According to a new report from Scottish fintech Zumo, digital assets, and blockchain more broadly, are an area of keen enterprise interest, with roughly four in five believing that they will be very or somewhat important to their respective industries in the next 24 months

Furthermore, the report states that there is a compelling business case for the use of blockchain, digital assets and/or cryptocurrencies within their organisation.

The report, titled Digital Assets 2023: Identifying the opportunities across the enterprise landscape, is, according to Zumo, the first to comprehensively survey, categorise and practically analyse emerging areas of opportunity across the global digital asset ecosystem from an enterprise perspective.

Digital Assets 2023 draws on fresh insights from some of the biggest names across the digital asset and financial services industries to highlight the opportunities in the nascent sector. Contributors include financial services giants – such as HSBC, NatWest, and Visa – and noted blockchain innovators, including Ripple and Chainalysis.

Industry cooperative, and Sibos organiser, Swift is another key contributor, with the organisation busy collaborating with its global community to test how financial institutions can interoperate with the multitude of blockchain networks emerging around the world.

A new ecosystem for a new age

Digital Assets 2023 traces the evolution of blockchain from an enterprise perspective, identifying four turning points characteristic of a progressive broadening in digital asset applications and participants, from the Bitcoin big bang moment (‘blockchain 1.0’) through to the first ‘enterprise’ era (‘blockchain 4.0’).

The report uses this context to construct an enterprise ecosystem map distinguishing consumer and institutionally-facing solutions, and investment versus applied use cases.

It then assesses the opportunities, challenges and inter-relationships associated with nine individual use cases, categorised as early (institutional digital asset investment; institutional DeFi; web3); developing (tokenisation; blockchain in industry; DLT for financial market infrastructure) and established (consumer-facing cryptoasset investment; and individual/business blockchain payments).

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Daniel Taylor, Zumo’s Research and Policy Lead, and the report’s author, said: “Active learning and knowledge development is a key part of Zumo’s mission as a trusted partner for those looking to enter the digital asset space.

“Today is the first truly ‘enterprise’ era, in which non-crypto businesses have access to, and are active across, all four quadrants of digital asset opportunity: consumer, institutional, application and investment. Our report practically distils and synthesises those emerging opportunities based on a big-picture understanding of the digital asset and blockchain ecosystem.”

“Digital Assets 2023 has been brought to life through consultation and cross-sector collaboration, and Sibos, with its emphasis on networking and learning, is therefore the perfect platform for launching it.”