In case you’re wondering why I haven’t really touched on cryptocurrency much during my time at the magazine so far, it’s because, for a while, I didn’t realize there was so much happening in the banking, financial services, and insurance (BFSI) sectors. But, there is. So, here I am — talking about it — and there’s a lot to say.

Let’s start with the fact that Crypto Parrot recently released data indicating Bitcoin's fees per transaction have grown at least twentyfold between February 2020 and February 2021 on a 30-day average. And that news isn’t just floating around the industry.

I was over at my friend’s house this past weekend, and her husband was talking about how, when he was at the park with their daughter earlier that day, he overheard this guy who was shouting about Bitcoin and how it’s just been exploding over the last year.

Furthermore, the effects of COVID-19 saw a rise in online shopping, online banking, and, well … online everything, which is why Finaria forecasts the global cyber insurance market will grow by 21% year over year to reach a value of $9.5 billion this year.

I think it’s pretty safe to assume that more and more BFSI companies are going to start looking to colo providers for hybrid cloud solutions as capacity continues to increase and the demand for instant access requires additional edge sites to be deployed.

BFSI companies are responsible for protecting highly sensitive data, and, as stated in Uptime Institute’s recent report, Five Data Center Trends for 2021, “You can’t outsource responsibility.”

“This is forcing many organizations to take a hard look at which workloads can be safely moved to the cloud and which cannot,” the report continued. “For some, such as the European financial services sector, regulators will require an assessment of the criticality of workloads — a trend that is likely to spread and grow to other sectors over time. The most critical applications and services will either have to stay in-house, or enterprise executives will need to satisfy themselves and their regulators that these services are run well by a third-party provider, and that they have full visibility into the operational practices and technical infrastructure of their provider.”

Like most things in this industry, the migration will be slow, but that doesn’t mean you should wait around for it to happen. Companies that stay ahead of the trends typically stay ahead of their competitors.

I’m no banker, but it sounds to me like all of this adds up to a huge opportunity.