Blockchain and digital assets could form the basis for a European trillion-dollar market as early as 2030 – this is the optimistic scenario of a new study by the Berlin-based management consultancy zebconsulting The market for digital assets currently amounts to around 240 billion euros. By the start of the new decade, however, it could already be an impressive 3.7 trillion euros. The basis for this bullish forecast are numerous expert interviews and a survey of financial institutions in six different countries. The comprehensive zeb study focuses particularly on the DACH region as well as the Netherlands and Luxembourg.
A closer look at the figures reveals that tokenization as a megatrend could leave the crypto market behind in terms of market size. The authors of the study believe that crypto assets in Switzerland and the EU will have a market capitalization of 1.03 trillion euros in the best case scenario. For tokenized securities and real assets such as real estate, however, a combined market capitalization of up to 1.9 trillion euros can be expected. According to the European financial institutions surveyed, digital assets as a whole therefore offer significantly greater potential than Bitcoin and Co.
Digital asset adoption by the financial industry
However, for this optimistic forecast for the digital assets market to actually come true, the availability of stablecoins and CDBCs must be guaranteed. These would provide the necessary liquidity and thus also drive the acceptance of tokenized securities. The study underlines the importance of regulating the new market in Europe, which provides much-needed clarity for financial institutions. Nevertheless, in a second wave, barriers to entry must be further lowered and existing regulatory gaps for digital assets closed.
Currently, financial institutions in Europe are primarily interested in basic services such as custody, which can be used for a wide variety of digital assets. There are still many legal uncertainties when it comes to more complex services such as staking, which is why TradFi companies are hesitant. Nevertheless, the “follower” category has seen an increase of 20 percentage points. As a result, more and more financial institutions are offering their customers cryptocurrency trading as a first step towards digital assets. In summary, the zeb study recognizes that despite the crypto winter and regulatory hurdles, there is a clearly positive trend in digital asset adoption in Europe.
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