The blockchain sector saw some major changes during the past year, brought on by a “maturing” crypto ecosystem and the development of innovative technologies.
American Fintech firm Ripple notes that it remained focused on better understanding and further analyzing this rapid “evolution” via primary and secondary research. Their work included surveying over 2,000 global financial institutions, business, individuals and developers “to uncover the key perceptions and trends related to the tokenization, management, and movement of digital assets, as well as the adoption of the core technologies that encompass and underpin these trends.”
Ripple is now pleased to share their 2022 report “New Value: Crypto Trends in Business and Beyond” which goes over important findings on “the current state of blockchain and digital asset applications, including their benefits, blockers, and future use cases.” This report includes an entire section on payments. It expands beyond payments “to help the industry better understand how crypto solutions more generally are being used in both financial and business applications worldwide, and, beyond business, by governments and individuals as well.”
The report pointed out that the Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) and Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) — continue to gain traction. The report from the Fintech firm also mentioned that the use of crypto for Decentralized Finance (DeFi), portfolio and capital management is progressing steadily. Payments leveraging crypto has “continued to grow dramatically.”
According to Ripple, the crypto and blockchain industry is “maturing and with that, institutions and enterprises are realizing the potential benefits of applying this technology to their own organizations for a variety of use cases.” Enterprises tend to be “more optimistic than financial institutions on the benefits of blockchain, the potential impacts and the enthusiasm to adopt this technology.”
The team at Ripple also noted:
“With last year’s explosion of popularity in NFTs, there is a growing number of interested individuals outside of what we’ve traditionally seen in this space. And there is a growing number of use cases that encompass functional NFTs (e.g. for ticketing, or voting) and business-oriented NFTs (e.g. representing real-world assets of various types). Given the agility and power of assets represented on the blockchain, the surge in creative use cases and interest among both individuals and businesses isn’t surprising.”
They added:
“Whether you are considering using CBDCs, NFTs, or cryptocurrencies, or anything else on a blockchain, sustainability should be taken into account. And, we confirmed, there is still a lot of progress to be made in educating consumers, institutions and businesses alike on the differences in carbon emissions between blockchains and the performance advantages of a sustainable blockchain.”
The team at Ripple also noted in their extensive report that 2021 was a very challenging year in many respects and for many people across the globe. However, it was a productive year for the use of blockchain and blockchain driven tokens across Financial Institutions, Enterprises, governments and consumers.
Ripple claims that they have conceptualized for almost a decade, the Internet of Value — aspects of which are now termed Web 3.0 and the metaverse — “is being realized in some ways which we predicted, and in many ways which we did not.”
According to the Fintech company, this emergent quality of innovation and its impacts “is true for all technology, but perhaps even more true for technology that is at its core decentralized.”
The company added:
“The true value in these new solutions and scenarios has become increasingly clear in the last year, and the fast movers are taking advantage to achieve real and measurable impact on processes and industries that everyone recognizes have not kept pace with innovation in other arenas. We believe, as do many of the respondents to our survey globally, that the impact of blockchain and its tokens will be massive in the coming years, though easier paths to using the technologies, and expanded integration with compliance needs, are still needed.”
They also noted:
“Having said that, now that enterprise solutions have matured and have been proven around the world, and regulators have clarified — in many jurisdictions at any rate — the relevant guidance, we believe the competitive advantage that these new technologies deliver will drive accelerating adoption, and accelerating growth for those who adopt. And while we know some of the ways that blockchain and crypto will be used, it will be just as fascinating to see the creative approaches that developers, communities, and entrepreneurs launch turn into the trends that we can discuss in next year’s report.”