Qtum ranks #65 of 504 cryptocurrencies. On a list that also counts tokens, memecoins, wrapped coins, staked derivatives and stablecoins it appears at #305: 240 of the 304 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 316 non-native assets CoinSpectrum lists above it by market cap, about 52% are tokens, 42% are claims on other assets and 7% are memecoins.
| CoinSpectrum Grade | B · 68/100 · provisional |
|---|---|
| Rank among cryptocurrencies | #65 |
| Rank counting claims | #305 |
| Market capitalisation | $88M |
| Price | $0.8294 |
| Circulating supply | 106,136,976 QTUM |
| Maximum supply | no fixed cap |
| Consensus family | Proof of Stake |
| Consensus mechanism | Mutualized PoS (UTXO) |
| 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 — 68 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 65 to 70 (B 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) | 5.4 | group average, 11 of 12 measured |
| Sound Money Properties (6 checks) (Source) | 7.5 | 4.5 of 6 points source |
| Scarcity (Limited supply · 1 Store of value · Whitepaper §6) | 4.6 | no fixed maximum; 106 million in circulation: supply scale 9.1, cap 0 |
| Durability (Sustainability · 1 Store of value) | ✓ | 9 full years since its first recorded price, no halt, freeze or reversal in five years |
| Fungibility (Interchangeability · 3 Unit of account) | ✓ | every unit identical and worth any other |
| Portability (Scalability · 2 Medium of exchange) | ✗ | typical fee $0.00075; about 69 transactions a second, 4.1 on the throughput scale (5 is the busiest networks' median demand) |
| Divisibility (Flexibility · 3 Unit of account) | ✓ | 8 decimal places, the smallest unit worth $8.3e-9 |
| Verifiability (Authenticity check · 1 Store of value · Whitepaper §8) | ✓ | node software open source; pruned nodes validate everything |
| Scalability (fees, throughput, block time, block space, features) | 6.1 | average of 5 parts source |
| Fees ($0.001 or less 10, $1 or more 0) | 10 | typical fee $0.00075 |
| Throughput (2,478 a second, the busiest network's peak day, 10; 119, the median of the ten busiest, 5) | 4.1 | about 69 simple transactions a second |
| Block time (10 minutes 10, less either side) | 5.4 | a block every 32 seconds |
| Block space per 10 minutes (32 MB or more 10) | 7.9 | 0.5 MB limit, 9.38 MB per 10 minutes |
| Features (3 checks) | 3.3 | 1 of 3 passed |
| Fast payments (Safe to accept within seconds · Whitepaper §11) | ✗ | 32-second PoS blocks with probabilistic confirmation; nothing protects zero-confirmation payments. |
| Pruned nodes (Old history dropped, every rule checked · Whitepaper §7) | ✓ | Qtum Core -prune deletes old blocks. |
| Light clients (Payments verified from headers · Whitepaper §8) | ✗ | Qtum is proof of stake, so Bitcoin-style SPV cannot check the stake behind its headers, and no shipped light client verifies it; light wallets trust a server. |
| Security (miner pay and 7 checks) | 4 | 4 of 9 points source |
| Miner pay (A day, $1,000 0 to $10 million 10; 2 points) | 0 | not mined |
| Own hashrate (Half its algorithm's largest, not merge-mined) | ✗ | not mined |
| Largest pool (Pool or validator under 50%) | ✓ | 22.6% |
| Largest three (Under 75% together) | ✓ | 53.6% |
| Clients (More than one maintained) | ✗ | 1 |
| Open source (Node software) | ✓ | The Qtum node is developed in the Qtum Foundation's qtumproject repository. |
| Real use (1,000+ transactions a day) | ✗ | about 151 a day |
| No 51% attack (Nor a deep reorganisation, five years) | ✓ | |
| Decentralisation | 5.5 | section average, 7 of 8 measured |
| Censorship resistant (Source) | 10 | No authority can halt the chain or freeze funds: No protocol-level freeze or halt authority over ordinary coins. source |
| No central team (Source) | 0 | A central team directs it: The Qtum node is developed in the Qtum Foundation's qtumproject repository. source |
| Who can mint (Source) | 8.6 | Proof of stake: 8.6 of 10 on the ladder of who produces blocks |
| Nodes (Source) | 8.5 | 347 reachable nodes source |
| Holder concentration (Source) | — | Not yet measured |
| Premine (allocated at launch) | 0.6 | 94.2% of today's supply allocated at launch to founders, a company, a foundation or investors. 100M QTUM created at genesis (Sep 2017): 51M to crowdsale buyers, 20M founders/early backers/team, 29M community/foundation, against current supply 106,133,609 QTUM (qtum.info, 2026-10-23). source |
| Fundraising | 0.6 | Sold by its issuer or insiders: 94.2% of supply was theirs to sell, 48.1% sold so far. The March 2017 crowdsale sold 51M QTUM for ~11,000 BTC and ~75,000 ETH (~$15.6M). 51M / 106,133,609 QTUM current supply (qtum.info, 2026-10-23) = 48.1%. Excluded: the Jan 2017 ~$1M angel round from 11 investors, whose QTUM sit inside the 20M founders/early-backers/team bucket and were not broken out. ~$1M angel round from 11 investors (Jan 2017), then the March 2017 crowdsale raising ~$15.6M in BTC and ETH. source |
| Developer share (after launch) | 10 | No developer share: every new coin goes to the miners or validators who produce blocks. Qtum's PoS block reward (4 QTUM at launch, halving about every four years) goes entirely to the staker who produces the block. No developer or foundation share is taken; the founders' and foundation's coins came from the 2017 genesis (premine). source |
| Privacy | 4 | section average |
| Privacy (5 checks) | 4 | 2 of 5 passed source |
| Protocol level privacy (Keys not tied to an identity · Whitepaper §10) | ✓ | Anyone can generate keys and receive and send coins; the consensus rules carry no identity check. |
| UTXO ledger (A new key for each payment · Whitepaper §2, §9) | ✓ | |
| Network privacy (Origin hidden by default) | ✗ | Qtum Core relays transactions directly; Tor is optional configuration. |
| Hidden amounts (Amounts confidential) | ✗ | No confidential transactions. |
| Hidden parties (Sender and receiver hidden) | ✗ | No sender or receiver hiding. |
| Programmability (tokens, contracts, 5 checks) | 7.8 | 7 of 9 points source |
| Token issuance (At protocol level) | 2 | QRC-20 (ERC-20 compatible) contracts on its EVM, run over a UTXO account abstraction layer and open to any account. |
| Smart contracts (General-purpose) | 2 | An EVM over a UTXO account-abstraction layer, open to any account. |
| Multisig and time locks (Without a third party) | ✓ | Bitcoin Script multisig plus CLTV (BIP 65 from genesis) and CSV (block 6,048). |
| Atomic swaps (With other chains) | ✓ | HTLCs in Script; Qtum is a supported coin in decred/atomicswap. |
| Native exchange (Built into the protocol) | ✗ | No exchange in the protocol. |
| Cross-chain messaging (Verified by the chain itself) | ✗ | No protocol messaging to other chains. |
| NFTs (Carried by the chain's rules) | ✓ | QRC-721 (ERC-721 compatible) contracts on the EVM. |
| Supply & Demand | 7.9 | group average |
| Supply & Demand (Source) | 6.6 | average of 6 measures |
| Exchanges (10 or more: 10) | 10 | 34 exchanges |
| Daily volume ($10K 0, $1B or more 10) | 3.8 | $381,370 traded in 24 hours; #734 by volume on the exchanges the site reads (scored on the median day of the last 30, $790,485) |
| Turnover (volume ÷ market cap, 5% a day: 10) | 5.8 | 0.80% of its market cap a day, median of the last 30 days |
| Order-book depth (bids and asks within 2% ÷ market cap, 1%: 10) | 8.2 | $252,008 within 2% of the price on 8 exchanges, 0.29% of its market cap, median of the last 2 days |
| Market cap ($1M 0, $10B or more 10) | 4.9 | $88M, 4.9 on a scale of 2.5 points per tenfold |
| Paper trading (futures, options and margin ÷ market cap, 0%: 10, 100%: 0) | 6.9 | futures, options and margin positions 9.7% of its market cap |
| Supply (smaller is better) | 9.1 | no fixed maximum; 106 million in circulation |
| Record | 9.3 | 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) | 9 | 9 full years since 2017-05-24, the first day with a recorded price (genesis not yet researched, so the age can only be understated). |
| Development (work, improvements, unfixed issues) | 9 | 4 positive, 0 negative source |
| Positive | ||
| Steady work, 6 of 6 | ✓ | 259 commits in 12 of the last 12 months (github.com/qtumproject/qtum); Qtum Core v30.2, released 2026-07-22 (v29.1 2025-11-04, v27.1 2024-11-03). |
| Shipped a security fix in two years, +1 | ✓ | Qtum Core v29.1 hard fork, Jan 2026: security fixes including the 32-bit -maxmempool/-dbcache overflow cap. |
| Shipped a privacy improvement in two years, +1 | ✓ | Qtum Core v27.1, Nov 2024 (hard fork Feb 2025): BIP 324 v2 encrypted P2P transport. |
| Shipped a new capability for users in two years, +1 | ✓ | v27.1 hard fork at block 4,590,000, Feb 2025: EVM Dencun (transient storage, MCOPY); v29.1, Jan 2026: Pectra precompiles. |
Twenty criteria, weighted equally. The Cryptocurrency Standards have five sections: sound money (six qualities: scarcity, durability, fungibility, portability, divisibility, verifiability), scalability (four measures and three features), security (miner pay and seven checks), decentralisation (censorship resistance, no central team, who can mint, nodes, holders, premine, fundraising and developer share) and privacy (five checks); programmability (token issuance, smart contracts and five checks) follows them. 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.
106,136,976 QTUM are in circulation, against no fixed cap — issuance has no defined end.
| Premine (allocated at launch) | 94.2% of today's supply |
|---|---|
| Sold by the issuer or insiders | 48.1% of today's supply |
| Developer share received since launch | 0% of today's supply |
| Developer share of new coins today | 0% |
| Nodes or validators | 347 |
| Fundraising | Private or venture funding |
100M QTUM created at genesis (Sep 2017): 51M to crowdsale buyers, 20M founders/early backers/team, 29M community/foundation, against current supply 106,133,609 QTUM (qtum.info, 2026-10-23).
~$1M angel round from 11 investors (Jan 2017), then the March 2017 crowdsale raising ~$15.6M in BTC and ETH.
The March 2017 crowdsale sold 51M QTUM for ~11,000 BTC and ~75,000 ETH (~$15.6M). 51M / 106,133,609 QTUM current supply (qtum.info, 2026-10-23) = 48.1%. Excluded: the Jan 2017 ~$1M angel round from 11 investors, whose QTUM sit inside the 20M founders/early-backers/team bucket and were not broken out.
Qtum's PoS block reward (4 QTUM at launch, halving about every four years) goes entirely to the staker who produces the block. No developer or foundation share is taken; the founders' and foundation's coins came from the 2017 genesis (premine).
Sources: financemagnates.com · blog.qtum.org · qtum.info · github.com · altfins.com · cbinsights.com. Researched 2026-10-24, medium 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.
Qtum is #65 among cryptocurrencies and #305 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 240 places between Qtum'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).