89% of banks are funding digital asset initiatives, but only 16% have actually shipped anything

Nearly nine out of ten financial institutions say they’re putting money behind digital asset infrastructure in 2026. The number that actually has something live and running? About one in six. That’s the central tension in a new report from Fireblocks titled “Financial Grid: Banking, Digital Assets, And The Infrastructure Decisions Defining 2026,” based on a survey of 638 C-suite executives and decision-makers at financial institutions and corporations worldwide. The survey, conducted by The Value Exchange in January 2026 across North America, Europe, Latin America, APAC, and the Middle East and Africa, paints a picture of an industry that has collectively decided digital assets matter, but is still figuring out how to make them work. The budget is there, the product isn’t Roughly 88-89% of institutions surveyed have either committed or plan to commit budget to digital asset infrastructure this year. Only 11% are pushing their spend to 2027. By most standards, that’s an overwhelming consensus that this technology is worth investing in. But production deployments tell a very different story. Just 16% of those institutions have reached production status, meaning the vast majority are ...