Financial news outlet Forbes has
released a list of “Blockchain’s Billion Dollar Babies,” or companies implementing
blockchain technology that have minimum revenues or valuations of $1 billion, on April 16.
The list includes companies in the
cryptocurrency and blockchain development spaces, in addition to traditional financial firms like
banks and clearing houses, food companies,
supply chain management firms and others.
Cryptocurrency-related companies featured on the list include
United States-based cryptocurrency exchange
Coinbase, European mining and hardware firm
Bitfury, and blockchain-based financial services network and
XRP token creator
Ripple.
In addition to noting major firms that are dabbling or full-on adopting blockchain technology, the list also includes which blockchain protocols are being adopted and by whom. Various
Hyperledger protocols, blockchain consortium
R3’s
Corda protocol and the
Ethereum network are prominently featured at a number of firms across various industries.
Forbes notes the potential for blockchain technology to simplify various business process per the example of Depository Trust & Clearing Corp (DTCC), which keeps records of 90 million transactions a day, or most of the world’s $48 trillion dollars in securities.
Per Forbes, the firm will begin switching its 50,000 accounts to a blockchain-based system, which will help eliminate duplicate procedures and reconciliations that are still prone to happen on traditional electronic clearing networks.
In mid-March, DTCC
published a white paper outlining guiding principles for the post-trade processing of tokenized securities. The paper notes the unique characteristics of the nascent market for tokenized securities and proposes that global policy standards for traditional markets are often applicable, and useful for stakeholders to identify the legal responsibilities pertaining to security token platforms.