Nutzung von Blockchain-Technologie und Kryptowerten im deutschen Unternehmenssektor (Deutsche Bundesbank – Research Centre)

Summary

• Fewer than 1% of corporate firms currently use blockchain technology or crypto-assets, showing no measurable increase from the 2021 baseline survey.p.3
• Around 2.5% of surveyed companies plan to implement these technologies in the next three years, keeping total planned and active adoption under 4%.p.3
• Adoption is highest in the financial and insurance sector, where around 13% use or plan to use blockchain technologies and 12% use or plan to use crypto-assets.p.3
• Firms using generative AI extensively are more than twice as likely to use blockchain and crypto-assets compared to non-users or limited users.p.3
• Among active corporate users of crypto-assets, 67% utilize them as an investment asset and 51% for liquidity holding or management.p.13

Key insights

1. Blockchain technology and crypto-assets remain a niche phenomenon in the German real economy with current adoption below 1%.p.3
2. Medium-term growth expectations remain restrained, as only about 2.5% of companies plan adoption within the next three years.p.3
3. The financial and insurance industry leads overall technology adoption, reaching combined current and planned adoption rates above 12%.p.3
4. The total current and planned implementation rate in manufacturing including construction remains low at approximately 2%.p.3
5. Larger corporate entities with more than 200 employees show a higher rate of blockchain adoption at around 7%, whereas crypto-asset usage shows no correlation with firm size.p.3
6. Extensive adoption of generative AI strongly correlates with higher adoption rates for both DLT and crypto-assets.p.3
7. Corporate applications of blockchain technology remain fragmented across multiple use cases without a single dominant primary application.p.4
8. Crypto-asset utilization within firms is primarily driven by liquidity management and balance sheet investment motives rather than payments.p.4
9. The global market capitalization of stablecoins reached around $300 billion in January 2026, with US Dollar stablecoins dominating and Euro stablecoins accounting for less than 1%.p.8
10. Most identified active enterprise use cases remain limited to pilot or testing stages rather than productive deployment.p.14