IOTA ranks #54 of 504 cryptocurrencies. On a list that also counts tokens, memecoins, wrapped coins, staked derivatives and stablecoins it appears at #179: 125 of the 178 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 174 non-native assets CoinSpectrum lists above it by market cap, about 51% are claims on other assets, 43% are tokens and 6% are memecoins.
| CoinSpectrum Grade | B · 65/100 · provisional |
|---|---|
| Rank among cryptocurrencies | #54 |
| Rank counting claims | #179 |
| Market capitalisation | $195M |
| Price | $0.0414 |
| Circulating supply | 4,717,964,052 IOTA |
| Maximum supply | no fixed cap |
| Consensus family | Proof of Stake |
| Consensus mechanism | Tangle |
| Ledger type | Single-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 — 65 out of 100, provisional (from 17 of 20 criteria, 28 October 2026 build). With what is not yet measured anywhere from nothing to full marks, the score would be 55 to 71 (C to B).
| Criterion | Score | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| Leading Consensus Mechanisms (Source) | 9.1 | group average |
| Consensus: leader ladder | 9.1 | Proof of stake: 9.1 of 10 on the ladder of consensus families ranked by their largest chain's market cap |
| Consensus: family ladder | 9.1 | Proof of stake: 9.1 of 10 on the ladder of families ranked by the combined market cap of their chains |
| Cryptocurrency Standards (Source) | 5.2 | group average, 10 of 13 measured |
| Sound Money Qualities (6 checks) | 6.8 | 3.4 of 5 points, 1 not yet measured source |
| Scarcity: a fixed cap that holds, and a supply near 21 million | 3.5 | no fixed maximum; 4.72 billion in circulation: supply scale 6.9, cap 0 |
| Durability: five years or more with no halt, freeze or reversal | ✗ | 9 full years since its first recorded price, one 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 | ✓ | 9 decimal places, the smallest unit worth $4.1e-11 |
| Portability: fees of a cent or less and capacity for real 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) | 2 | 1 of 5 passed source |
| Whitepaper privacy: keys are not tied to an identity | ✓ | Anyone can create keys and receive and send coins; the protocol carries 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) | ✗ | IOTA Rebased (Sui-derived) submits transactions to validators directly. |
| 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) | — | 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; 119, the median of the ten busiest, 5) | – | not yet measured |
| Block time (10 minutes 10, less either side) | 0 | a block every 0.2 seconds |
| Block space per 10 minutes (32 MB or more 10) | – | not yet measured |
| Features (3 checks) | 10 | 3 of 3 passed |
| Payments safe to accept within seconds | ✓ | Since the 2025 Rebased upgrade, Mysticeti consensus finalises transactions in under a second. |
| Pruned nodes: a full node can validate and drop old history | ✓ | Sui-derived full nodes prune old objects and checkpoints after a retention window. |
| Light clients verify payments from headers or proofs, without a trusted server | ✓ | IOTA Rebased (May 2025) ships the iota-light-client crate, which verifies committee-signed checkpoints. |
| Security (miner pay and 7 checks) | 5 | 5 of 9 points source |
| Miners paid a day ($1,000 0, $10 million or more 10), 2 points | 0 | not mined |
| Its own hashrate: at least half its algorithm's largest, not merge-mined | ✗ | not mined |
| Largest pool or validator under 50% | ✓ | 11.15% |
| Largest three under 75% | ✓ | 23.41% |
| More than one maintained client | ✗ | 1 |
| Node software is open source | ✓ | The node software is developed by the IOTA Foundation in the iotaledger repository. |
| Real on-chain use: 1,000+ transactions a day | ✓ | about 2,042,152 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 | Move coins from packages any account can publish, since the IOTA Rebased mainnet upgrade of May 2025. |
| Smart contracts: a general-purpose contract system | 2 | Move packages publishable by any account since the IOTA Rebased mainnet upgrade of May 2025. |
| Multisig and time locks | ✓ | Built-in k-of-n weighted multisig (up to 10 parties) plus time conditions in Move via the on-chain clock. |
| Atomic swaps with other chains | ✓ | Move packages can hold funds against a hash preimage with a timeout refund (HTLC). |
| 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 | ✓ | NFTs as Move objects in the object model. |
| Decentralisation | 5 | section average, 6 of 8 measured |
| Censorship resistant (Source) | 10 | No authority can halt the chain or freeze funds: The Rebased protocol has no freeze or halt key over IOTA; the IOTA Foundation stopped the old coordinator in February 2020, but that component no longer exists. source |
| No central team (Source) | 0 | A central team directs it: The node software is developed by the IOTA Foundation in the iotaledger repository. source |
| Who can mint (Source) | 8.6 | Proof of stake: 8.6 of 10 on the ladder of who produces blocks |
| Nodes (Source) | — | Not yet counted |
| Holder concentration (Source) | — | Not yet measured |
| Premine (allocated at launch) | 0.8 | 91.8% of today's supply allocated at launch to founders, a company, a foundation or investors. Before open issuance began with IOTA Rebased (May 2025), every token was allocated: 2,779,530,283 IOTA sold in the 2015 crowdsale plus about 1.82B minted at the October 2023 Stardust upgrade for the Foundation, the Tangle Ecosystem Association, a UAE entity, contributors and an airdrop. That is about 4.6B against a current total supply of 5,011,022,291 IOTA (CoinGecko, 2026-10-23). source |
| Fundraising | 0.8 | Sold by its issuer or insiders: 91.8% of supply was theirs to sell, 55.5% sold so far. The Nov-Dec 2015 crowdsale sold the entire original supply of 2,779,530,283 IOTA; holders later donated 5% to the Foundation, but that came after the sale and does not undo it. 2,779.5M / 5,011.0M total supply (CoinGecko, 2026-10-23) = 55.5%. Open crowdsale, 25 November to 21 December 2015, raising about 1,300 to 1,337 BTC (about $500k). No private or venture token round was found. In 2017, early holders donated 5% of supply to the Foundation. source |
| Developer share (after launch) | 10 | No developer share: every new coin goes to the miners or validators who produce blocks. Since IOTA Rebased (May 2025), 767,000 IOTA is minted every ~24h epoch and paid to validators and their stakers through staking pools. Fees are burned. No foundation or treasury share is taken from issuance. The Foundation's tokens came from the 2023 Stardust mint, which is already counted under premine. source |
| Supply & Demand | 7.1 | group average |
| Supply & Demand (Source) | 7.2 | average of 6 measures |
| Exchanges (10 or more: 10) | 10 | 34 exchanges |
| Daily volume ($10K 0, $1B or more 10) | 4.7 | $1,196,848 traded in 24 hours; #424 by volume on the exchanges the site reads (scored on the median day of the last 30, $2,284,939) |
| Turnover (volume ÷ market cap, 5% a day: 10) | 6.2 | 0.94% of its market cap a day, median of the last 30 days |
| Order-book depth (bids and asks within 2% ÷ market cap, 1%: 10) | 8.9 | $930,306 within 2% of the price on 5 exchanges, 0.48% of its market cap, median of the last 2 days |
| Market cap ($1M 0, $10B or more 10) | 5.7 | $195M, 5.7 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) | 6.9 | no fixed maximum; 4.72 billion in circulation |
| Record | 8.7 | group average |
| Record (origin, claims, halts) | 9 | 2 positive, 1 negative source |
| Positive record | ||
| Launched with a stated purpose, not as a joke | ✓ | |
| No claims by its founders that contradict its own design | ✓ | |
| Negative record | ||
| Halt, freeze or reversal, 2021-12-29 | ✗ | Coordinator stopped issuing milestones on mainnet for at least four hours (investigation from 06:59, fix in progress at 11:01); Coordinator restarted and nodes told to update to Hornet 1.1.3. |
| Age (years since genesis) (Source) | 9 | 9 full years since 2017-06-13, the first day with a recorded price (genesis not yet researched, so the age can only be understated). |
| Development (work, improvements, unfixed issues) | 8 | 3 positive, 0 negative, 1 not yet researched source |
| Positive | ||
| Steady work, 6 of 6 | ✓ | 3,299 commits in 12 of the last 12 months (github.com/iotaledger/iota); iota v1.34.1 [Mainnet], released 2026-10-21. |
| Shipped a scaling upgrade in two years, +1 | ✓ | IOTA Rebased hard fork, 5 May 2025: new Move-based ledger with parallel execution. |
| Shipped a new capability for users in two years, +1 | ✓ | IOTA Rebased, 5 May 2025: Move smart contracts and delegated staking on L1. |
| Not yet researched | ||
| Shipped a security fix in two years | – | |
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.
4,717,964,052 IOTA are in circulation, against no fixed cap — issuance has no defined end.
| Premine (allocated at launch) | 91.8% of today's supply |
|---|---|
| Sold by the issuer or insiders | 55.5% of today's supply |
| Developer share received since launch | 0% of today's supply |
| Developer share of new coins today | 0% |
| Fundraising | Public sale |
Before open issuance began with IOTA Rebased (May 2025), every token was allocated: 2,779,530,283 IOTA sold in the 2015 crowdsale plus about 1.82B minted at the October 2023 Stardust upgrade for the Foundation, the Tangle Ecosystem Association, a UAE entity, contributors and an airdrop. That is about 4.6B against a current total supply of 5,011,022,291 IOTA (CoinGecko, 2026-10-23).
Open crowdsale, 25 November to 21 December 2015, raising about 1,300 to 1,337 BTC (about $500k). No private or venture token round was found. In 2017, early holders donated 5% of supply to the Foundation.
The Nov-Dec 2015 crowdsale sold the entire original supply of 2,779,530,283 IOTA; holders later donated 5% to the Foundation, but that came after the sale and does not undo it. 2,779.5M / 5,011.0M total supply (CoinGecko, 2026-10-23) = 55.5%.
Since IOTA Rebased (May 2025), 767,000 IOTA is minted every ~24h epoch and paid to validators and their stakers through staking pools. Fees are burned. No foundation or treasury share is taken from issuance. The Foundation's tokens came from the 2023 Stardust mint, which is already counted under premine.
Sources: blog.iota.org · coingecko.com · docs.iota.org · docs.iota.org · en.wikipedia.org · wiki.iota.org. Researched 2026-10-24, high confidence.
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.
IOTA is #54 among cryptocurrencies and #179 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 125 places between IOTA'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 IOTA →