SharesPost study: DLT market opportunity to top $2.5 trillion during next 10 years

San Francisco-based SharesPost, a prominent provider of private firm liquidity solutions and private capital markets study, has released a new research report detailing the comprehensive market opportunity for the blockchain/distributed ledger technology (DLT) industry.

The study, titled Investment Strategies for Blockchain: A $2.5 Trillion Opportunity, examines particular DLT use-cases across 20 different industry verticals and surmises a value creation opportunity of more than $2.5 trillion over the next decade.

The blockchain market opportunity over the next ten years is remarkable in the following verticals:

• Supply Chain/IoT: $550 billion
• Identity/Security: $420 billion
• Financial Services: $400 billion
• E-commerce: $300 billion
• Infrastructure: $200 billion

SharesPost managing director and head of research Rohit Kulkarni said in a press release CoinReport received from Wachsman, SharesPost’s PR firm, “Blockchain has always been deemed a disruptive technology, but in quantifying its actual market potential, we hope/plan to showcase the possible impact this technology could have over the next several years. As such, blockchain is becoming increasingly important to individual and institutional investors who are looking to enter the markets most impacted by the technology.”

The study specifies four ways institutional and individual investors can approach DLT-affected markets. They include:

• Investing in tokens through ICOs – In 2017, a total of $6 billion were invested in blockchain startups via 500 ICOs. Some of the most notable ICOs include those of South Korean IoT blockchain startup Hdac, which raised $258 million; blockchain data storage startup Filecoin, which raised $257 million and smart contracts blockchain platform Tezos, which raised $232 million.
• Investing in digital currencies – The study points out that the top five traded cryptocurrencies, bitcoin, ether, ripple, bitcoin cash and litecoin, respectively, are now worth over $500 billion compared to under $100 billion a year back.
• Investing in blockchain startups – Accredited investors can invest in blockchain startups via venture capital funds financing the firms or via the secondary market. In the U.S., Circle and Coinbase are the blockchain startups with the most amount of funding raised via venture capital, followed by Ripple, BitPay and Chain.com.
• Investing in publicly traded blockchain proxies – Possibly a less risky choice, some of the most prominent of these include credit card organizations such as Visa and MasterCard, which are utilizing blockchain to lower costs and shorten delays in processing payments across borders, and IBM, which is collaborating with other major organizations to develop blockchain applications for the supply chain.

SharesPost has also announced a strategic partnership with Securrency, a provider of financial and regulatory technology products for the tokenized issuance and trading of securities.

The partnership will assist in driving tokenized securities trading to SharesPost platform by delivering liquidity through SharesPost’s substitute trading system to private tokenized security issuers availing themselves of Securrency’s security and compliance technologies.

Securrency CEO Dan Doney commented, “The issuance of securitized tokens can be complex, especially when it comes to maintaining compliance with regulations in multiple jurisdictions. We’re thrilled to be working together with the innovative team at SharesPost’s Digital Securities Group, as our technologies deliver essential security and compliance features to support primary offerings and secondary-market trading of tokenized securities across SharesPost’s impressive range of services.”

Logo via a press release on SharesPost’s website