Ethereum Classic ranks #25 of 504 cryptocurrencies. On a list that also counts tokens, memecoins, wrapped coins, staked derivatives and stablecoins it appears at #69: 44 of the 68 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 56 non-native assets CoinSpectrum lists above it by market cap, about 59% are claims on other assets, 34% are tokens and 7% are memecoins.
| CoinSpectrum Grade | B · 73/100 · provisional |
|---|---|
| Rank among cryptocurrencies | #25 |
| Rank counting claims | #69 |
| Market capitalisation | $1.2B |
| Price | $7.55 |
| Circulating supply | 158,845,730 ETC |
| Maximum supply | 210,700,000 ETC |
| Consensus family | Proof of Work |
| Consensus mechanism | Etchash |
| Own hashrate | 194 TH/s |
| Network purpose | Smart-contract platform |
| Ledger type | Multi-asset ledger |
| Launch distribution | Presale |
Market figures from the 28 October 2026 build. Open the live view for every exchange's price, and charts.
B — 73 out of 100, provisional (from 18 of 20 criteria, 28 October 2026 build). With what is not yet measured anywhere from nothing to full marks, the score would be 66 to 76 (B 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) | 6.2 | group average, 11 of 13 measured |
| Sound Money Qualities (6 checks) | 6.5 | 3.9 of 6 points source |
| Scarcity: a fixed cap that holds, and a supply near 21 million | 9.4 | fixed maximum supply of 211 million: supply scale 8.7, cap 10 |
| Durability: five years or more with no halt, freeze or reversal | ✓ | 11 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 | ✓ | 18 decimal places, the smallest unit worth $7.5e-18 |
| Portability: fees of a cent or less and capacity for real demand | ✗ | typical fee $0.00035; about 30 transactions a second (2.7 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; no light clients or pruned nodes |
| Privacy (5 checks) | 2 | 1 of 5 passed source |
| Whitepaper privacy: keys are not tied to an identity | ✓ | Any secp256k1 key can hold and send ETC; the chain's account and transfer 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) | ✗ | core-geth relays transactions directly; no Dandelion or Tor. |
| Hidden amounts (confidential transactions, RingCT, shielded pools, Mimblewimble) | ✗ | No confidential transactions. |
| Hidden sender and receiver (ring signatures or zero-knowledge proofs, one-time or stealth addresses) | ✗ | No sender or receiver hiding. |
| Scalability (fees, throughput, block time, block space, features) | 5.2 | average of 5 parts source |
| Fees ($0.001 or less 10, $1 or more 0) | 10 | typical fee $0.00035 |
| Throughput (2,478 a second, the busiest network's peak day, 10; 119, the median of the ten busiest, 5) | 2.7 | about 30 simple transactions a second |
| Block time (10 minutes 10, less either side) | 4 | a block every 12.6 seconds |
| Block space per 10 minutes (32 MB or more 10) | 9.5 | 0.5 MB limit (converted from its gas, compute, mass or count limit), 23.8 MB per 10 minutes |
| Features (3 checks) | 0 | 0 of 3 passed |
| Payments safe to accept within seconds | ✗ | About 14.6-second probabilistic PoW blocks; safe acceptance needs many confirmations. |
| Pruned nodes: a full node can validate and drop old history | ✗ | core-geth --gcmode full prunes old state tries but keeps every block; no block-history expiry. |
| Light clients verify payments from headers or proofs, without a trusted server | ✗ | No sync-committee or finality-proof light client; PoW header chains without a maintained light protocol. |
| Security (miner pay and 7 checks) | 6 | 6 of 9 points source |
| Miners paid a day ($1,000 0, $10 million or more 10), 2 points | 4.8 | about $79,746 a day |
| Its own hashrate: at least half its algorithm's largest, not merge-mined | ✓ | |
| Largest pool or validator under 50% | ✓ | 41.4% |
| Largest three under 75% | ✗ | 81.8% |
| More than one maintained client | ✗ | 1 |
| Node software is open source | ✓ | Core-geth, the only maintained ETC client after Besu dropped ETC, is maintained by a small group of developers funded by the ETC Cooperative. |
| Real on-chain use: 1,000+ transactions a day | ✓ | about 10,083 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 | ERC-20 contracts on its EVM, open to any account since the 2016 chain split. |
| Smart contracts: a general-purpose contract system | 2 | The EVM, open to any account, with Ethereum's contract tooling carried over. |
| Multisig and time locks | ✓ | Multisig and timelock contracts on the EVM. |
| Atomic swaps with other chains | ✓ | EVM HTLC contracts (hash lock plus timelock refund). |
| An exchange built into the protocol | ✗ | No exchange in the protocol. |
| Cross-chain messaging the chain verifies itself | ✗ | No protocol messaging to other chains. |
| Non-fungible tokens | ✓ | ERC-721 contracts on the EVM. |
| Decentralisation | 6.8 | section average, 6 of 8 measured |
| Censorship resistant (Source) | 10 | No authority can halt the chain or freeze funds: No protocol-level party can freeze coins or halt the chain. source |
| No central team (Source) | 0 | A central team directs it: Core-geth, the only maintained ETC client after Besu dropped ETC, is maintained by a small group of developers funded by the ETC Cooperative. source |
| Who can mint (Source) | 10 | Proof of work: 10 of 10 on the ladder of who produces blocks |
| Nodes (Source) | — | Not yet counted |
| Holder concentration (Source) | — | Not yet measured |
| Premine (allocated at launch) | 5.4 | 45.7% of today's supply allocated at launch to founders, a company, a foundation or investors. ETC inherits Ethereum's genesis allocation of 72,009,990.5 coins (about 60M from the 2014 public sale plus about 12M to the developer fund and the Ethereum Foundation), against a circulating/total supply of about 157.7M ETC (CoinGlass and Coinranking, 2026). source |
| Fundraising | 5.4 | Sold by its issuer or insiders: 45.7% of supply was theirs to sell, 38% sold so far. Inherited from Ethereum's 2014 crowdsale on the predecessor chain (balances copied 1:1 at the 2016 fork): 60,102,216 ETH sold; ETC itself made no sale. 60.10M / ~158.0M ETC circulating = total (KuCoin/Finary, Aug-Sep 2026) = 38.0%. Ethereum's 2014 public crowdsale (42 days, open to anyone) raised 31,591 BTC (about $18.4M). There were no private or VC rounds. ETC adds no sale of its own. source |
| Developer share (after launch) | 10 | No developer share: every new coin goes to the miners or validators who produce blocks. The whole block reward (ECIP-1017 '5M20' schedule, now 2.048 ETC) goes to miners; there has never been a dev fee. A protocol treasury (ECIP-1098) was proposed and not adopted, and the ETC Cooperative is donation-funded. source |
| Supply & Demand | 8.1 | group average |
| Supply & Demand (Source) | 7.6 | average of 6 measures |
| Exchanges (10 or more: 10) | 10 | 47 exchanges |
| Daily volume ($10K 0, $1B or more 10) | 6.2 | $11,601,822 traded in 24 hours; #114 by volume on the exchanges the site reads (scored on the median day of the last 30, $13,108,278) |
| Turnover (volume ÷ market cap, 5% a day: 10) | 6.4 | 1.0% of its market cap a day, median of the last 30 days |
| Order-book depth (bids and asks within 2% ÷ market cap, 1%: 10) | 7.7 | $2,446,219 within 2% of the price on 9 exchanges, 0.20% of its market cap, median of the last 2 days |
| Market cap ($1M 0, $10B or more 10) | 7.7 | $1.2B, 7.7 on a scale of 2.5 points per tenfold |
| Paper trading (futures, options and margin ÷ market cap, 0%: 10, 100%: 0) | 7.5 | futures, options and margin positions 6.1% of its market cap |
| Supply (smaller is better) | 8.7 | fixed maximum supply of 211 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 | 11 full years since genesis. Ethereum's original chain, which kept its ledger when the DAO-recovery fork split off at block 1,920,000 on 20 July 2016: its history runs from the genesis block of 30 July 2015. |
| Development (work, improvements, unfixed issues) | 7 | 2 positive, 0 negative source |
| Positive | ||
| Steady work, 6 of 6 | ✓ | 28 commits in 3 of the last 12 months (github.com/etclabscore/core-geth); core-geth v1.12.23 'Argos', released 2026-08-14 (also v1.12.21 and v1.12.22 in March 2026; no release between June 2024 and March 2026). |
| Shipped a security fix in two years, +1 | ✓ | Core-geth v1.12.21, 18 Mar 2026: emergency patch for an active attack on bootnodes; v1.12.22, 28 Mar 2026: CVE-2025-24883, CVE-2026-26315, CVE-2026-26313. |
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.
158,845,730 of a maximum 210,700,000 ETC are in circulation — 75.4% of the total that will ever exist.
| Premine (allocated at launch) | 45.7% of today's supply |
|---|---|
| Sold by the issuer or insiders | 38% of today's supply |
| Developer share received since launch | 0% of today's supply |
| Developer share of new coins today | 0% |
| Fundraising | Public sale |
ETC inherits Ethereum's genesis allocation of 72,009,990.5 coins (about 60M from the 2014 public sale plus about 12M to the developer fund and the Ethereum Foundation), against a circulating/total supply of about 157.7M ETC (CoinGlass and Coinranking, 2026).
Ethereum's 2014 public crowdsale (42 days, open to anyone) raised 31,591 BTC (about $18.4M). There were no private or VC rounds. ETC adds no sale of its own.
Inherited from Ethereum's 2014 crowdsale on the predecessor chain (balances copied 1:1 at the 2016 fork): 60,102,216 ETH sold; ETC itself made no sale. 60.10M / ~158.0M ETC circulating = total (KuCoin/Finary, Aug-Sep 2026) = 38.0%.
The whole block reward (ECIP-1017 '5M20' schedule, now 2.048 ETC) goes to miners; there has never been a dev fee. A protocol treasury (ECIP-1098) was proposed and not adopted, and the ETC Cooperative is donation-funded.
Sources: blog.ethereum.org · kucoin.com · coinranking.com · github.com · github.com · coinranking.com. Researched 2026-10-24, high confidence.
Ethereum Classic is secured by 194 TH/s of its own work. Hashrate does not compare across algorithms — a SHA-256 hash and a Scrypt hash cost different amounts to produce.
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.
Ethereum Classic is #25 among cryptocurrencies and #69 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 44 places between Ethereum Classic'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).