Moody's Blockchain blind spot | Financial Times

Eighty-one of the world's 100 largest listed companies by market capitalization have "incorporated blockchain into their business model," ratings agency Moody's proclaimed last week. A (very) quick check of the relevant data suggests that the number is somewhat exaggerated.

According to Moody's:

Many companies are testing and adopting blockchain technology solutions for their business. For example, financial institutions are developing blockchain infrastructures to transfer funds between subsidiaries at lower cost, higher speed, and lower overhead to track the inflow of funds using an electronic distributed ledger. Manufacturing companies are using blockchain to improve the traceability of goods and raw materials across the entire supply chain.

As of September 2021, 81 of the 100 largest listed companies had incorporated blockchain into their business model. . .

It is unclear whether Moody's analysts read the press release from which the number was taken all the way down: the further you scroll, the more the claim becomes watered down.

The data comes from the blockchain analysis company Blockdata (slogan: “Accelerating. Blockchain. Adoption”). First, the list of 81 companies includes “companies that are in a research phase, meaning they are exploring opportunities and deciding what technologies they might use for their blockchain initiatives.”

“If we remove the research phase,” the post continues, “we find that there are still an impressive 65 companies actively developing blockchain solutions.”

The claim is further watered down in a separate post. It turns out that only 44 of the top 100 companies “actively pursued blockchain strategies” last year.

Only five of these 44 companies are “financial companies.” Tormented English aside, Moody's claim that "we are witnessing the rapid adoption of financial institutions developing blockchain infrastructure to increase the speed and efficiency of money transfers" simply does not hold water.