According to Ripple’s report (https://ripple.com/lp/2023-new-value-report/), MENA financial decision makers are more optimistic about crypto, digitalassets, and blockchain compared to their counterparts elsewhere. The report highlights several key findings:
- Confidence: 72% of finance leaders expressed growing confidence in the crypto industry over the last six months. Notably, the MENA region demonstrated even higher confidence, reaching 87%.
- Impact: 90% of global finance leaders expect significant impacts on businesses from blockchain and digital assets within the next three years. Tokenisation is seen as having a substantial effect on public stock trading and private share trading, especially among finance decision makers in the MENA region with crypto experience.
- CBDCs and Stablecoins: Financial decision makers anticipate a significant impact of CBDCs and stablecoins across business, finance, and society. This sentiment is particularly strong among those with crypto experience and those based in the MENA and Latin America regions.
- Acceleration: Respondents expect digital currencies to have a big effect on business, finance, and society within a shorter period compared to last year’s survey. The acceleration of digital currency technologies is particularly pronounced in the field of payments.
- Institutional DeFi and Decentralised Digital Identity (DID): Financial decision makers show interest in institutional DeFi solutions, recognising their potential to address borrowing and capital-raising pain points. Additionally, the vast majority (90%) believe that DID will have a significant impact on the banking, financial services, and insurance sectors.
- Custody: While 35% of respondents currently use a crypto custody solution, 54% plan to adopt one within the next three years. Most companies prefer managed custody solutions outsourced to third parties.
- Positive Outlook: Over 88% of global finance decision makers believe that crypto and blockchain will have a massive impact on business, finance, and society in the next three years. More than half already have a crypto solution or are in the process of implementing one, and the majority express openness to exploring other crypto tech.
While there is overall positivity surrounding crypto adoption, barriers to adoption remain, such as privacy concerns, lack of clear regulation, risk management, and price volatility. Cross-border payments and consumer-to-business payments are considered top use cases for both CBDCs and stablecoins.