A trio of world establishments, including Big Innovation Centre, DAG Global and Deep Knowledge Analytics, released a report which analyzes the blockchain industry’s potential in the U.K. The companies are positive that the country will become its leader in just a few years.
The U.K. has long since recognized that the blockchain technology is disruptive. Thus, in January 2018, the All Party Parliamentary Group on Blockchain a.k.a Big Innovation Centre was established. While the House of Commons, the lower chamber of the British Parliament, is not the one who created it, this informal group attracts Members of both Houses who all acknowledge the importance of blockchain.
They are not the only ones: the report “identified and profiled” 225 companies, 170 investors, 20 tech hubs and think tanks, 10 incubators and accelerators, and the 100 faces of the UK blockchain industry. “It offers in-depth profiles of all major companies, investors, influencers, R&D centers, and other industry and governmental entities and players,” the report’s press-release reads.
The conclusion is clear: the U.K. can become a global hub for blockchain. It has the “resources as well as industrial and governmental will.” The report even posits that it can turn into “next generation Digital Crypto Economy by approximately 2022.”
Despite this positive outlook Prof. Birgitte Andersen, CEO of Big Innovation Center, recognizes that “We are still at the early stages of the Blockchain industry’s development.” Yet since she understands its huge impact the сenter “is already marshaling our innovation focus as effectively as possible on accelerating our businesses and society, advancing us from ‘digital-economy and e-commerce’ to ‘AI-civilisation and blockchain’. Starting with a map of the Blockchain landscape and its key influencers is crucial.”
Concurrently, Sean Kiernan, Chief Executive Officer of DAG Global, notes that there is a gap “between the two worlds of traditional finance and Crypto Economy” but he expects that it will disappear soon enough adding that “DAG Global will work actively to bridge these two worlds into a united, synergetic framework that is poised to yield outcomes greater than the sum of their respective parts.”
Dmitry Kaminskiy, the founder of the Hong-Kong-based Deep Knowledge Analytics, reiterates his colleagues’ enthusiasm saying that the future lies in the blockchain, crypto economy and AI, and the U.K. has the highest probability of becoming the world leader in this area adding that precisely for this reason the companies conducted this research.
He also stressed that this report is just a first step and together with colleagues they will “develop further to update the report each financial quarter, in order to best align with the industry’s inflection point in coming years.”
The full report, 960 pages, can be downloaded here.
On a final note, the U.K.’s enthusiasm is certainly inspiring and follows the recent report by the European Union, of which London is still a member (until March 2019), which warns regulators against banning cryptocurrencies.