The foundation of the Internet dates back to the creation of ARPANET in the 1960s, and its official birth on 1 January 1983, created ripples across the globe – undoubtedly one of the most transformative milestones in modern history, one that has radically changed how societies communicate, exchange ideas and do commerce.
More than four decades since its inception, the Internet remains the backbone of the global digital economy and continues to play a hand in the rise of newer, more advanced technologies as its adoption skyrockets worldwide, with 5.56 billion people now connected to the World Wide Web.
Because of the profound impact of the Internet across global sectors, some technological advancements were seemingly overshadowed, among those is blockchain technology, which debuted in 1991 by Stuart Haber and W. Scott Stornetta before being popularised by Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008 with the introduction of a peer-to-peer (P2P) electronic cash system we now know as Bitcoin.
Blockchain technology presents itself as a modern tool for record-keeping and asset tracking, minus the control of a third-party entity, making digital transactions on-chain more transparent, cheaper and seamless. Because of its ability to revolutionise various aspects of online interactions, this decentralised ledger is often touted as the new Internet.
While both technologies exhibit certain similarities, they serve distinct functions. The Internet works as a digital infrastructure that enables effective communication and data exchange among users and devices. Conversely, blockchain technology provides a secure, transparent and tamper-resistant mechanism for recording transactions, ensuring the integrity of data.
At this stage, it remains uncertain whether the Internet may eventually operate on-chain; however, recent developments suggest a significant transformation is underway, and blockchain is at the forefront of this.
A Closer Look at the State of the Blockchain Market in 2025
The advent of over 1,000 blockchains – each varying under four main types: public, private, consortium and permissioned – is a sign of its growing adoption. It signals a digital revolution that extends beyond the confines of the finance industry, one of the several sectors in which blockchain gained its ground.
Major Industries Powering Blockchain Growth and Innovation
Finance
Finance is one of the top sectors that has integrated blockchain in its operations to address its growing demand for speed, security and transparency. While traditional finance (TradFi) systems proved to be a bedrock and a trustworthy avenue for monetary transactions, users struggle with high fees and delays in cross-border payments, not to mention that the clunky TradFi systems are vulnerable to cybercrimes involving money laundering, fraud, hacks and terrorism financing, which have gotten worse after cryptocurrencies boomed worldwide and banks started offering crypto-related services. In the first half of 2025, crypto crime losses topped $2.1 billion (£1.5 billion), nearly equal to the overall losses registered in 2024.
This worsening cybercrime situation only led to a clamor to integrate a system that could help curb the losses, and financial organisations saw blockchain as a potential solution. But adding another layer of security isn’t all that blockchain is about.
For the TradFi ecosystem, blockchain is a means to diversify its offerings in this era and could even one day give birth to new currencies with actual use that could outlive the hype, as governments explore the viability of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) while stablecoins make strides.
Operating on a secure and immutable chain, CBDCs are seen as the future of money, a belief that prompted 137 countries to explore their feasibility. According to an Atlantic Council study, of the 137 countries involved in CBDCs, three have already launched their own CBDCs – the Bahamas, Jamaica, and Nigeria – while 49 are in the pilot stage, 20 are still in the developmental phase, and 36 are researching as of 2025. A handful of CBDC projects have also been initiated since CBDCs came to light, with some notable ones including China’s e-CNY, Project mBridge, the digital euro, and Project Agora.
Beyond CBDCs, blockchain in payments and settlements is also advancing the digital revolution. In 2016, Accenture reported that nine out of 10 banking institutions in the United States, Europe, and Canada were actively exploring blockchain technology for payments, 30% are in the advanced stages of adopting blockchain for payments, while seven per cent are still in the early stages of adoption.
While there remains no definite number on how many financial institutions are actively exploring blockchain, the participation of major banking firms, including JPMorgan, Bank of America, Citigroup, and even payments giants Visa and Mastercard, is a dead giveaway of the evolving financial ecosystem.
Beyond retail banking and digital payments, which are tipped to rise $140.26 billion (£104.24 billion) and $38.07 trillion (£28.2 trillion) by 2030, respectively, blockchain growth statistics in finance have extended into capital markets, asset management, trade finance and insurance – all contributing to the projected valuation of $80.2 billion (£59.4 billion) by 2032, a steep climb from the blockchain in finance market’s nearly $8.1 billion (£6.02 billion) in 2023.
By sector, capital markets is predicted to balloon to over $16 trillion (£11.8 trillion) by 2030, driven by asset tokenisation; asset management could see a growth of $4.5 billion (£3.3 billion) from $1 billion (£743.2 million) in 2023; blockchain would also be a booster for global trade finance, adding $3 trillion (£2.22 trillion) by 2030; while the on-chain insurance market is projected to be a $59.90 billion (£44.5 billion) sector by 2032.
Supply Chain
Just as blockchain is transforming the financial services market, it’s also revolutionising the supply chain industry, a market expected to reach a valuation of $36 billion (£26.7 billion) by 2033 and where fraud remains a persistent challenge, much like in finance.
Counterfeiting is one of the most rampant issues, and it has worsened with the rise of e-commerce. In its Mapping Global Trade in Fakes 2025 report, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) said that an estimated $467 billion (£348.5 billion) worth of counterfeit goods were registered in 2021, with China, Hong Kong and Türkiye as the primary source.
Besides counterfeiting, supply chain and logistics companies also struggle with data complexity and inefficiency, prompting them to turn to blockchain to streamline their operations. With blockchain technology, firms have increased visibility and a tamper-proof record of a product’s journey and history, simplifying tracking goods, preventing counterfeit items and ensuring everything is done responsibly. It also helps reduce paperwork and delays by automating parts of the process, saving companies time and money.
While data management and security by way of traceability are the most common blockchain use cases in supply chain, blockchain’s utility extends beyond these applications. Highlighting its decentralised feature, blockchain cuts out middlemen and extra fees, while making sending money or settling payments faster, cheaper and simpler.
But perhaps blockchain’s most impactful role in the supply chain industry will be driving sustainability. Supply chains are a major source of carbon emissions, accounting for roughly 90% of a company’s greenhouse gas emissions, according to the Institute of Sustainability Studies, citing an EY study. With blockchain, auditing goods becomes seamless, replacing papers with one secure digital record. It also gives suppliers and companies a clear view of their operations, helping them spot supply chain risks early and adapt more easily to the challenges of a global marketplace.
Healthcare
In 2018, Singapore, an island-nation nestling in Southeast Asia, suffered a cyberattack that left the personal information of 1.5 million patients, including that of former Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, stolen. The data breach exposed security lapses in the country’s healthcare information systems, and despite the city-state’s attempt to track down the individual or groups behind the attack, nothing came out of it. No arrests were made.
This incident is a reminder that as technology evolves, so do bad actors and the manner in which they carry out their crimes, and one country’s economic status isn’t a sure way to avoid the threat.
While data breaches cannot be prevented, utilising a blockchain-powered data storage greatly enhances the protection of sensitive information. Blockchain also grants patients control over their data, allowing them to revoke access to medical records to entities other than their healthcare providers.
Data breaches and drug counterfeiting may have negatively impacted the healthcare sector, but they also served as silver linings that could further drive blockchain adoption within the industry. In 2024, blockchain in the healthcare market topped $2.9 billion (£2.16 billion), with experts projecting a surge to $52.6 billion (£39.2 billion) by 2033 as the sector’s demand for effective health data management systems heightens.
Improving the healthcare sector’s cybersecurity is only part of what blockchain offers. This decentralised ledger could also be a key to another breakthrough in the medical field, as it serves as a platform to help professionals secure and streamline data sharing for their research and drug development.
Not only does blockchain champion privacy control in data management and identity verification, but it also enables secure and faster settlements by eliminating intermediaries.
Real Estate
The property market, which is projected to be valued at $654.39 trillion (£488.14 trillion) in 2025, is a significant sector where blockchain’s capacity to build and uphold trust between parties could be emphasised. Trust is essential between a property seller and a potential buyer. By utilising blockchain technology, sellers can easily prove their ownership, allowing buyers to verify it without difficulty.
Beyond proving ownership, the real estate industry can also leverage on-chain self-executing contracts, or smart contracts, to automate complex processes, including property transfers, rentals and asset management. Blockchain has also diversified real estate investment through tokenisation, a process that has gained traction in recent years. Tokenisation allows homeowners or sellers to convert the value of their properties into digital tokens, which can be bought, sold, and traded on-chain.
Real estate is only among a handful of assets that can now be tokenised. As blockchain becomes widely adopted, communities have started to tokenise financial instruments, intellectual property, luxury goods, and even debt.
Retail and E-commerce
The power of technology was highlighted at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2019, with economies on lockdown and smartphones acting as our lifelines to stay connected with the rest of the world. While this global catastrophe exposed the lapses and failures of the healthcare sector, it paved the way for people to fully recognise the potential of blockchain to revolutionise the retail and e-commerce industry.
Traditional retail was heavily affected when COVID-19 hit, prompting retail companies to shift online to remain afloat. This sudden pivot led to a drastic surge in e-commerce sales, ballooning to $26.7 trillion (£19.9 trillion) in 2019, a 4% increase from 2018. However, with numerous retailers – some even new to e-commerce – this transition is fraught with perils, with many juggling to solve issues tied to unsecured payment processing, counterfeit goods and troublesome operations.
Through the implementation of blockchain technology, retailers gain the capability to monitor the location of their products along with all relevant data in real time. Payments for goods and services were settled seamlessly, thanks to blockchain’s ability to enable supply chain financing, promoting flexible payments for buyers and suppliers.
Decentralised ledgers also transformed loyalty perks in e-commerce by introducing non-fungible tokens (NFTs) as tradeable assets and cryptocurrencies as rewards for faithful buyers. On top of these, trading becomes more direct and seamless without middlemen, which means buyers and sellers get more control, allowing them to save costs on extra fees and enjoy a fairer and more open marketplace.
And much like the previous industries mentioned, blockchain in retail and e-commerce also boosts privacy and automation by safeguarding personal information and speeds up identity verification.
These moves not only helped retailers and the entire e-commerce sector survive the pandemic, but they also onboarded many into the blockchain ecosystem without them knowing, only feeling its actual utility.
Fuelling the Next Wave of Digital Innovation
Globally, there are 11 sectors defined by the Global Industry Classification Standard (GICS). These sectors are further categorised into 25 industry groups and 74 industries, highlighting how massive the global economy is and that we’re barely scratching the surface in terms of blockchain adoption.
But blockchain getting mainstream is not impossible, considering that major corporations, institutions and Big Tech companies are making significant contributions to fuel this drive – and by contributions, we mean investments. While 53% of the global funding was funnelled to AI in the first half of 2025, enterprises, venture capitalists (VCs) and startups continue to support blockchain projects, allocating $4.8 billion (£3.58 billion) to real-world use-cases, including supply chain security, industrial Internet of Things (IoT), tokenisation of real-world assets (RWAs) and decentralised finance (DeFi).
Blockchain’s impact on disrupting industries is only beginning, and with the rapid pace of digitalisation worldwide, with more than 560 million people now using blockchain and over 85 million people having blockchain wallets, it won’t be surprising if this technology becomes mainstream soon. Even experts believe the blockchain usage statistics will only grow from here, projecting its value to surge to $393.42 billion (£293.3 billion) by 2032 from the estimated $31.18 billion (£23.2 billion) in 2025.
While widespread blockchain adoption won’t happen overnight, it begins with bold, collective action – from governments to industry leaders and everyday users. Be part of that movement at the London Blockchain Conference. Reserve your spot today and lead the charge in this new era of technological advancement.
