Bitcoin Cash (BCH)
Bitcoin Cash ranks #14 of 484 cryptocurrencies. On a list that also counts tokens, memecoins, wrapped coins, staked derivatives and stablecoins it appears at #22: 8 of the 21 assets ahead of it are not native coins but tokens or claims. A token is issued on a host blockchain rather than running its own; a claim stands for an asset already counted. Of the 13 non-native assets CoinSpectrum lists above it by market cap, 10 are claims on other assets and 3 are tokens.
| CoinSpectrum Grade | A++ · 91/100 · provisional |
|---|---|
| Rank among cryptocurrencies | #14 |
| Rank counting claims | #22 |
| Market capitalisation | $4.6B |
| Price | $227.45 |
| Circulating supply | 20,114,987 BCH |
| Maximum supply | 21,000,000 BCH |
| Consensus family | Proof of Work |
| Consensus mechanism | SHA-256 |
| Own hashrate | 3.95 EH/s |
| Active addresses a day | 21,791 October 2026 median |
| Network purpose | Payments |
| Ledger type | Multi-asset ledger |
| Launch distribution | No premine |
| Regulatory class | Commodity |
Market figures from the 10 November 2026 build. Open the live view for every exchange's price, and charts.
CoinSpectrum Grade (Source)
A++ — 91 out of 100, provisional (from 10 of 10 sections, 10 November 2026 build). With what is not yet measured anywhere from nothing to full marks, the score would be 89 to 91 (A++ to A++).
| Section and criteria | Score | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| Consensus | 10 | average of 2 criteria |
| By leader (its largest chain's market cap) (Source) | 10 | Proof of work: 10 of 10 on the ladder of consensus families ranked by their largest chain's market cap |
| By family (all its chains' market cap) (Source) | 10 | Proof of work: 10 of 10 on the ladder of families ranked by the combined market cap of their chains |
| Supply | 10 | fixed maximum supply of 21 million |
| Distribution | 9.1 | average of 4 parts |
| Holder concentration (Source) | – | Not yet measured |
| Active addresses | 6.3 | 21,791 addresses active a day, the median of October 2026's 31 days (counted by CoinSpectrum from the chain's own blocks) source |
| Premine (allocated at launch) | 10 | Fair launch: no premine |
| Fundraising (share sold) (Source) | 10 | No sale of the coin |
| Developer share (after launch) | 10 | No developer share: every new coin goes to the miners who produce blocks |
| Decentralisation | 9.8 | average of 4 parts |
| Governance (Source) | 10 | No authority can halt the chain or freeze funds: No protocol-level party can freeze, blacklist or reverse coins. source |
| No central team (Source) | 10 | No central team: Several independent node teams (Bitcoin Cash Node, Knuth, BCHD, Bitcoin Verde) coordinate upgrades through the CHIP process. source |
| Who can mint (Source) | 10 | Open to anyone with hardware: anyone can produce blocks by mining, no permission needed |
| Nodes (Source) | 9.2 | 560 reachable nodes source |
| Security | 8.4 | 6.7 of 8 points source |
| Pool diversity (Largest pool 50% 0 to 20% 10, largest three 90% 0 to 50% 10; 2 points) | 8.9 | largest 24.8%, largest three 52.5% |
| Network activity (Transactions a day, 250 0, 500,000 or more 10; 2 points) | 5.3 | about 13,524 transactions a day |
| Hashrate (Own work 5, its power 1 kW 0 to 10 GW 5; 1 point) | 8.4 | own work 5; about 53.3 MW, 3.4 of 5; 0.43% of its algorithm's largest, not scored |
| Clients (Separate code and teams 10, separate code or teams 9, a fork by the same team or a stale second 8; one client: a new version within 12 months 7, 24 months 6, none in 24 months 5, none in 48 months 3; a second in development +0.5, a second seen running +1, 8 at most with one client; chain ended 0; 1 point) | 10 | Bitcoin Cash Node (C++, from Bitcoin ABC and Core, v29.2.0, Oct 2026), Knuth (C++, from libbitcoin, v1.5.2, Oct 2026), BCHD (Go, from btcd, v0.22.4, Oct 2026) and Bitcoin Verde (Java, v3.0.1, May 2025), each its own team |
| Open source (Node software) | ✓ | |
| No 51% attack (Nor a deep reorganisation, five years) | ✓ | |
| Scalability | 10 | average of 5 parts, +1 for an adaptive block size source |
| Fees ($0.001 or less 10, $1 or more 0) | 10 | typical fee $0.0005 |
| Throughput (2,478 a second, the busiest network's peak day, 10; 121, the median of the ten busiest, 5) | 6.1 | about 236 simple transactions a second |
| Block time (10 minutes 10, less either side) | 10 | a block every 10 minutes |
| Block space per 10 minutes (24 MB or more 10: the ten busiest networks' median demand, 16.4 MB, and half again for growth) | 10 | 32 MB limit |
| Features (3 checks) | 10 | 3 of 3 passed |
| Fast payments (Safe to accept within seconds · Whitepaper abstract, §1, §2 and §11) | ✓ | Nodes relay the first-seen transaction with no replace-by-fee, and BCHN propagates double-spend proofs, so zero-confirmation payments are protected by the network. |
| Pruned nodes (Old history dropped, every rule checked · Whitepaper §7) | ✓ | BCHN -prune deletes old blocks (inherited from Bitcoin Core 0.11). |
| Light clients (Payments verified from headers · Whitepaper §8) | ✓ | Bitcoin-style SPV with headers and Merkle proofs. |
| Adaptive block size (a bonus point, at most 10) | +1 | Adaptive Blocksize Limit Algorithm (CHIP-2023-04, activated 15 May 2024) raises and lowers the maximum block size from how full recent blocks are, never below a 32 MB floor. |
| Privacy | 7 | 7 of 10: whitepaper privacy 7 of 7, extra features 0 of 3 source |
| Protocol level privacy (Keys not tied to an identity · Whitepaper §10) | 10 | Anyone can generate keys and receive and send coins; the consensus rules carry no identity check. |
| UTXO ledger (Separate outputs, change to a new address · Whitepaper §2, §9) | 10 | Coins are separate unspent outputs: a payment spends whole outputs and sends the change to a new address, so the coins in one wallet need not share a history. |
| HD addresses (A new address for each payment, unlinked · Whitepaper §10) | 10 | BIP32 extended public key (xpub): a watch-only wallet derives each new receiving address without the private key |
| Hidden amounts (Amounts confidential) | 0 | No confidential transactions; CashFusion is a wallet tool. |
| Hidden parties (Sender and receiver hidden) | 0 | No protocol-level sender or receiver hiding. |
| Network privacy (Origin hidden by default) | 0 | BCHN relays transactions directly; Tor is optional configuration. |
| Programmability | 8.9 | 8 of 9 points source |
| Token issuance (At protocol level) | 2 | CashTokens, part of the consensus rules since the May 2023 upgrade. |
| Smart contracts (General-purpose) | 2 | Native introspection opcodes and bigger integers (May 2022) plus CashTokens (May 2023) let CashScript covenants run applications such as the Cauldron and Fex.cash AMM DEXs on mainnet. |
| Multisig and time locks (Without a third party) | ✓ | OP_CHECKMULTISIG (P2SH) plus OP_CHECKLOCKTIMEVERIFY and OP_CHECKSEQUENCEVERIFY, inherited from Bitcoin. |
| Atomic swaps (With other chains) | ✓ | HTLCs in standard Script (hash lock plus CLTV/CSV refund), as in BIP 199. |
| Native DEX (Trades the coin itself, not a claim) | ✓ | Traded as itself, not as a wrapped token or a claim: THORChain; BasicSwap; Komodo DeFi; its own chain's DEXes (Bitcoincash, DefiLlama); Cauldron and Fex, contract AMMs on Bitcoin Cash. |
| Cross-chain messaging (Verified by the chain itself) | ✗ | No protocol messaging to other chains. |
| NFTs (Carried by the chain's rules) | ✓ | CashTokens NFTs (indivisible tokens with commitments) in the consensus rules since the 15 May 2023 upgrade. |
| Demand | 8.1 | average of 7 measures |
| Exchanges (10 or more: 10) | 10 | 47 exchanges |
| Daily volume ($10K 0, $1B or more 10) | 7.2 | $39,857,991 traded in 24 hours; #52 by volume on the exchanges the site reads (scored on the median day of the last 30, $42,019,119) |
| Turnover (volume ÷ market cap, 5% a day: 10) | 5.7 | 0.78% of its market cap a day, median of the last 30 days |
| Order-book depth (±2% of the price ÷ market cap, 1%: 10) | 7.1 | $6,319,880 within 2% of the price on 9 exchanges, 0.14% of its market cap, median of the last 15 days; a lower bound: the books returned by 1 of them stop short of 2% |
| Market cap ($1M 0, $10B or more 10) | 9.2 | $4.6B, 9.2 on a scale of 2.5 points per tenfold |
| Paper trading (futures, options and margin ÷ market cap, 0%: 10, 100%: 0) | 7.8 | futures, options and margin positions 4.7% of its market cap |
| Wallet support (wallets that hold it, 10 or more: 10) | 10 | 28 wallets in the site's wallet directory |
| Record | 9.3 | average of 3 criteria |
| Age (years since genesis) (Source) | 10 | 17 full years since genesis. Split from Bitcoin on 1 August 2017 after block 478,558, keeping Bitcoin's ledger: its history runs from Bitcoin's genesis block of 3 January 2009. |
| Development (work, fixes, vulnerabilities) | 8 | 3 positive, 0 negative source |
| Positive | ||
| Steady work, 6 of 6 | ✓ | 189 commits in 12 of the last 12 months (github.com/bitcoin-cash-node/bitcoin-cash-node); Bitcoin Cash Node v29.2.0, 2 Oct 2026; 5 releases in the last 24 months. |
| Shipped a security fix in two years, +1 | ✓ | BCHN 28.0.1, about Dec 2024: security/consensus-relevant fixes (networking UB in ReceiveMsgBytes, mempool removeForBlock). |
| Shipped a new capability for users in two years, +1 | ✓ | May 2025 upgrade: VM limits and high-precision arithmetic; 15 May 2026 upgrade: loops, functions, bitwise ops and Pay-to-Script. |
| Conduct (origin, claims, halts) | 10 | 3 positive, 0 negative source |
| Positive record | ||
| Launched with a stated purpose, not as a joke | ✓ | |
| No claims by its founders that contradict its own design | ✓ | |
| No halt, freeze or reversal in five years | ✓ | |
Ten sections, weighted equally, each 0 to 10: consensus (the two ladders), supply (the supply scale and a fixed cap that holds), distribution (premine, fundraising, developer share, holders), decentralisation (governance, no central team, who can mint, nodes), security, scalability, privacy, programmability (what the scripting layer can do beyond the whitepaper's payment system), demand, and record (age, development, conduct). They are built from the criteria in the second table: privacy, scalability, security and decentralisation are the Cryptocurrency Standards among them, as follows: privacy (the whitepaper's three checks a base of 7 of 10, three extra features up to 3 more), scalability (four measures and three features), security (pool diversity, network activity, hashrate, clients and two checks) and decentralisation (governance, no central team, who can mint, nodes, holders, premine, fundraising and developer share); programmability (token issuance, smart contracts and five checks) follows them, and supply and demand are two: the supply, scored against 21 million, and demand, the average of seven measures of the market and the wallets. Provisional: parts marked — are not yet measured and are left out of the average. A rating of structure and market depth, not a price forecast or investment advice. How the grade is built · Highest-graded cryptocurrencies.
Proof of Work coins
Bitcoin BTCA+
Zcash ZECA+
Dogecoin DOGEA+
Monero XMRA+
Litecoin LTCA+
Ethereum Classic ETCA
Kaspa KASA+All Proof of Work chains →Proof of Stake coins
Ethereum ETHA+
BNB BNBA
Solana SOLA+
TRON TRXA
Hyperliquid HYPEB
Cardano ADAA
NEAR Protocol NEARAAll Proof of Stake chains →Supply
20,114,987 of a maximum 21,000,000 BCH are in circulation — 95.8% of the total that will ever exist.
Launch and allocation
| Nodes or validators | 560 |
|---|
The work behind it
Bitcoin Cash is secured by 3.95 EH/s of its own work. Hashrate does not compare across algorithms — a SHA-256 hash and a Scrypt hash cost different amounts to produce.
What a regulator has said
Named a digital commodity in the joint SEC-CFTC interpretation (Mar 17, 2026).
The regulator's position, reported as stated, not CoinSpectrum's. Assets nobody has ruled on are left unclassified rather than sorted by a guess.
Bitcoin Cash is a Bitcoin protocol upgrade activated on 1 August 2017 (block 478,559). It follows the scaling approach Bitcoin's creator Satoshi Nakamoto described from the start: raising the base block-size limit as the network grows. Nothing was created that day. Bitcoin was released in 2009; on 1 August 2017 part of the Bitcoin community activated the block-size upgrade, and on 24 August a separate SegWit upgrade activated on the same network.
Satoshi wrote in October 2010 that the block-size limit could be phased in with a simple height-triggered change — if (blocknumber > 115000) maxblocksize = largerlimit — and that older clients would obsolete themselves by the time the change activated. Bitcoin Cash raised the base block to 8 MB in 2017 and to 32 MB in 2018 — the same mechanism, executed.
The full comparison of the two 2017 upgrade paths — the block-size raise and SegWit — and the site's position on the naming convention that treats one as "Bitcoin" and the other as "a fork of Bitcoin" is in the Journal: Bitcoin took two upgrade paths in 2017.
How CoinSpectrum ranks Bitcoin Cash
Bitcoin Cash is #14 among cryptocurrencies and #22 in the market ranking, which lists wrapped coins, staked derivatives, stablecoins and tokens alongside them. CoinSpectrum counts an asset once, and counts only cryptocurrencies: assets with their own blockchain and their own consensus. A wrapped coin, a staked derivative or a stablecoin is a claim on something already counted; a token, memecoin or otherwise, runs on another chain's blocks. All of them are listed, each in its own section, and none is added to the total. The 8 places between Bitcoin Cash's two ranks are held by claims and tokens, not by other networks. The methodology sets out the rule and the counting rule argues for it.
The price above is the median of the exchanges the site reads live, checked every minute and cross-checked against a market snapshot (how market data is gathered). The grade is scored on published criteria, each with its source (the method). The site is independent, nothing on it is a paid placement, and its statements are signed (about CoinSpectrum, the manifesto).
See the 1 wrapped and staked claim on Bitcoin Cash →
Wallets that hold Bitcoin Cash
Read on the site
- Cryptocurrency privacy: the six qualities that make a coin private · blog
- How the CoinSpectrum Grade is scored: ten sections of equal weight, demand read live · blog
- Mining profitability and hashrate sites compared · blog
- Regulatory classes of cryptocurrencies: commodity, contested, security, unclassified · blog
- Why ten-minute blocks: what faster blocks cost every node and wallet, measured · blog
- What decentralisation means: seven questions, in order of importance · blog
- BIP-110: how a soft fork became a new cryptocurrency · journal
- Bitcoin Cash didn't launch in 2017: what a chain split actually creates · journal
- Browsers that support Web3 domains: Theseus Navigator, LibreWeb, Brave · journal
- Crypto wallet hacks, and the wallets that were never hacked · journal
- Which cryptocurrencies have a fixed supply? Capped and uncapped coins · journal
- Hard fork vs chain split — what's the difference · journal
- Movers: 20 days across the 171 cryptocurrencies · journal
- Pre-issued and sold: when founders sell coins they premined · journal
- We tested SegWit against legacy nodes on regtest. It's a hard fork. · journal
- Signing in with a seed phrase: an account record, not a wallet for savings · journal
- Why we count BTC, BCH and BSV as three cryptocurrencies · journal
- Where a DEX runs, and what it actually trades · journal