What happened
Fortune named Yi He to its Most Powerful Women list, CryptoBriefing reported on May 27. He co-founded Binance with Changpeng Zhao in 2017 and now serves as co-CEO, overseeing Binance Labs, the exchange's venture and incubation arm, alongside marketing and customer-facing operations. She is one of the most senior women in the industry and, more notably, one of the few crypto-native figures Fortune has placed on a list that for years skewed toward bank chiefs, consumer-goods CEOs, and asset managers.
The distinction matters because of who usually fills these slots. Fortune's ranking weighs revenue under management, influence over a sector, and the size of the business a leader controls. Binance, despite its regulatory history, still processes the largest spot and derivatives volume of any centralized crypto exchange. Putting its co-CEO on the list is an acknowledgment that the venue she helps run has become too large for a mainstream business publication to treat as fringe.
Why it matters
Recognition lists don't move markets, and this one won't either. What it signals is harder to price. Binance spent 2023 and 2024 absorbing the fallout from its US settlement, the departure of Changpeng Zhao as global CEO, and a $4.3 billion penalty over anti-money-laundering and sanctions failures. The story since has been about whether the exchange could rebuild standing with regulators, institutions, and the kind of mainstream audience that reads Fortune rather than Crypto Twitter.
A seat on the Most Powerful Women list is a small data point in that rebuild. It frames Yi He, and by extension Binance's current leadership bench, as part of the establishment rather than outside it. For an exchange working to land banking relationships and institutional custody mandates, that framing has quiet value. It also lands at a moment when crypto leadership is still overwhelmingly male, and a high-profile woman at the top of the largest exchange cuts against that pattern.