A new report published on Aug. 8 by United States-based market research firm International Data Corporation (IDC) claims that based on its research, spending on blockchain solutions will increase to $15.9 billion by 2023.
This projection puts blockchain’s five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) at 60.2% between 2018-2023. IDC Worldwide Blockchain Strategies Research Director James Wester has said that even though there’s still a lot of uncertainty regarding blockchain regulation, the enterprise adoption of blockchain has continued to grow. Wester stated:
“The adoption of blockchain for financial services, identity, trade, and other markets is encouraging. Companies are recognizing value from initial pilot programs and moving those projects into production.”
Wester also noted that despite the regulatory setbacks and uncertainty, mass blockchain adoption is on a tipping point. He expressed his joy at the fact that businesses are starting to realize the true potential of blockchain outside of identity management and financial services.
Furthermore, Wester remarked that the main cause of this growth is the success of many of the pilot projects in financial services, supply chain management, and identity verification. Now that early adopters are moving those blockchain projects into production, a new wave of investors will walk into the domain to take advantage of this new technology.
80% Yearly Growth of Blockchain Spending in 2019
The report by IDC expects blockchain spending to increase by a whopping 80% in 2019 as compared to that of last year. Over the course of this progress, banks and financial institutions will hold 30% of their investment portfolio in blockchain investments. Discrete manufacturing and process manufacturing are predicted to allocate 20% of their investments to blockchain. Furthermore, process manufacturing is also predicted to have the fastest blockchain spending growth of any industry — at 69.8% CAGR.
According to the report, the United States is going to be the largest investor in blockchain technology with $1.1 billion total expenditure; Western Europe will be second in place with a total investment of around $661 million; China will be in the third spot with a total blockchain investment of $304 million.
Stacey Soohoo from IDC’s Customer Insights & Analysis unit commented that it is no longer a question of ‘if’ blockchain will be a lasting feature of the IT landscape, but rather how far will its scope extend.
Blockchain has seen a gradually increasing adoption over a broad spectrum of industries in the last couple of years. From food tracking to personal data security, a plethora of industries have implemented blockchain technology into their operations. It is no surprise, then, that blockchain investments are estimated to become a large multi-billion industry.
