Bitcoin Cash ranks #14 of 504 cryptocurrencies. On a list that also counts tokens, memecoins, wrapped coins, staked derivatives and stablecoins it appears at #21: 7 of the 20 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 12 non-native assets CoinSpectrum lists above it by market cap, 9 are claims on other assets and 3 are tokens.
| CoinSpectrum Grade | A++ · 91/100 · provisional |
|---|---|
| Rank among cryptocurrencies | #14 |
| Rank counting claims | #21 |
| Market capitalisation | $5.8B |
| Price | $289.78 |
| Circulating supply | 20,109,081 BCH |
| Maximum supply | 21,000,000 BCH |
| Consensus family | Proof of Work |
| Consensus mechanism | SHA-256 |
| Own hashrate | 4.54 EH/s |
| Network purpose | Payments |
| Ledger type | Multi-asset ledger |
| Launch distribution | No premine |
| Regulatory class | Commodity |
Market figures from the 28 October 2026 build. Open the live view for every exchange's price, and charts.
A++ — 91 out of 100, provisional (from 19 of 20 criteria, 28 October 2026 build). With what is not yet measured anywhere from nothing to full marks, the score would be 86 to 91 (A+ to A++).
| Criterion | Score | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| Leading Consensus Mechanisms (Source) | 10 | group average |
| Consensus: leader ladder | 10 | Proof of work: 10 of 10 on the ladder of consensus families ranked by their largest chain's market cap |
| Consensus: family ladder | 10 | Proof of work: 10 of 10 on the ladder of families ranked by the combined market cap of their chains |
| Cryptocurrency Standards (Source) | 8.9 | group average, 12 of 13 measured |
| Sound Money Qualities (6 checks) | 10 | 6 of 6 points source |
| Scarcity: a fixed cap that holds, and a supply near 21 million | 10 | fixed maximum supply of 21 million: supply scale 10, cap 10 |
| Durability: five years or more with no halt, freeze or reversal | ✓ | 17 full years since genesis, no halt, freeze or reversal in five years |
| Fungibility: every unit interchangeable, none the protocol can freeze or set apart | ✓ | no authority can freeze, blacklist or set apart a coin |
| Divisibility: the smallest unit worth a cent or less | ✓ | 8 decimal places, the smallest unit worth $0.0000029 |
| Portability: fees of a cent or less and capacity for real demand | ✓ | typical fee $0.0011; about 236 transactions a second (6.1 on the throughput scale; 5 is the busiest networks' median demand) |
| Verifiability: open-source nodes and checking without a trusted server | ✓ | node software open source; light clients verify from headers or proofs |
| Privacy (5 checks) | 4 | 2 of 5 passed source |
| Whitepaper privacy: keys are not tied to an identity | ✓ | Anyone can generate keys and receive and send coins; the consensus rules carry no identity check. |
| UTXO ledger: a new key for each payment, no account linking every coin | ✓ | |
| Network-level privacy: the node hides where a transaction came from (Dandelion++, Tor or I2P, on by default) | ✗ | BCHN relays transactions directly; Tor is optional configuration. |
| Hidden amounts (confidential transactions, RingCT, shielded pools, Mimblewimble) | ✗ | No confidential transactions; CashFusion is a wallet tool. |
| Hidden sender and receiver (ring signatures or zero-knowledge proofs, one-time or stealth addresses) | ✗ | No protocol-level sender or receiver hiding. |
| Scalability (fees, throughput, block time, block space, features) | 9.2 | average of 5 parts source |
| Fees ($0.001 or less 10, $1 or more 0) | 9.9 | typical fee $0.0011 |
| Throughput (2,478 a second, the busiest network's peak day, 10; 119, 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 (32 MB or more 10) | 10 | 32 MB limit |
| Features (3 checks) | 10 | 3 of 3 passed |
| Payments safe to accept within seconds | ✓ | 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: a full node can validate and drop old history | ✓ | BCHN -prune deletes old blocks (inherited from Bitcoin Core 0.11). |
| Light clients verify payments from headers or proofs, without a trusted server | ✓ | Bitcoin-style SPV with headers and Merkle proofs. |
| Security (miner pay and 7 checks) | 7.1 | 7.1 of 9 points source |
| Miners paid a day ($1,000 0, $10 million or more 10), 2 points | 5.3 | about $130,401 a day |
| Its own hashrate: at least half its algorithm's largest, not merge-mined | ✗ | |
| Largest pool or validator under 50% | ✓ | 24.8% |
| Largest three under 75% | ✓ | 52.5% |
| More than one maintained client | ✓ | 4 |
| Node software is open source | ✓ | Several independent node teams (Bitcoin Cash Node, Knuth, BCHD, Bitcoin Verde) coordinate upgrades through the CHIP process. |
| Real on-chain use: 1,000+ transactions a day | ✓ | about 13,524 a day |
| No 51% attack or deep reorganisation in five years | ✓ | |
| Programmability (tokens, contracts, 5 checks) | 7.8 | 7 of 9 points source |
| Token issuance at protocol level, validated by its own nodes | 2 | CashTokens, part of the consensus rules since the May 2023 upgrade. |
| Smart contracts: a general-purpose contract system | 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 | ✓ | 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. |
| An exchange built into the protocol | ✗ | Cauldron and Fex.cash are user contracts, not consensus features. |
| Cross-chain messaging the chain verifies itself | ✗ | No protocol messaging to other chains. |
| Non-fungible tokens | ✓ | CashTokens NFTs (indivisible tokens with commitments) in the consensus rules since the 15 May 2023 upgrade. |
| Decentralisation | 9.9 | section average, 7 of 8 measured |
| Censorship resistant (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 | Proof of work: 10 of 10 on the ladder of who produces blocks |
| Nodes (Source) | 9.2 | 560 reachable nodes source |
| Holder concentration (Source) | — | Not yet measured |
| Premine (allocated at launch) | 10 | Fair launch: no premine |
| Fundraising | 10 | No sale of the coin |
| Developer share (after launch) | 10 | No developer share: every new coin goes to the miners who produce blocks |
| Supply & Demand | 8.9 | group average |
| Supply & Demand (Source) | 7.8 | average of 6 measures |
| Exchanges (10 or more: 10) | 10 | 47 exchanges |
| Daily volume ($10K 0, $1B or more 10) | 7.3 | $88,444,933 traded in 24 hours; #57 by volume on the exchanges the site reads (scored on the median day of the last 30, $43,625,224) |
| Turnover (volume ÷ market cap, 5% a day: 10) | 5.5 | 0.72% of its market cap a day, median of the last 30 days |
| Order-book depth (bids and asks within 2% ÷ market cap, 1%: 10) | 6.8 | $6,595,179 within 2% of the price on 9 exchanges, 0.11% of its market cap, median of the last 2 days; a lower bound: the books returned by 1 of them stop short of 2% |
| Market cap ($1M 0, $10B or more 10) | 9.4 | $5.8B, 9.4 on a scale of 2.5 points per tenfold |
| Paper trading (futures, options and margin ÷ market cap, 0%: 10, 100%: 0) | 7.9 | futures, options and margin positions 4.6% of its market cap |
| Supply (smaller is better) | 10 | fixed maximum supply of 21 million |
| Record | 9 | group average |
| Record (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 | ✓ | |
| 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, improvements, unfixed issues) | 7 | 3 positive, 1 negative source |
| Positive | ||
| Steady work, 6 of 6 | ✓ | 190 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. |
| Negative | ||
| Unfixed vulnerability, disclosed 2024-09-18, −1 | ✗ | CVE-2019-25220: a long low-difficulty header chain can exhaust memory because the node has no headers pre-synchronisation; still in Bitcoin Cash v29.2.0. |
Twenty criteria, weighted equally. The Cryptocurrency Standards have six sections: sound money qualities (six checks: scarcity, durability, fungibility, divisibility, portability, verifiability), privacy (five checks), scalability (four measures and three features), security (miner pay and seven checks), programmability (token issuance, smart contracts and five checks) and decentralisation (censorship resistance, no central team, who can mint, nodes, holders, premine, fundraising and developer share). Provisional: criteria 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.
20,109,081 of a maximum 21,000,000 BCH are in circulation — 95.8% of the total that will ever exist.
| Nodes or validators | 560 |
|---|
Bitcoin Cash is secured by 4.54 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.
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.
Bitcoin Cash is #14 among cryptocurrencies and #21 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 7 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 →