Last year, Fireblocks published the State of Stablecoins. It mapped the leading edge of institutional digital money adoption and the payments use case across payment providers, fintechs, and the payments functions of banks. This year, we have asked a different question, of a different audience.
We surveyed 600+ C-suite and senior decision-makers at global and regional transaction banks, investment banks, commercial and digital banks, custodians, financial market infrastructures, and the corporates that are their clients. We looked across every major market, and not just at stablecoins, but about the full scope of what they are building, why they are building it, and what is standing between commitment and production.
What they told us is that their build is broad, the pressure is more immediate, and the constraints are internal. ln at least one respect, the data surprised us. We have presented it as we found it. The Financial Grid maps it in full.
The headline: 88% funded, only 16% in production
88% of financial institutions have committed or will commit budget to digital asset infrastructure in 2026. Only 16% have reached production. That gap between production-scale spending and production-scale capability is the central finding of The Financial Grid. Budget at this scale does not happen without conviction. And it is a sequencing problem: custody architecture, wallet governance, regulatory compliance are the decisions production-scale deployment actually requires, yet they are unresolved at most institutions.
The threat is not who you think it is
43% of respondents cite non-bank competitive pressure as the critical driver of their investment. They recognize that fintechs, payment providers, and digital asset platforms are not waiting to build digital asset capabilities.
But the demand signal deserves equal attention: 76% of banks rate other banks as a strong or primary source of demand. These are different pressures with different infrastructure implications. Building to compete with fintechs produces one agenda. Building to meet what your settlement partners and counterparties require of you produces another. The institutions moving fastest are responding to both.
The build is broader than the entry point
No institution is building for a single use case or a single asset class. Global and regional transaction banks start with cross-border payments and settlement. Investment banks are building for tokenized securities settlement, collateral optimisation, and DVP. Digital banks lead with 24/7 settlement. But when asked which asset types they expect to use in a live environment this year, tokenized securities score high universally, including at institutions whose primary priority is payments.
The infrastructure decisions they make now will determine whether their broader build is possible later.
The unexpected bank advocates for digital assets
96% of respondents expect the regulatory environment to be favorable or very favorable. However, the more telling finding is who is most convinced. It’s not the C-suite, it’s the security and compliance functions. The people whose job is to find the risk are reading the frameworks coming into force as specifications to build to, not barriers.
And they are not sitting this out. Security functions are leading digital asset initiatives at 30% of financial institutions, risk and compliance at 22%, with fewer than 2% of either function reporting no engagement. Whether this reflects genuine cultural shift or the self-selecting nature of institutions committed enough to respond, the direction is clear: where compliance has shifted, it has become an accelerant, not a constraint.
Closing the production gap starts with one decision
Only 15% describe their custody and wallet governance infrastructure as fully production-ready. These are not problems that resolve with more time or more budget. They are infrastructure decision problems, and the institutions closing the production gap are making specific decisions in a specific sequence. It starts with custody architecture, because it determines which digital asset businesses an institution can run, at what scale, and on what timeline.
One number alongside that finding is almost certainly wrong: Only 3% of respondents flagged regulatory reporting as a challenge, despite daily transaction and balance-level reporting being a hard requirement under multiple global frameworks in existence and coming into force. Institutions not planning for it will face it as a retrofit at the worst possible moment.
The conversation starts here
The Financial Grid maps the global picture. Regional spotlights covering North America, Europe, Latin America, Asia, the Middle East, and Africa follow separately. We are particularly looking forward to sharing how corporates responded to our survey, and what they need from their banking partners.
Read the full report to learn more.
Fireblocks helps over 95 banks build their digital asset infrastructure. If you are working through these decisions, we are glad to talk.
