and asset management companies, believe that the main disadvantage of the widespread application of blockchain is the "vested interests" of traditional systems.

Richard Johnson

Richard Johnson, Vice President of Greenwich’s Market Structure and Technology Group, said:

"This year the financial industry will continue to focus on blockchain technology, which has proven to be very suitable for the capital market."

Blockchain is a distributed, encrypted system for transferring assets. It is the technology underlying bitcoin and is seen by many as a potential force for revolutionizing the financial industry. Hype around blockchain has grown rapidly in the past 18 months, even as the pace of adoption of the technology in the financial industry has been slow.

The survey report shows:

“In 2016, people started talking about blockchain rationally, and market participants gained a better understanding of the technology, how it could be integrated into capital markets, and the identification of the most disruptive use cases.”

Currently, asset management companies are not the most supportive of blockchain, but banks, brokers and exchanges are at the forefront, hoping to use it to reduce costs, settlement times and improve payment services.

The $1 billion forecast is based on respondents’ annual budgets for blockchain-related projects being above $200 million. Greenwich estimates its survey respondents represent 20% of companies in the blockchain industry.