Fortune Crypto 40 List: How It Came To Be

by Arthur · April 10, 2023

It’s a dirty secret in the media industry that “best of” lists are popular but also, in most cases, totally subjective. It’s not hard to sit around with some workmates to come up with some names, then present it to the world as an authoritative ranking – and get a few clicks in the process. Fortune lists aren’t like that – and the first Fortune Crypto 40 definitely isn’t.

When we launched, the plan was to recreate the Fortune 500—our flagship list that ranks the largest U.S. companies by revenue. It quickly became clear that this would be impractical, as few major players in crypto are public companies, and of those that are, few break out their crypto-specific revenues. We also discovered that it is not possible to compare the crypto performance of Fidelity (which ranks No. 4 in the TradFi category) with Chainalysis (No. 1, Data) with a decentralized platform like Curve (No. 5, DeFi). And so we set out to create distinct categories that would allow apples-to-apples comparisons, and a methodology for each.

Hundreds of hours later, the list is now live, and I’m proud to say it’s the first of its kind: an authoritative ranking of crypto excellence based on empirical data (developer activity, fundraising, TVL, and so on as the category may dictate ) and in some cases reputation, as informed by a survey of over 200 finance and crypto executives.

In some cases, this resulted in predictable outcomes – few people will be surprised to see Uniswap (#1, DeFi) and OpenSea (#1, NFTs) leading their respective categories – but also some notable omissions. Ripple and MasterCard were knocked out, while financial problems at other major players such as DCG and Gemini resulted in reputational hits that kept them off this year’s list. There are also some controversial names on the list, notably Binance (No. 2, CeFi), which fared poorly in the survey but whose other metrics were dominant, as well as JPMorgan Chase (No. 3, TradFi), whose CEO professes a hatred of crypto, but has also overseen some truly innovative blockchain projects.

The Fortune Crypto 40 also recognizes back-end companies like Alchemy (No. 4, Infrastructure) that lack buzz but have quietly become indispensable to the industry, as well as entities like Polygon Labs (No. 3, Protocols) that support blockchains which are the core of crypto. More generally, the list serves to recognize firms that are likely to be around for decades to come, and to hold up good players in the crypto industry who – contrary to popular belief – outnumber the charlatans and crooks. We hope you can find time to look through the entire list and, like us, learn more about who really leads the way.

Finally, female Panamanian artist who goes by Ix Shells dropped an NFT version of the gorgeous blockchain-themed cover she designed for this month’s issue of Fortune Blade. If you want to own a piece of history – and support her and the crypto industry in the process – you can buy one for 0.1 ETH until the 24-hour sale ends at 1 p.m. EDT today.

Jeff John Roberts
[email protected]
@jeffjohnroberts

DECENTRALIZED NEWS

In the wake of the collapse of Signature and Silvergate, Binance.US has relied on an intermediary, Prime Trust LLC, to hold customer deposits (WSJ)

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Ethereum’s Shanghai update, which is likely to see owners cashing out billions worth of staked ETH, goes live this week – what you need to know (Fortune)

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The first major report from FTXcaretaker CEO reveals lack of accounting, including a directive to staff to “come up with some numbers? Idk.” (Coindesk)