Good morning.
Last year’s plunge of cryptocurrencies, the collapse of FTX, and the evaporation of a couple trillion dollars in value, left many people—myself included—wondering what was left in the wreckage. Is this really a revolutionary new technology that will change the way the world does business and finance? Or is it mainly a tool for speculators and scofflaws? U.S. regulators have gone on the attack, with the CFTC suing Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, and the SEC sending a Wells Notice to Coinbase, the number two exchange.
Is there a pony in there somewhere? At Fortune, we’re still looking. Today, we are launching a new list, the Fortune Crypto 40, that identifies the companies doing the best work with blockchain. The list recognizes that “the industry, which was once defined by crypto trading, is now much broader,” says our seasoned Crypto Editor Jeff John Roberts, who has been covering crypto for nearly a decade. “We honor a wide range of industries, from VC firms to NFT shops to data companies to decentralized protocols, that have created major enterprises around blockchain technology.”
The new list is based on a rigorous methodology, looking at an array of metrics and a survey of financial executives. It pinpoints eight different categories and chooses the top five companies and entities operating in each. You can find the list this morning here. We think it demonstrates that there is indeed interesting work going on in crypto and blockchain technology that will change the business world in many ways. One example: how NFTs are remaking the music industry.
Spoiler alert: Binance is not at the top of any of these lists. If you want to understand one reason why, take a look at Shawn Tully’s analysis of the Binance business model here. And to understand the forces that shaped Binance’s founder and CEO, read this profile of Changpeng “CZ” Zhao by Roberts and Yvonne Lau.
More news below.
Alan Murray
@alansmurray
alan.murray@fortune.com
