A recent study, a collaborative effort between Ripple, CB Insights, and the UK Centre for Blockchain Technologies, reveals that prominent financial firms like Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, and Japan’s SBI Group are leading the charge in traditional finance’s support of emerging blockchain startups.
The study indicates that global banks actively participated in 345 investment deals with blockchain ventures between 2020 and 2024. The majority of these investments focused on providing early-stage funding. Citigroup and Goldman Sachs stood out, each involved in 18 separate deals, with JP Morgan and Mitsubishi UFJ close behind, each participating in 15 investments.
Significant attention was given to “mega-rounds,” investment deals valued at $100 million or more. Banks contributed to 33 such rounds over the specified four-year period, directing capital toward businesses concentrating on areas like trading platforms, asset tokenization, digital asset custody solutions, and innovative payment technologies.
Illustrative examples include CloudWalk, a Brazilian company, which successfully raised over $750 million through two funding rounds supported by Banco Itaú, among others. Similarly, Solaris, a German company, obtained over $100 million in funding from the SBI Group and subsequently became the target of a majority stake acquisition.
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Major Global Banks Back Blockchain with Over 100 Deals
Global Systemically Important Banks (G-SIBs), financial institutions deemed so crucial to the global economy that their failure could destabilize the entire system, were involved in 106 deals, including 14 mega-rounds, each surpassing $100 million in value.
Financial institutions from the United States and Japan led in terms of deal frequency, while Singapore, France, and the United Kingdom also demonstrated substantial activity. In total, over $100 billion was invested in blockchain startups worldwide between 2020 and 2024, spread across more than 10,000 individual deals.
Ripple’s study, encompassing insights from over 1,800 leaders in global finance, also revealed that a substantial 90% anticipate blockchain technology and digital assets to exert a “significant or massive” impact on the financial industry within the next three years.
This growing momentum is reinforced by evolving regulatory landscapes, including the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for US Stablecoins, or GENIUS Act, in the United States and the Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation in the European Union. These frameworks provide increased clarity for the operation of digital asset businesses.
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Banks Focus on Stablecoins, Tokenization Expected Next
Driving this investment trend is a surge in demand for practical, real-world blockchain applications. A separate report from Citi indicates that stablecoin transaction volumes reached between $650 billion and $700 billion per month in the first quarter of 2025. Consequently, an increasing number of banks are introducing their own stablecoins, aiming to offer programmable money solutions without the volatility associated with other cryptocurrencies.
Looking forward, the tokenization of assets is predicted to be a defining trend in the blockchain space. Boston Consulting Group and Ripple project that the value of tokenized real-world assets could potentially exceed $18 trillion by the year 2033, demonstrating a substantial compound annual growth rate of 53%.
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