Blockchain Adoption in European Banking: Strategic Responses to the Cryptocurrency Revolution

Blockchain technology has sparked academic and institutional interest in the banking sector across Europe, particularly around digitalization, regulatory reform, and FinTech. However, research has stayed fragmented and overly technical, with little emphasis on taking a strategic and futurist approach to the uncertain impact of blockchain on frameworks of banking in Europe. This thesis aims to address that gap by studying how to prepare for the future of blockchain adaptation through a hybrid methodological framework comprised of structural topic modelling (STM), expert insight-based strategic foresight, and scenario planning. A study of 1,308 police-reviewed academic publications from Scopus (2014–2025) was examined with structural topic modelling (STM), to extract latent themes in the banking and blockchain research literature. Through this process, four core topics were extracted: central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), decentralised network security, FinTech, and applications of artificial intelligence (AI). Expert domain evaluators were then asked to evaluate the four topics to develop an impact–uncertainty matrix, which prioritised two topics (CBDCs & AI) as both high impact and high uncertainty. Using these, I created four scenario narratives to develop future pathways for the future of banking in Europe – Digital Hegemony, Autonomous Finance, The Surveillance Economy, and Open Innovation Grid. The results indicated that blockchain technology will not replace traditional banking, instead providing more hybrid infrastructures for banking within the oversight of financial authorities through decentralised new points of innovation. Trade-offs in the new hybrid banking systems were revealed by the scenario analysis through the acknowledgement of varying degrees of regulations, transparency, financial inclusivity, and systemic risk. This means that there will be important determinates that will shape the adoption of blockchain in banking in the future, such as regulatory clarity, interoperability, and ethical AI governance. The thesis contributes to the literature by establishing a new interdisciplinarity framework of foresight that includes computational topic modelling with expert knowledge, scenario thinking, and illumination. It also provides strategic foresight for banking sector participants, including banks, policymakers, and FinTech stakeholders in Europe and beyond, as they seek to approach the adoption of blockchain that is resilient and ethical.