Dive Brief:
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Executives in the technology, consumer products and manufacturing, and media and telecommunications industries plan to spend the most on blockchain technology in 2017, according to a new survey from Deloitte of more than 300 senior executives.
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Of respondents from those industries, 28% reported their companies have already invested $5 million or more in blockchain technology, with 10% investing $10 million or more.
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Looking forward, 25% of the respondents said they anticipate they will invest more than $5 million in blockchain technology in 2017.
Dive Insight:
Blockchain may be best known in the financial industry, but surprisingly, that industry is not expected to be the biggest blockchain adopter in 2017, according to Deloitte. One of the key appeals of blockchain is that transmissions and movements can be audited through log data, so the technology has potential for a wide range of uses.
But not everyone is on board with blockchain quite yet. While the technology has gained huge notoriety over the past year, and more than a quarter of respondents said their companies see blockchain as a priority, about 39% of executives said they had little or no knowledge of blockchain at all.
Some companies, however, are preparing for the rise of a blockchain economy. IBM is creating an "ecosystem" to help expedite the development of blockchain-based business applications.
