An asset counts once

CoinSpectrum ranks cryptocurrencies — assets with their own blockchain and their own consensus mechanism. Everything else is listed, but never mixed in.

Most aggregators answer one question: what is trading, and for how much. They rank a wrapped Bitcoin beside Bitcoin, a dollar token beside the chain that settles it, and report a total in the thousands. Nothing about that is dishonest — it is just a different question from the one this site asks.

Native blockchain assets with their own consensus mechanism are counted as cryptocurrencies. Stablecoins, wrapped assets and tokens are listed separately, never mixed with the cryptocurrency ranking.

Why the number is smaller

A wrapped Bitcoin is a claim on a Bitcoin that already exists. Counting both means counting the same coin twice — and by that logic an exchange's BTC balance would be an asset too, and so would every futures and perpetual position written against it. A dollar-pegged token is the same structure with a currency behind it instead of a coin.

So claims are not added to the total. They are listed in their own section, with their peg, their backing and their host chain, because they are worth looking at — they are just not additional assets in the world.

Two rankings, side by side

Setting the claims aside changes where everything sits. So every asset page shows both numbers: the pure rank — the position among assets that exist on their own — next to the ordinary market rank that counts dollar tokens and wrapped coins alongside them.

The gap between the two is the point. It is a measure of how much of a coin's visibility comes from the company it is listed in rather than from the network itself.

What you get instead

Who publishes it

An independent project, not an exchange, not a fund, and not a listing service. Nothing on the site is a paid placement; where a link earns a referral, it changes nothing about whether or where a venue appears.

Where it lives

The site answers to more than one name, and the names are not equivalent. coin-spectrum.com is the ordinary one: registered through ICANN, resolved by the DNS every browser already uses. coinspectrum.x is the same site under a name registered on the Bitcoin Cash chain rather than with a registrar — there is no renewal to forget and no registry that can be asked to take it back.

A .x name needs a resolver that knows how to read it, so a normal browser will not open it directly. It reaches the site through a gateway path instead, and natively for anyone running a name-aware resolver.

Behind both names, the pages are also mirrored to the Sia storage network every six hours, so the copy the chain-registered name points at is not a single server that can quietly stop answering. The ranking, the asset pages and these notes are all in that mirror.

The same words either way, though no longer the same bytes: the mirrored copy has its internal links rewritten, because the gateway that serves it resolves them from the site root rather than from each page's own folder. If the two ever disagree, the ICANN name is the one that updated first.

The short version

Counting claims as assets inflates every total on every aggregator. Removing them costs this site a big number and buys an honest one.

Common questions

Where do prices come from?

Directly from major exchanges — Binance, Coinbase, Gate.io, Bybit and Kraken via client-side calls, plus MEXC and KuCoin via the site's server for the exchanges that don't allow direct browser access. Live coverage grows over time as new venues are added. A six-hourly snapshot from CoinGecko, CoinMarketCap and CoinPaprika fills in structural fields the live feeds don't cover. See the market-data page for the full source list and refresh cadence.

Does CoinSpectrum accept paid listings?

Not in the cryptocurrency ranking. An asset appears there because it passes the counting rule, not because anyone paid. Other rankings the site publishes — exchanges, wallets, and similar directories — may include paid placements where they exist; any such row is labelled explicitly so the reader sees the difference. Nothing sponsored is left implicit.

How can I report an error?

Via X or Telegram. Name the row and the field; the pipeline log stamps every reading with its source so we can trace where it came from.

What separates CoinSpectrum from CoinGecko or CoinMarketCap?

One rule, applied without exception. Everything the site does — the ranking, the taxonomy, the API — follows from "one asset counts once, claims are listed as claims." That single choice is why the cryptocurrency total is 200-something instead of 10,000-something. It is also why the site can say plainly what a wrapped coin, a stablecoin, or a JPEG certificate is.