16 firms shortlisted for digital-asset access awards in Paris

BeInCrypto’s Institutional 100 Awards narrowed the Access to Digital Assets pillar to 16 shortlisted firms across four categories. Winners were revealed at the Proof of Talk conference at the Louvre Palace in Paris on June 2, 2026.

The pillar covers firms that provide products, asset management, institutional adoption and market data to help institutions access and manage digital-asset exposure. Shortlists were presented alphabetically within each category and are not ranked. Winners were announced live at the awards ceremony.

In the Best Digital Asset Product category, the shortlist reflected institutional product flows and tokenized fund activity. BlackRock’s IBIT reached about $67 billion in assets under management by early May 2026 and its BUIDL tokenized money market fund exceeded $3 billion. Bitwise’s BSOL became the largest U.S. spot Solana ETF after its October 2025 NYSE debut and captured more than 80% of cumulative inflows in that segment. Fidelity’s FBTC held roughly $17 billion in AUM and is custodied in-house through Fidelity Digital Assets, NA. Franklin Templeton’s BENJI tokenized money market funds reached nearly $2 billion and were live on more than eight public blockchains.

The Fund Manager of the Year shortlist included firms that run venture, hedge and tokenized strategies. a16z Crypto closed Crypto Fund V at $2.2 billion in May 2026. Bitwise managed over $15 billion across more than 30 crypto investment products in the U.S., U.K. and Europe. Pantera Capital operates venture, hedge and tokenized strategies with more than $5 billion in AUM. Paradigm raised a $1.5 billion fund in February 2026 to expand into AI and frontier technologies alongside its crypto investments.

The Leader in Digital Asset Adoption category nominated institutions that have implemented tokenized instruments and blockchain settlement for clients. The shortlist included BlackRock, Fidelity, HSBC and JPMorgan Chase. Fidelity pairs spot crypto ETFs such as FBTC and FETH with in-house custody through Fidelity Digital Assets, NA. HSBC’s Orion platform enabled more than $3.5 billion in digitally native bonds and the bank secured a Hong Kong Monetary Authority stablecoin issuer licence ahead of a planned HKD stablecoin launch in late 2026. JPMorgan’s Kinexys initiative moved JPM Coin, rebranded JPMD, onto public blockchains with deployments on Base in 2025 and on the Canton Network in January 2026.

Best Market Intelligence & Data Platform nominees supply on-chain, market and index data used by institutional desks and portfolio teams. Talos acquired Coin Metrics in July 2025 for more than $100 million, combining on-chain and market data with institutional trading infrastructure. Dune Analytics reported more than 200,000 dashboards, 6.5 million queries and 1.5 million datasets across 100-plus blockchains and launched AI Agents and a dbt Connector for institutional workflows in 2026. Glassnode provides on-chain analysis across over 1,700 assets and 900 metrics, publishes quarterly Charting Crypto reports and introduced a Glassnode MCP server in 2026. Kaiko serves over 200 enterprise clients, joined ISDA in April 2026, and worked with S&P Dow Jones Indices to put the iBoxx US Treasuries Index on-chain as a tokenized benchmark.

The BeInCrypto Institutional 100 is an annual research program covering 25 categories across six pillars. The 2026 evaluation window ran from April 2025 through March 2026. Shortlists were produced through editorial research and blind scoring by an external panel of institutional digital-asset practitioners. Public filings, regulatory registers, audited reports, on-chain data, ETF flow trackers and nominee disclosure forms were used where available; final blended scores were not published.

BeInCrypto posted a welcome message from the awards floor: “Tonight we recognize the institutions and leaders shaping the future of digital asset finance across 25 categories.” The organization described the shortlists as the combined outcome of its research and judge review.