1. Home
  2. Studies
  3. A Growing Niche: German Blockchain Companies
Markus Demary / Vera Demary IW-Kurzbericht No. 8 15. February 2021 A Growing Niche: German Blockchain Companies

A growing, but still small number of companies in Germany are supplying products and services based on the blockchain technology. Most of these are start-up companies and are headquartered in Berlin. Although a lot of them are focused on providing financial services, an increasing number of blockchain companies has started developing other blockchain-based services.

Download PDF
German Blockchain Companies
Markus Demary / Vera Demary IW-Kurzbericht No. 8 15. February 2021

A Growing Niche: German Blockchain Companies

IW-Kurzbericht

German Economic Institute (IW) German Economic Institute (IW)

A growing, but still small number of companies in Germany are supplying products and services based on the blockchain technology. Most of these are start-up companies and are headquartered in Berlin. Although a lot of them are focused on providing financial services, an increasing number of blockchain companies has started developing other blockchain-based services.

Since the initial development of the cryptocurrency Bitcoin in 2008, cryptocurrencies and the underlying blockchain technology are widely regarded as major technology trends. Although there seem to be numerous applications for blockchains in particular and distributed ledger technologies in general, ranging from payments via registry to identity management, the blockchain technology has not yet reached a wide-spread dissemination in the corporate world. One reason for this is that the technology is not complementary to existing database systems, but renders existing systems redundant. If there is a trustworthy intermediary administrating a central data base, switching to a blockchain system of distributed ledgers is neither necessary nor worth the cost. The other reason that this technology has not yet been widely adopted is that rules and regulation need to be adjusted first, so that the blockchain technology can be applied legally watertight.

An analysis of blockchain companies

The described legal impediments and substitution effects of the technology with respect to existing systems lead to the question whether there is a lack of start-up activity in the field of blockchain. To address this, we take a look at a dataset on blockchain start-up companies in Germany.

Identifying blockchain start-ups for a statistical analysis is demanding because there is no economic sector that comprises blockchain companies. One way of identification is to collect those companies in databases that mention the technology in the information they have supplied about themselves and about their business model. Applying this strategy to the Crunchbase database, we identified 275 companies that we define as blockchain companies.

Crunchbase is a company database that contains information about public and private companies, initially with a focus on start-ups and tech companies. Within Crunchbase’s dataset, we searched for companies headquartered in Germany that used one or more of the following words in their company description: blockchain, cryptocurrency, bitcoin, ethereum, ripple, distributed ledger. This search strategy dives deeper than to use the industry groups associated with the technology which Crunchbase provides. Our company sample is larger because in addition to pure blockchain companies, it also contains businesses that focus on other products or services and conduct blockchain activities additionally. While our sample is not representa-tive for German companies working with blockchains, it allows a more detailed analysis of these companies.

Download PDF
German Blockchain Companies
Markus Demary / Vera Demary IW-Kurzbericht No. 8 15. February 2021

Markus Demary / Vera Demary: A Growing Niche – German Blockchain Companies

IW-Kurzbericht

German Economic Institute (IW) German Economic Institute (IW)

More on the topic

Read the article
The Asian Blockchain Centers
Markus Demary / Vera Demary IW-Kurzbericht No. 10 15. February 2021

The Asian Blockchain Centers

Many Asian start-up companies have specialized in blockchain technology. In particular, Hong Kong, Israel and Singapore have the highest blockchain company density in Asia. The determinants for a flour-ishing blockchain ecosystem are a business-friendly ...

IW

Read the article
Markus Demary / Vera Demary IW-Kurzbericht No. 9 15. February 2021

The European Blockchain Centers

Blockchain companies have sprung up all over Europe, at the forefront: Malta and Estonia. Compared to the sizes of their workforce, both countries have an outstanding number of blockchain companies and can easily compete with larger countries like Germany or ...

IW

More about this topic

Content element with id 8880 Content element with id 9713