That’s a very good question, and it’s one of the weaknesses in the data set used in our blockchain report. We did a little bit of mapping in the study of where companies are based, where governments have made more announcements about blockchain initiatives, but the data is too incomplete to create a geographic ranking.
Generally, advanced economies are more active because blockchain is high tech, so the technology is developed in countries, companies, and industries that have bigger R&D and innovation budgets. So the northern hemisphere generally – North America, Western Europe, and parts of Asia are leading on blockchain.
Having said that, there are interesting things happening in other areas, for example, in the Middle East. Dubai is very aggressively promoting a blockchain agenda, and it wouldn’t surprise me to see them lead in certain areas because they have a political system that can allow for very quick decisions and implementation. I wouldn’t be surprised to see the first central bank digital currency based on blockchain technology launched in the Middle East.
Garrick Hileman and Michel Rauchs released the 2017 Global Blockchain Benchmarking Study, which can be downloaded as a PDF here: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3040224.
You can read the brief summary of their study here: https://insight.jbs.cam.ac.uk/2017/central-banks-are-trialling-blockchain/
The above interview was conducted on 12 December, 2017.