44% of the top 100 public companies use blockchain amid growing institutional adoption

Despite occasional setbacks caused by regulatory or macroeconomic hurdles, the blockchain and cryptocurrency industry is growing in adoption and use cases among large global institutional players.

Indeed, 44 out of the top 100 public companies by market capitalization across six major sectors are currently actively utilizing blockchain in some form, according to the report by enterprise blockchain adoption analytics platform Blockdata published on October 6.

Specifically, most of these companies (36%) belong to the technology, media, and telecom sector and include such names as Meta (NASDAQ: META), Salesforce (NYSE: CRM), Adobe (NASDAQ: ADBE), Verizon (NYSE: VZ), and Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA).

They’re followed by consumer and retail (20%) and basic materials and industrials (20%) sectors, with participants like UPS (NYSE: UPS), PayPal (NASDAQ: PYPL), Visa (NYSE: V), Walmart (NYSE: WMT), McDonald’s (NYSE: MCD), and Nike (NYSE: NKE).

Most of these active institutional users of blockchain and crypto technology are located in the United States (63%), whereas 12% of them are headquartered in mainland China and the Hong Kong special administrative region.

Institutional use cases for blockchain

According to the report, besides financial institutions and banks, other corporations are deploying blockchain across various areas, including the creation of customer loyalty programs, improvement of supply chain transparency, as well as designing and marketing non-fungible tokens (NFTs).

For instance, Meta is developing NFT support for Instagram; Salesforce has rolled out a closed pilot program for a service to allow users to manage NFTs for marketing and branding, while Verizon has incorporated a Guardtime-based blockchain platform to cater to large international organizations.

Furthermore, PayPal allows its users to buy, hold, and sell crypto, as well as transfer crypto from PayPal to external wallets. Walmart is using blockchain to reduce disputes and manual work in payables and receivables. Finally, Visa has introduced a series of crypto-supported cards for Latina American countries.

Many others have filed applications for NFT and metaverse related trademarks with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), adding to the more than 6,000 NFT and blockchain related trademarks in the U.S. filed since January 1, 2022, as Finbold reported.