Bitcoin (BTC)

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Bitcoin ranks #1 of 484 cryptocurrencies — assets with their own blockchain and their own consensus mechanism.

CoinSpectrum GradeA+ · 86/100 · provisional
Rank among cryptocurrencies#1
Rank counting claims#1
Market capitalisation$1.47T
Price$73,124
Circulating supply20,110,356 BTC
Maximum supply21,000,000 BTC
Consensus familyProof of Work
Consensus mechanismSHA-256
Own hashrate922 EH/s
Active addresses a day623,398 October 2026 median
Network purposeSettlement ledger
Ledger typeOverlay-asset ledger
Launch distributionNo premine
Regulatory classCommodity

Market figures from the 10 November 2026 build. Open the live view for every exchange's price, and charts.

CoinSpectrum Grade (Source)

A+ — 86 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 84 to 86 (A+ to A+).

Section and criteriaScoreBasis
Consensus10average of 2 criteria
By leader (its largest chain's market cap) (Source)10Proof 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)10Proof of work: 10 of 10 on the ladder of families ranked by the combined market cap of their chains
Supply10fixed maximum supply of 21 million
Distribution10average of 4 parts
Holder concentration (Source)–Not yet measured
Active addresses10623,398 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)10Fair launch: no premine
Fundraising (share sold) (Source)10No sale of the coin
Developer share (after launch)10No developer share: every new coin goes to the miners who produce blocks
Decentralisation10average of 4 parts
Governance (Source)10No authority can halt the chain or freeze funds: No protocol-level party can freeze, blacklist or claw back coins or halt the chain. source
No central team (Source)10No central team: Bitcoin Core is maintained by independent contributors funded by many separate companies and grants; btcd (btcsuite) is a separate implementation. source
Who can mint (Source)10Open to anyone with hardware: anyone can produce blocks by mining, no permission needed
Nodes (Source)1012,138 reachable nodes source
Security9.47.5 of 8 points source
Pool diversity (Largest pool 50% 0 to 20% 10, largest three 90% 0 to 50% 10; 2 points)7.4largest 26%, largest three 63.2%
Network activity (Transactions a day, 250 0, 500,000 or more 10; 2 points)10about 714,813 transactions a day
Hashrate (Own work 5, its power 1 kW 0 to 10 GW 5; 1 point)10own work 5; about 12.4 GW, 5 of 5; the largest on its algorithm
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)10Bitcoin Core (C++, v32.1, Oct 2026) and btcd (Go, separate code by the btcsuite developers, v0.27.0, Oct 2026); Bitcoin Knots is a fork of Core
Open source (Node software)✓
No 51% attack (Nor a deep reorganisation, five years)✓
Scalability6.2average of 5 parts source
Fees ($0.001 or less 10, $1 or more 0)6.3typical fee $0.013
Throughput (2,478 a second, the busiest network's peak day, 10; 121, the median of the ten busiest, 5)1.2about 11.8 simple transactions a second
Block time (10 minutes 10, less either side)10a 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)6.74 MB limit
Features (3 checks)6.72 of 3 passed
Fast payments (Safe to accept within seconds · Whitepaper abstract, §1, §2 and §11)✗Ten-minute probabilistic blocks, and Bitcoin Core relays full replace-by-fee by default since v28, so zero-confirmation payments are not protected by the network.
Pruned nodes (Old history dropped, every rule checked · Whitepaper §7)✓Bitcoin Core 0.11 (2015): -prune keeps the UTXO set and recent blocks (at least 288).
Light clients (Payments verified from headers · Whitepaper §8)✓SPV with Merkle proofs since the 2008 whitepaper; BIP 157/158 compact block filters served by Bitcoin Core 0.21 (2021).
Privacy77 of 10: whitepaper privacy 7 of 7, extra features 0 of 3 source
Protocol level privacy (Keys not tied to an identity · Whitepaper §10)10Anyone 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)10Coins 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)10BIP32 extended public key (xpub): a watch-only wallet derives each new receiving address without the private key
Hidden amounts (Amounts confidential)0No confidential transactions in the protocol; amounts are public.
Hidden parties (Sender and receiver hidden)0No ring signatures, ZK sender proofs or stealth addresses in the protocol.
Network privacy (Origin hidden by default)0Bitcoin Core 31.0 (Apr 2026): -privatebroadcast sends own transactions over Tor/I2P, but it is opt-in and needs Tor/I2P set up; no Dandelion relay.
Programmability5.65 of 9 points source
Token issuance (Through a metaprotocol)1Ordinals/BRC-20, Runes, Omni, Counterparty, RGB, Taproot Assets: read by indexers, not validated by the chain's nodes
Smart contracts (Scripting for spending conditions)1Bitcoin Script limited to spending conditions (signatures, hashes, time locks, multisig); no general contract system on the base layer.
Multisig and time locks (Without a third party)✓m-of-n OP_CHECKMULTISIG (bare and P2SH) plus nLockTime, OP_CHECKLOCKTIMEVERIFY (BIP 65, 2015) and OP_CHECKSEQUENCEVERIFY (BIP 112, 2016).
Atomic swaps (With other chains)✓HTLCs (hash branch plus CLTV/CSV refund branch) expressible in standard Script, as specified in BIP 199; Garden runs BTC HTLC swaps.
Native DEX (Trades the coin itself, not a claim)✓Traded as itself, not as a wrapped token or a claim: THORChain; Maya Protocol; Chainflip; BasicSwap; Komodo DeFi; Bisq; its own chain's DEXes (Bitcoin, DefiLlama).
Cross-chain messaging (Verified by the chain itself)✗No protocol messaging to other chains; bridges and sidechains are run by third parties.
NFTs (Carried by the chain's rules)✗No token type in consensus; Ordinals inscriptions are read only by indexers.
Demand8.1average of 7 measures
Exchanges (10 or more: 10)1047 exchanges
Daily volume ($10K 0, $1B or more 10)10$9,717,641,580 traded in 24 hours; #2 by volume on the exchanges the site reads (scored on the median day of the last 30, $8,390,972,521)
Turnover (volume ÷ market cap, 5% a day: 10)4.80.53% of its market cap a day, median of the last 30 days
Order-book depth (±2% of the price ÷ market cap, 1%: 10)4.1$251,057,645 within 2% of the price on 9 exchanges, 0.02% of its market cap, median of the last 15 days; a lower bound: the books returned by 7 of them stop short of 2%
Market cap ($1M 0, $10B or more 10)10$1471B, at the top of the scale
Paper trading (futures, options and margin ÷ market cap, 0%: 10, 100%: 0)7.7futures, options and margin positions 5.2% of its market cap
Wallet support (wallets that hold it, 10 or more: 10)1046 wallets in the site's wallet directory
Record9.7average of 3 criteria
Age (years since genesis) (Source)1017 full years since genesis. Genesis block mined 3 January 2009.
Development (work, fixes, vulnerabilities)94 positive, 0 negative source
Positive
Steady work, 6 of 6✓3,812 commits in 12 of the last 12 months (github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin); Bitcoin Core v32.0, released 2026-10-21; regular six-monthly major releases.
Shipped a security fix in two years, +1✓Bitcoin Core 30.0, Oct 2025: fixed four disclosed low-severity vulnerabilities (CVE-2025-46597, -46598, -54604, -54605); 29.0, Apr 2025, fixed a remote-code-execution bug disclosed later.
Shipped a privacy improvement in two years, +1✓Bitcoin Core 31.0, Apr 2026: opt-in private broadcast sends a node's own transactions over short-lived Tor/I2P connections (P2P transport, not consensus).
Shipped a scaling upgrade in two years, +1✓Bitcoin Core 29.1 (Sep 2025) and 30.0 (Oct 2025): default minimum relay fee cut tenfold, 1 to 0.1 sat/vB (relay policy, not consensus; no block-size change).
Conduct (origin, claims, halts)103 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

Zcash ZECA+Dogecoin DOGEA+Monero XMRA+Bitcoin Cash BCHA++Litecoin LTCA+Ethereum Classic ETCAKaspa KASA+All Proof of Work chains →

Proof of Stake coins

Ethereum ETHA+BNB BNBASolana SOLA+TRON TRXAHyperliquid HYPEBCardano ADAANEAR Protocol NEARAAll Proof of Stake chains →

Supply

20,110,356 of a maximum 21,000,000 BTC are in circulation — 95.8% of the total that will ever exist.

Launch and allocation

Nodes or validators12,138

The work behind it

Bitcoin is secured by 922 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.

How CoinSpectrum ranks Bitcoin

Bitcoin is #1 among cryptocurrencies and #1 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. Nothing above Bitcoin is a claim or a token, so its two ranks agree. 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 39 wrapped and staked claims on Bitcoin →

Wallets that hold Bitcoin

Bitcoin CoreElectrumSparrowLedgerColdcardTrezorWasabiBlueWalletMuunBalletBitBox02D'CENT34 more in the directory

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