Bitcoin (BTC)

Bitcoin ranks #1 of 489 cryptocurrencies — assets with their own blockchain and their own consensus mechanism.

CoinSpectrum GradeA+ · 83/100 · provisional
Rank among cryptocurrencies#1
Rank counting claims#1
Market capitalisation$1.64T
Price$81,361
Circulating supply20,105,281 BTC
Maximum supply21,000,000 BTC
Consensus familyProof of Work
Consensus mechanismSHA-256
Own hashrate972 EH/s
Network purposeSettlement ledger
Ledger typeOverlay-asset ledger
Launch distributionNo premine
Regulatory classCommodity

Market figures from the 29 October 2026 build. Open the live view for every exchange's price, and charts.

CoinSpectrum Grade (Source)

A+ — 83 out of 100, provisional (from 12 of 12 criteria, 29 October 2026 build). With what is not yet measured anywhere from nothing to full marks, the score would be 82 to 83 (A+ to A+).

CriterionScoreBasis
Leading Consensus Mechanisms (Source)10group average
By family (all its chains' market cap)10Proof of work: 10 of 10 on the ladder of families ranked by the combined market cap of their chains
By leader (its largest chain's market cap)10Proof of work: 10 of 10 on the ladder of consensus families ranked by their largest chain's market cap
Cryptocurrency Standards (Source)7.6group average
Sound Money Properties (6 checks) (Source)8.35 of 6 points source
Scarcity (Limited supply · Store of value · Whitepaper §6)10fixed maximum supply of 21 million: supply scale 10, cap 10
Durability (Sustainability · Store of value)✓17 full years since genesis, no halt, freeze or reversal in five years
Fungibility (Interchangeability · Unit of account)✓every unit identical and worth any other
Portability (Scalability · Medium of exchange)✗typical fee $0.013, over a cent; about 12 transactions a second, 1.2 on the throughput scale (5 is the busiest networks' median demand)
Divisibility (Flexibility · Unit of account)✓8 decimal places, the smallest unit worth $0.00081
Verifiability (Authenticity check · Store of value · Whitepaper §8)✓node software open source; light clients verify from headers or proofs
Privacy (5 checks)42 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)✗Bitcoin Core 31.0 (Apr 2026): -privatebroadcast sends own transactions over Tor/I2P, but it is opt-in and needs Tor/I2P set up; no Dandelion relay.
Hidden amounts (Amounts confidential)✗No confidential transactions in the protocol; amounts are public.
Hidden parties (Sender and receiver hidden)✗No ring signatures, ZK sender proofs or stealth addresses in the protocol.
Scalability (fees, throughput, block time, block space, features)6.1average of 5 parts source
Fees ($0.001 or less 10, $1 or more 0)6.3typical fee $0.013
Throughput (2,478 a second, the busiest network's peak day, 10; 119, the median of the ten busiest, 5)1.2about 11.8 simple transactions a second
Block time (10 minutes 10, less either side)10a block every 10 minutes
Block space per 10 minutes (32 MB or more 10)6.44 MB limit
Features (3 checks)6.72 of 3 passed
Fast payments (Safe to accept within seconds · Whitepaper §11)✗Ten-minute probabilistic blocks, and Bitcoin Core relays full replace-by-fee by default since v28, so zero-confirmation payments are not protected by the network.
Pruned nodes (Old history dropped, every rule checked · Whitepaper §7)✓Bitcoin Core 0.11 (2015): -prune keeps the UTXO set and recent blocks (at least 288).
Light clients (Payments verified from headers · Whitepaper §8)✓SPV with Merkle proofs since the 2008 whitepaper; BIP 157/158 compact block filters served by Bitcoin Core 0.21 (2021).
Security (miner pay, pool diversity, network activity and 4 checks)9.59.5 of 10 points source
Miner pay (A day, $1,000 0 to $10 million 10; 2 points)10about $36,803,649 a day
Pool diversity (Largest pool 50% 0 to 20% 10, largest three 90% 0 to 50% 10; 2 points)7.4largest 26%, largest three 63.2%
Network activity (Transactions a day, 250 0, 500,000 or more 10; 2 points)10about 714,813 transactions a day
Own hashrate (Half its algorithm's largest, not merge-mined)✓
Clients (More than one maintained)✓2
Open source (Node software)✓Bitcoin Core is maintained by independent contributors funded by many separate companies and grants; btcd (btcsuite) is a separate implementation.
No 51% attack (Nor a deep reorganisation, five years)✓
Decentralisation (8 checks and scales) (Source)10average of 7 parts
Censorship resistant (Source)10No authority can halt the chain or freeze funds: No protocol-level party can freeze, blacklist or claw back coins or halt the chain. source
No central team (Source)10No central team: Bitcoin Core is maintained by independent contributors funded by many separate companies and grants; btcd (btcsuite) is a separate implementation. source
Who can mint (Source)10Open to anyone with hardware: anyone can produce blocks by mining or proof of space, no permission or stake needed
Nodes (Source)1012,138 reachable nodes source
Holder concentration (Source)–Not yet measured
Premine (allocated at launch)10Fair launch: no premine
Fundraising (share sold)10No sale of the coin
Developer share (after launch)10No developer share: every new coin goes to the miners who produce blocks
Programmability (tokens, contracts, 5 checks)4.44 of 9 points source
Token issuance (Through a metaprotocol)1Ordinals/BRC-20, Runes, Omni, Counterparty, RGB, Taproot Assets: read by indexers, not validated by the chain's nodes
Smart contracts (Scripting for spending conditions)1Bitcoin Script limited to spending conditions (signatures, hashes, time locks, multisig); no general contract system on the base layer.
Multisig and time locks (Without a third party)✓m-of-n OP_CHECKMULTISIG (bare and P2SH) plus nLockTime, OP_CHECKLOCKTIMEVERIFY (BIP 65, 2015) and OP_CHECKSEQUENCEVERIFY (BIP 112, 2016).
Atomic swaps (With other chains)✓HTLCs (hash branch plus CLTV/CSV refund branch) expressible in standard Script, as specified in BIP 199; Garden runs BTC HTLC swaps.
Native exchange (Built into the protocol)✗No order book or AMM in the consensus rules.
Cross-chain messaging (Verified by the chain itself)✗No protocol messaging to other chains; bridges and sidechains are run by third parties.
NFTs (Carried by the chain's rules)✗No token type in consensus; Ordinals inscriptions are read only by indexers.
Supply & Demand (8 measures) (Source)8.3average of 8 measures
Exchanges (10 or more: 10)1048 exchanges
Daily volume ($10K 0, $1B or more 10)10$9,708,692,538 traded in 24 hours; #2 by volume on the exchanges the site reads (scored on the median day of the last 30, $8,788,605,695)
Turnover (volume ÷ market cap, 5% a day: 10)4.80.53% of its market cap a day, median of the last 30 days
Order-book depth (±2% of the price ÷ market cap, 1%: 10)4$266,241,718 within 2% of the price on 9 exchanges, 0.02% of its market cap, median of the last 3 days; a lower bound: the books returned by 7 of them stop short of 2%
Market cap ($1M 0, $10B or more 10)10$1636B, at the top of the scale
Paper trading (futures, options and margin ÷ market cap, 0%: 10, 100%: 0)7.7futures, options and margin positions 5.3% of its market cap
Supply (21 million scores 10)10fixed maximum supply of 21 million
Wallet support (wallets that hold it, 10 or more: 10)1043 wallets in the site's wallet directory
Record9.7group average
Age (years since genesis) (Source)1017 full years since genesis. Genesis block mined 3 January 2009.
Development (work, fixes, vulnerabilities)94 positive, 0 negative source
Positive
Steady work, 6 of 6✓3,712 commits in 12 of the last 12 months (github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin); Bitcoin Core v32.0, released 2026-10-21; regular six-monthly major releases.
Shipped a security fix in two years, +1✓Bitcoin Core 30.0, Oct 2025: fixed four disclosed low-severity vulnerabilities (CVE-2025-46597, -46598, -54604, -54605); 29.0, Apr 2025, fixed a remote-code-execution bug disclosed later.
Shipped a privacy improvement in two years, +1✓Bitcoin Core 31.0, Apr 2026: opt-in private broadcast sends a node's own transactions over short-lived Tor/I2P connections (P2P transport, not consensus).
Shipped a scaling upgrade in two years, +1✓Bitcoin Core 29.1 (Sep 2025) and 30.0 (Oct 2025): default minimum relay fee cut tenfold, 1 to 0.1 sat/vB (relay policy, not consensus; no block-size change).
Conduct (origin, claims, halts)103 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✓

Twelve criteria, weighted equally. The Cryptocurrency Standards are five of them: sound money (six qualities: scarcity, durability, fungibility, portability, divisibility, verifiability), privacy (five checks), scalability (four measures and three features), security (miner pay, pool diversity, network activity and four checks) and decentralisation (censorship resistance, no central team, who can mint, nodes, holders, premine, fundraising and developer share); programmability (token issuance, smart contracts and five checks) follows them, and supply and demand averages eight measures of the market, the wallets and the supply. 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.

Proof of Work coins

Zcash ZECADogecoin DOGEBMonero XMRABitcoin Cash BCHA+Litecoin LTCAEthereum Classic ETCAKaspa KASAAll Proof of Work chains →

Proof of Stake coins

Ethereum ETHABNB BNBBSolana SOLATRON TRXBHyperliquid HYPECCardano ADABNEAR Protocol NEARAAll Proof of Stake chains →

Supply

20,105,281 of a maximum 21,000,000 BTC are in circulation — 95.7% of the total that will ever exist.

Launch and allocation

Nodes or validators12,138

The work behind it

Bitcoin is secured by 972 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.

What a regulator has said

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.

How CoinSpectrum ranks Bitcoin

Bitcoin is #1 among cryptocurrencies and #1 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. Nothing above Bitcoin is a claim or a token, so its two ranks agree. 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 39 wrapped and staked claims on Bitcoin →

Wallets that hold Bitcoin

Bitcoin CoreElectrumSparrowLedgerColdcardTrezorWasabiBlueWalletMuunBitBox02D'CENTFoundation Passport31 more in the directory

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