CoinSpectrum asks to be checked rather than trusted. This page sets out the rules it holds itself to, so a reader can tell when it breaks them.
Updated 26 October 2026.
CoinSpectrum is an independent project: not an exchange, not a fund, and not a listing service. It is written by Iris Thaumas and published without a company, by choice (why). No project, exchange or investor pays for a place in the cryptocurrency ranking, a classification, a grade or a journal feature, and none can buy one. Paid placements in the other directories, where they exist, are labelled on the row. Referral links change nothing about whether or where a venue appears.
Every figure carries its source. Prices come from exchanges' own public feeds, medianed after outliers are dropped; supply, classification and network figures come from a six-hourly build that cross-checks several data providers (see Market data). Research for grades and journal pieces cites primary sources where they exist: whitepapers, code repositories, block explorers, project announcements. A figure the site cannot source is left blank rather than guessed, and the blank is shown as a blank.
What counts as a cryptocurrency, how the ranking is ordered and how assets and exchanges are graded are set out in the methodology and the grade method. The rules are versioned and dated; when a rule changes, the change and its reason are published, and the rule applies to every asset the same way. The data behind every grade is in the API, so any result can be recomputed by someone who disagrees with it.
The site publishes two kinds of writing. The blog argues for the site's rules and positions, and says so. The journal reports what the data does under those rules. Positions are stated directly, with the reasons for them, so a reader can reject the argument and still use the data.
Errors are corrected once they are confirmed against a source. A data error is fixed at the point where it entered the pipeline, so the fix reaches every page that shows the figure. A factual error in an article is corrected in place, and the article's update date changes; a correction that changes a conclusion is stated in the article. Grade method changes are listed in the method's own changelog. To report an error, see Contact.
The data pipeline is automated, and research is done with the help of software tools, including AI assistants, to gather and check sources. What is published is reviewed and is the responsibility of the author; sources are linked so a reader does not have to take either on trust.
Statements made in CoinSpectrum's name are signed with its Bitcoin Cash signing key, so they can be checked without trusting the page or the channel they arrived through.