US banking giant Citigroup believes that blockchain and crypto assets are likely destined for mass adoption and hyper growth.
In a new report titled “Money, Tokens, and Games: Blockchain’s Next Billion Users and Trillions in Value,” Citi analysts say that since blockchain is more complex than other widely adopted technologies, its trajectory to mass adoption has been slower.
“The potential for tokenization via blockchain has been talked about as being transformative for the past few years but we are not quite at the point of mass adoption. Unlike automobiles or more recent innovations like ChatGPT or the Metaverse, blockchain is a back-end infrastructure technology without a prominent consumer interface, making it harder to visibly see how it could be innovative.”
Citi says that mass adoption of blockchain will likely be sparked by the implementation of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), as well as the rise of blockchain-based gaming projects and social media payments. The bank highlights that it expects an 80x growth in the tokenization of real-world assets,
“But we believe we are approaching an inflection point, where the promised potential of blockchain will be realized and be measured in billions of users and trillions of dollars in value. Successful adoption will be when blockchain has a billion-plus users who do not even realize they are using the technology. This is likely to be
driven by the adoption of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) by large central banks as well as tokenized assets in gaming and blockchain-based payments on social media.
By 2030, up to $5 trillion of CBDCs could be circulating in major economies in the world, half of which could be linked to distributed ledger technology. Tokenization of financial and real-world assets could be the killer use case driving blockchain breakthrough with tokenization expected to grow by a factor of 80x in private markets and reach up to almost $4 trillion in value by 2030.”
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