Bytecoin (BCN)
Bytecoin ranks #169 of 484 cryptocurrencies. On a list that also counts tokens, memecoins, wrapped coins, staked derivatives and stablecoins it appears at #1176: 1007 of the 1175 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 1424 non-native assets CoinSpectrum lists above it by market cap, about 60% are tokens, 32% are claims on other assets, 7% are memecoins and 1% are NFT collections.
| CoinSpectrum Grade | B · 60/100 · provisional, C to A |
|---|---|
| Rank among cryptocurrencies | #169 |
| Rank counting claims | #1176 |
| Market capitalisation | $5M · a day's trading is under 0.001% of it: a quoted figure, not one holders could sell into |
| Price | $0.0000280 |
| Circulating supply | 184,066,828,814 BCN |
| Maximum supply | 184,470,000,000 BCN |
| Consensus family | Proof of Work |
| Consensus mechanism | CryptoNight |
| Own hashrate | — |
| Network purpose | Private payments |
| Ledger type | Single-asset ledger |
| Launch distribution | Premine |
Market figures from the 10 November 2026 build. Open the live view for every exchange's price, and charts.
CoinSpectrum Grade (Source)
B — 60 out of 100, provisional (from 9 of 10 sections, 10 November 2026 build). With what is not yet measured anywhere from nothing to full marks, the score would be 46 to 68 (C 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 | 5.6 | the supply scale times 0.9, and a point for a fixed cap that holds |
| Supply (21 million scores 10) | 5.1 | fixed maximum supply of 184 billion |
| Distribution | 7.3 | average of 3 parts |
| Holder concentration (Source) | – | Not yet measured |
| Active addresses | – | Not yet measured |
| Premine (allocated at launch) | 2 | 80% of today's supply allocated at launch to founders, a company, a foundation or investors. A documented instamine. When the code and site surfaced publicly in March 2014, 'a little over 80%' of Bytecoin's total emission was already mined, under a claimed July 2012 launch nobody had observed. About 80% of the 184.47B emission against ~184.07B current supply gives about 80%. source |
| Fundraising (share sold) (Source) | 10 | No sale of the coin source |
| Developer share (after launch) | 10 | No developer share: every new coin goes to the miners or validators who produce blocks. No cut. CryptoNote emission (all block rewards) goes to miners; there is no developer fee or treasury in the emission rules. The early instamine is counted as premine, not a cut. source |
| Decentralisation | 6.7 | average of 3 parts |
| Governance (Source) | 10 | No authority can halt the chain or freeze funds: No freeze or admin key over user coins. source |
| No central team (Source) | 0 | A central team directs it: The Bytecoin developers (bcndev) maintain the only node (LGPL), last released in July 2019. source |
| Who can mint (Source) | 10 | Open to anyone with hardware: anyone can produce blocks by mining, no permission needed |
| Nodes (Source) | – | Not yet counted |
| Security | 7 | 2.8 of 4 points, 4 not yet measured source |
| Pool diversity (Largest pool 50% 0 to 20% 10, largest three 90% 0 to 50% 10; 2 points) | – | |
| Network activity (Transactions a day, 250 0, 500,000 or more 10; 2 points) | – | |
| Hashrate (Own work 5, its power 1 kW 0 to 10 GW 5; 1 point) | 5 | own work 5; about 0 kW (estimated from its miner pay), 0 of 5 |
| 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) | 3 | one client, no new version in 48 months (latest Jul 2019) |
| Open source (Node software) | ✓ | |
| No 51% attack (Nor a deep reorganisation, five years) | ✓ | |
| Scalability | — | too few measures yet source |
| Fees ($0.001 or less 10, $1 or more 0) | – | not yet measured |
| Throughput (2,478 a second, the busiest network's peak day, 10; 121, the median of the ten busiest, 5) | – | not yet measured |
| Block time (10 minutes 10, less either side) | 7.5 | a block every 2 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) | – | not yet measured |
| Features (3 checks) | 0 | 0 of 2 passed, 1 not yet researched |
| Fast payments (Safe to accept within seconds · Whitepaper abstract, §1, §2 and §11) | ✗ | Two-minute proof-of-work blocks; no zero-confirmation protection. |
| Pruned nodes (Old history dropped, every rule checked · Whitepaper §7) | – | No documented pruning mode in bytecoind v3.5.1. |
| Light clients (Payments verified from headers · Whitepaper §8) | ✗ | No SPV-style light client; wallets rely on a bytecoind node. |
| Privacy | 8.7 | 8.7 of 10: whitepaper privacy 7 of 7, extra features 1.7 of 3 source |
| Protocol level privacy (Keys not tied to an identity · Whitepaper §10) | 10 | Wallet keys are generated locally and transfers are validated by ring signatures, with no identity condition. |
| 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 | One-time (stealth) addresses: every payment goes to a new address derived from the receiver's public address, unlinkable on chain |
| Hidden amounts (Amounts confidential) | 0 | Amounts are public denominations (CryptoNoteConfig dust/denomination rules); no RingCT. |
| Hidden parties (Sender and receiver hidden) | 10 | CryptoNote ring signatures (minimum anonymity 3 since the Amethyst upgrade) hide the sender and one-time output keys hide the receiver. |
| Network privacy (Origin hidden by default) | 0 | CryptoNote P2P relays transactions directly; no Dandelion++ or built-in Tor in bytecoin v3.5.1. |
| Programmability | 0 | 0 of 9 points source |
| Token issuance | 0 | No token issuance on the chain itself |
| Smart contracts | 0 | CryptoNote payment chain; transactions carry only key outputs (OutputKey is the sole output type in its consensus structures). |
| Multisig and time locks (Without a third party) | ✗ | Outputs can carry an unlock block or timestamp, but the current codebase has no multisignature output type, so m-of-n spending is missing. |
| Atomic swaps (With other chains) | ✗ | No hash locks in its transaction format and no adaptor-signature swap implementation found. |
| Native DEX (Trades the coin itself, not a claim) | ✗ | No DEX found trading the coin itself: none on its own chain (DefiLlama), and not on THORChain, Maya, Chainflip, Komodo DeFi, BasicSwap, Bisq or Haveno (checked 2026-11-04). |
| Cross-chain messaging (Verified by the chain itself) | ✗ | No cross-chain feature in the protocol. |
| NFTs (Carried by the chain's rules) | ✗ | No token or NFT type in the protocol. |
| Demand | 2.3 | average of 6 measures |
| Exchanges (10 or more: 10) | 1 | 1 exchange |
| Daily volume ($10K 0, $1B or more 10) | 0 | $1 traded in 24 hours; #4433 by volume on the exchanges the site reads (scored on the median day of the last 9, $1) |
| Turnover (volume ÷ market cap, 5% a day: 10) | 0 | 0.00% of its market cap a day, median of the last 6 days |
| Order-book depth (±2% of the price ÷ market cap, 1%: 10) | – | no order book on the nine exchanges read |
| Market cap ($1M 0, $10B or more 10) | 1.8 | $5.1M, 1.8 on a scale of 2.5 points per tenfold |
| Paper trading (futures, options and margin ÷ market cap, 0%: 10, 100%: 0) | 10 | no futures, options or margin on the exchanges read |
| Wallet support (wallets that hold it, 10 or more: 10) | 1 | its own node and wallet, counted as 1: no wallet in the site's directory lists it yet |
| Record | 6.7 | average of 3 criteria |
| Age (years since genesis) (Source) | 10 | 12 full years since 2014-06-17, the first day with a recorded price (genesis not yet researched, so the age can only be understated). |
| Development (work, fixes, vulnerabilities) | 0 | 0 positive, 1 negative source |
| Negative | ||
| Steady work, 0 of 6 | ✗ | 0 commits in 0 of the last 12 months (github.com/bcndev/bytecoin); bytecoin v3.5.1, 18 Jul 2019; no release in seven years. |
| 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+
Komodo KMDA
Bitcoin Gold BTGA
Ycash (y.cash) YECA
Alephium ALPHAAll 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
184,066,828,814 of a maximum 184,470,000,000 BCN are in circulation — effectively all of them.
Launch and allocation
| Premine (allocated at launch) | 80% of today's supply |
|---|---|
| Developer share received since launch | 0% of today's supply |
| Developer share of new coins today | 0% |
| Fundraising | No sale and no investor round |
A documented instamine. When the code and site surfaced publicly in March 2014, 'a little over 80%' of Bytecoin's total emission was already mined, under a claimed July 2012 launch nobody had observed. About 80% of the 184.47B emission against ~184.07B current supply gives about 80%.
No formal sale. The insider-mined coins were never disclosed or accounted for.
No cut. CryptoNote emission (all block rewards) goes to miners; there is no developer fee or treasury in the emission rules. The early instamine is counted as premine, not a cut.
The 80% figure comes from community analysis of the blockchain (2014 bitcointalk critique), not an audit. The team was pseudonymous. How much of the instamine was later sold is unknown.
Sources: github.com · github.com · gwern.net · cryptobriefing.com · en.wikipedia.org. Researched 2026-10-24, medium confidence.
The work behind it
No source we can reach publishes a hashrate for Bytecoin.
What a regulator has said
No SEC/CFTC determination — unclassified.
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 Bytecoin
Bytecoin is #169 among cryptocurrencies and #1176 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 1007 places between Bytecoin'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).