Over the first three years of the Forbes Blockchain 50, our list of billion-dollar companies making meaningful use of the technology popularized by bitcoin, has become a bellwether of institutional adoption. Our list shines light on how large corporations—often household names like Walmart and Novartis— are using blockchain tech to improve business processes and become more efficient and profitable. Now is your chance to help us find the best possible honorees for next year.
Each year’s list, which requires that members be valued at $1 billion or more, or generate $1 billion in revenue, has demonstrated the technology’s wide and growing geographic and industry reach. Over time, it has shifted from a focus on early stage proof of concept projects to functioning technology with giant transaction volumes. And it has increasingly featured consumer-facing companies, rather than only B2B players.
In other words, the distributed ledger technology that lets a group of users agree on a single truth, and prove that a digital object is only in one place at a time, is actually being used. And it’s not only being used by nimble startups with little to lose, but also by generations-old enterprises with some of the best known and trusted names in the world: Fidelity, Honeywell, Visa and the NBA.
Forbes Blockchain 50 – Inside The Class Of 2021
With the rapid rise of bitcoin, which this year reached an all time high of $64,000, the number of companies aiming to capitalize on the original digital asset has surged. What began with cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, which made the first list in 2019 when bitcoin was only worth $5,000 and went public this year with an $86 billion direct listing, has expanded to include companies such as business analytics firm MicroStrategy, which essentially turned itself into bitcoin ETF by holding more than $5 billion worth of bitcoin.
“There is going to be more change in the next 5 years than we have seen in the last 30 years in the financial system,” said Dan Schulman, the CEO of Blockchain 50 lister, PayPal, speaking at last year’s Blockchain 50 Symposium. “And I think digital currencies are going to lead the way.”
Know a company whose blockchain innovation is under-appreciated? Let us know now, and help us spread the word using #Blockchain50 on Twitter. Has your company been overlooked in the past, or fallen off the list, but is breaking new ground by making real strides with blockchain? Let us know how. Do you work at one of the nine firms that has been on the list all three years, and is still leading the way? We want to know what the company is doing that merits it remaining on the list.
The nomination deadline is Friday, November 5. Once the nomination period ends, a team of Forbes reporters and editors will sort through the nominees, looking for the most mature blockchain programs run by the most talented teams in the world. Winners will be revealed in a 2022 magazine issue, and online.