In November 2019, Mindsmith and Clifford Chance presented an overview of global and regional development trends of the world’s largest financial institutions through the analysis of their blockchain activity.

Key findings:

• The interest of financial institutions in blockchain is not fading, but the format of interaction with the technology is changing. The intensity of interaction with the technology is growing every year. While from 2017 to 2019 the main priority was to study blockchain in practice, in 2019 there was a shift in focus on patenting inventions. Thus, the “blockchain revolution” continues and moves to a qualitatively new level, despite the decrease in the number of public blockchain projects. The world’s largest financial institutions continue to actively work with this technology, investing both time and money in it.

• Various groups of financial institutions are being formed with their own preferences regarding the formats of interaction with blockchain. Among them, there are the Scientists (they focus on patenting inventions), the Practitioners (they prefer to invest and apply blockchain in practice), the Flagships (they have chosen a cross-blockchain approach and actively interact with the technology in all possible formats), as well as the Followers (they have not yet chosen the main format of interaction for themselves).

• Countries known for widespread support for the use of blockchain and cryptocurrencies were not among the leaders. For example, Switzerland, Estonia, Australia, and South Korea are not among the leaders. 

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