Level of blockchain startup equity financing worldwide 2012-2018

As of the first half of 2019, blockchain start-up companies around the world had amassed 783 million U.S. dollars in investment funding. The market has grown drastically since its mainstream introduction around 2012, with total investment funding rising from just one million dollars to over 4.15 billion in 2018.

Blockchain technology overview

Blockchain is a form of tamper-evident distributed ledger of records, which offers businesses a secure way to record transactions across a peer-to-peer network. Still a relatively new phenomenon, organizations from countries around the world are rushing to introduce the technology into their businesses. Blockchain is perhaps best known for its use within cryptocurrency technology, but its potential use cases cover a much broader spectrum apart from digital currencies. Within companies, some of the most popular blockchain use cases include data validation, data access, and identity protection. As of 2018, nearly 30 percent of organizations in the consumer products and manufacturing industry had already deployed blockchain technology within their business, with another 45 percent of these companies in the blockchain experimentation phase.