The BeInCrypto Institutional 100 awards have rolled out a new category for corporate governance, with a long list of 15 firms ranging from crypto-native custodians to traditional banks. The winner won't be decided by numbers alone — 80% of the score comes from an expert council that will weigh things like board independence, audit maturity, and incident response. The shortlist drops this month, and the final winner gets named at Proof of Talk in Paris on June 2–3.
How the scoring works
Unlike purely quantitative awards, this one leans heavily on human judgment. Only 20% of the score comes from hard data — regulatory filings, OCC and SEC EDGAR records, NYDFS reports, FCA, FINMA, BaFin, and MAS registers, plus MiCA-CASP entries, audited reports, and private data from PitchBook, Tracxn, and Crunchbase. The other 80%? That's the Expert Council's call.
The criteria cover public-market discipline, banking charter strength, board independence, audit maturity, incident response, disclosure quality, and leadership credibility. The initial pool was bigger — more than 30 firms were screened before the list was cut to 15.
Who made the long list
The 15 firms span several sub-segments: listed crypto companies, federal crypto banks, regulated custody firms, TradFi banks, and public-market digital asset platforms. They are Anchorage Digital, BitGo, Block, BNY, Bullish, Circle Internet Group, Coinbase, Fidelity Digital Assets NA, Galaxy Digital, Kraken (Payward), Robinhood Markets, Securitize, Standard Chartered, Strategy (MicroStrategy), and Sygnum.
It's a mix that shows how broad the governance conversation has gotten — a federal bank like Anchorage sits alongside a payments giant like Block and a traditional custodian like BNY. The award's backers say the diversity is intentional, meant to reflect the whole ecosystem rather than just one corner of it.
What happens next
The shortlist is expected in May 2026. Then the expert council votes, and the winner is announced at Proof of Talk, the two-day conference in Paris that kicks off June 2. That's where the industry will find out which of the 15 gets the nod for best corporate governance — and what that might mean for how the rest of the sector measures up.
