Fortune Crypto 100 Names Hyperliquid Top DeFi, Coinbase Tops CeFi

Fortune unveiled its inaugural Crypto 100 this week, placing Hyperliquid at the top of the decentralized finance category and naming Coinbase the leader in centralized finance. The ranking, compiled with intelligence firm Inca Digital, reviewed more than 3,000 companies and organized them into 10 categories of 10 entries each.

Fortune modeled the project on its Fortune 500 list. The teams combined a survey of more than 200 crypto experts for trust and reputation scores with data on on-chain activity, corporate financials, security infrastructure, regulatory records and global media footprint. Fortune and Inca Digital declined to disclose exact metric weights. Each company could appear in only one category and was placed where it ranked highest under the published methodology.

Hyperliquid rose to the DeFi top after a year of growth. The perpetuals exchange increased in market capitalization and briefly surpassed Dogecoin. Its Assistance Fund has directed $1.16 billion in buybacks to the HYPE token since launch. Institutional demand tied to exchange-traded funds supported the token through 2026. At press time HYPE traded at $56.65, giving it a market capitalization of about $12.66 billion and placing it near the 11th largest token by market value. The price remains below its June 2 all-time high of $75.48 after a weekly pullback of roughly 12.6%.

Coinbase topped the centralized finance category and Binance placed second. Other category leaders were Franklin Templeton for traditional finance, Robinhood for fintech, Andreessen Horowitz for venture capital, Tether for stablecoins, Chainalysis for crypto services, Mara for mining, Bitcoin for blockchains and protocols, and BlackRock for digital asset treasuries and ETFs. Fortune noted the BlackRock result reflects concentration of institutional crypto exposure among a small number of Wall Street asset managers.

Adam Zarazinski, CEO of Inca Digital, described the list as an effort to isolate “real signals,” adding that Inca combined financial and technical analysis across markets, sentiment and on-chain activity to produce the ranking.

Fortune acknowledged one omission: crypto market makers were not included in the first edition and will be added in future editions. A companion Crypto Innovators list recognized 30 emerging firms across Asia-Pacific, Europe, Latin America and Africa. Fortune presented the Crypto 100 as a potential annual benchmark and indicated whether it becomes recurring may depend on how the ranked companies perform ahead of the 2027 edition.