Fortune has launched its inaugural Fortune Crypto 40 list—which recognizes the best companies in the crypto economy.
Key Details
- This list marks the first of many annual lists that will appear in the April/May issue of Fortune going forward.
- The list notes eight categories for different focus areas within the crypto economy, including centralized finance (CeFi), decentralized finance (DeFi), NFTs, and blockchain protocol firms.
- The first list awards Uniswap Labs, Lido, MakerDAO, Aave, and Curve as the best DeFi companies and Coinbase, Binance, Kraken, Galaxy Digital, and Circle as the best CeFi.
- It also honored NFT marketplaces OpenSea, Yuga Labs, Sky Mavis, Art Blocks, and RTFKT.
Why It’s Important
The crypto economy has grown tremendously since 2017, with major currencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum becoming notable investment tools. As we previously reported, crypto has come a long way in the past decade, from a tool used primarily for illicit gambling and drug trafficking to a tool at the bleeding edge of the financial world.
Fortune’s list is just the most recent recognition of that evolution and notes that the different categories reflect just how diverse and complex that new crypto economy is. “The decision to create separate categories instead of a single list reflects the fact that crypto is a diverse industry and that it’s hard to find common metrics to weigh the relative importance of a crypto exchange versus a traditional finance company versus a DeFi project,” it says.
Backing Up A Bit
The crypto economy is still reeling from the precipitous collapses of Terraform Labs, Celsius, Voyager, Three Arrows Capital, and FTX—resulting in the White House, the Department of Justice, the SEC, the Federal Reserve, and Congress have all advocating cracking down on crypto. Advocates like Cathie Wood remain bullish in their prediction that the crypto economy will recover fully and skyrocket in the next half-decade.
With two price surges this year, Bitcoin has proven its ability to outperform the market and may reach record valuations if it continues to improve.