After much anticipation, Ripple’s 2023 New Value Report: Crypto Trends in Business and Beyond has dropped! Hot off the press, the latest edition of this annual thought leadership report is an important indicator of global sentiment and perspectives towards crypto, digital assets and blockchain, and provides a glimpse into the potential future of this technology in the months and years ahead.
Now in its second year, the report continues to track awareness, interest and activity in crypto and blockchain solutions driving real business value. It also explores the pain points these technologies address and how crypto is evolving to form holistic, interoperable and lasting business solutions.
Divided into three primary sections—Tokenize, Manage and Move—this year’s report surveyed over 1,700 global finance leaders across financial institutions and enterprises regarding institutional decentralized finance (DeFi), tokenization, Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs), payments and more.
Top Five 2023 Crypto Trends in Business
1. Crypto outlook remains overwhelmingly positive.
Despite a challenging 2022 for the crypto industry and a somewhat rocky start to 2023, this year’s report finds overwhelming enthusiasm around the prospects for crypto and digital assets. Global finance leaders’ confidence in crypto has actually increased over the last six months, with more than 90% saying the technology will have a significant or massive impact on business, finance and society within the next three years.
Rather than allowing a few bad actors to shake their long-term confidence in crypto, the sentiments of global financial leaders portray an industry leaning into the technology to help realize and fulfill crypto’s full potential.
2. High expectations are translating into real-world deployments.
Seventy-nine percent (79%) of all respondents are either very or extremely confident about integrating cryptocurrency solutions into their businesses. The words most used to describe how they feel about crypto include “excited,” “confident” and “optimistic.”
More than three-quarters of respondents are open to exploring crypto and digital asset technologies like NFTs or stablecoins over the next few years. While most leaders have confidence in crypto, those who have experience using or implementing a crypto solution are the most optimistic, which further cements crypto’s ability to drive real business value, now and in the future.
3. Anticipation for tokenized real-world assets continues to grow.
According to Boston Consulting Group (BCG), the tokenization of global illiquid assets could be a $16 trillion business opportunity by 2030. This potential is reflected by the 72% of respondents that expect to use tokenization in their business as a way of driving innovation over the next three years, and across a range of industries including finance, manufacturing, media and entertainment.
Compared to last year, participants expect greater impact from CBDCs and stablecoins in less time, with cross-border and consumer-to-business payments being the two most highly ranked use cases for these token types. Finance leaders are particularly optimistic about the impact of tokenization on securitized assets like mortgages and asset-backed securities, and enterprises see the most potential in the metaverse and for events or ticketing.
4. Payments is the top use case for holding crypto.
Crypto-enabled payments is one of the technology’s most mature use cases, with 44% of global finance leaders seeing payments as the most likely gateway to crypto adoption. Enterprises and financial institutions give nearly equal weight to the role of crypto for accepting payments (53%), enabling customers to make crypto payments (52%) and making cross-border payments in crypto (47%).
More than half of global payments leaders see faster payments as the top value proposition for integrating crypto into cross-border payments, while 50% of global treasury leaders say cost savings is a more pressing benefit.
5. DeFi is coming to an institution near you.
Despite being fairly nascent, this year’s findings make it clear that finance leaders are keeping a close eye on institutional DeFi and many have already begun to explore or integrate DeFi solutions within their organizations. Seventy-six percent (76%) say they are interested in institutional DeFi as a means to drive innovation for their business in areas like the management of risk, liquidity and identity.
Finance leaders are most excited about DeFi’s potential to improve operational efficiency, data management, financial flexibility and access to always-on markets.
Accelerating the Internet of Value
While interest in crypto and digital assets is high and adoption trends are positive, challenges still lie ahead and the path to widespread use and integration isn’t necessarily linear. For crypto-enabled solutions to become the standard across industries, reported concerns around privacy, regulatory clarity, risk management and price volatility must be addressed.
But as evidenced in this year’s study, crypto adoption is being driven by growing consumer demand, tangible use cases for businesses and financial institutions, and an industry-wide shift towards real-world utility. It’s no longer a matter of if, but when, for financial institutions and enterprises to benefit from crypto’s speed, transparency and cost savings.
Helping to educate financial institutions, governments and businesses on the potential and importance of crypto is critical to accelerating the Internet of Value.
Download the full report to learn more and get started today.
