Bytecoin ranks #172 of 504 cryptocurrencies. On a list that also counts tokens, memecoins, wrapped coins, staked derivatives and stablecoins it appears at #1227: 1055 of the 1226 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 1449 non-native assets CoinSpectrum lists above it by market cap, about 72% are tokens, 21% are claims on other assets and 7% are memecoins.
| CoinSpectrum Grade | pending — launch under review |
|---|---|
| Rank among cryptocurrencies | #172 |
| Rank counting claims | #1227 |
| Market capitalisation | $5M |
| Price | $0.0000275 |
| Circulating supply | 184,066,828,814 BCN |
| Maximum supply | 184,470,000,000 BCN |
| Consensus family | Proof of Work |
| Consensus mechanism | CryptoNight |
| Own hashrate | — |
| Network purpose | Private payments |
| Ledger type | Single-asset ledger |
| Launch distribution | Premine |
Market figures from the 28 October 2026 build. Open the live view for every exchange's price, and charts.
Grade pending. Fewer than six of Bytecoin's nine network-security points are measured yet. A grade is not given until it is, so that a coin is never rated higher for what is not yet known.
| 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) | 6.4 | group average, 9 of 13 measured |
| Sound Money Qualities (6 checks) | 9.3 | 3.7 of 4 points, 2 not yet measured source |
| Scarcity: a fixed cap that holds, and a supply near 21 million | 7.1 | fixed maximum supply of 184 billion: supply scale 4.1, cap 10 |
| Durability: five years or more with no halt, freeze or reversal | ✓ | 12 full years since its first recorded price, 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 $2.7e-13 |
| 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 |
| Privacy (5 checks) | 6 | 3 of 5 passed source |
| Whitepaper privacy: keys are not tied to an identity | ✓ | Wallet keys are generated locally and transfers are validated by ring signatures, with no identity condition. |
| 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) | ✗ | CryptoNote P2P relays transactions directly; no Dandelion++ or built-in Tor in bytecoin v3.5.1. |
| Hidden amounts (confidential transactions, RingCT, shielded pools, Mimblewimble) | ✗ | Amounts are public denominations (CryptoNoteConfig dust/denomination rules); no RingCT. |
| Hidden sender and receiver (ring signatures or zero-knowledge proofs, one-time or stealth addresses) | ✓ | CryptoNote ring signatures (minimum anonymity 3 since the Amethyst upgrade) hide the sender and one-time output keys hide the receiver. |
| 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) | 7.5 | a block every 2 minutes |
| Block space per 10 minutes (32 MB or more 10) | – | not yet measured |
| Features (3 checks) | 0 | 0 of 2 passed, 1 not yet researched |
| Payments safe to accept within seconds | ✗ | Two-minute proof-of-work blocks; no zero-confirmation protection. |
| Pruned nodes: a full node can validate and drop old history | – | No documented pruning mode in bytecoind v3.5.1. |
| Light clients verify payments from headers or proofs, without a trusted server | ✗ | No SPV-style light client; wallets rely on a bytecoind node. |
| Security (miner pay and 7 checks) | — | 2 of 5 points, 4 not yet measured source |
| Miners paid a day ($1,000 0, $10 million or more 10), 2 points | 0 | about $0 a day |
| Its own hashrate: at least half its algorithm's largest, not merge-mined | – | |
| Largest pool or validator under 50% | – | |
| Largest three under 75% | – | |
| More than one maintained client | ✗ | 0 |
| Node software is open source | ✓ | The Bytecoin developers (bcndev) maintain the only node (LGPL), last released in July 2019. |
| Real on-chain use: 1,000+ transactions a day | – | |
| No 51% attack or deep reorganisation in five years | ✓ | |
| Programmability (tokens, contracts, 5 checks) | 0 | 0 of 9 points source |
| Token issuance | 0 | No token issuance on the chain itself |
| Smart contracts | 0 | CryptoNote payment chain; transactions carry only key outputs (OutputKey is the sole output type in its consensus structures). |
| Multisig and time locks | ✗ | Outputs can carry an unlock block or timestamp, but the current codebase has no multisignature output type, so m-of-n spending is missing. |
| Atomic swaps with other chains | ✗ | No hash locks in its transaction format and no adaptor-signature swap implementation found. |
| An exchange built into the protocol | ✗ | No exchange in the protocol. |
| Cross-chain messaging the chain verifies itself | ✗ | No cross-chain feature in the protocol. |
| Non-fungible tokens | ✗ | No token or NFT type in the protocol. |
| Decentralisation | 7 | section average, 6 of 8 measured |
| Censorship resistant (Source) | 10 | No authority can halt the chain or freeze funds: No freeze or admin key over user coins. source |
| No central team (Source) | 0 | A central team directs it: The Bytecoin developers (bcndev) maintain the only node (LGPL), last released in July 2019. 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) | 2 | 80% of today's supply allocated at launch to founders, a company, a foundation or investors. A documented instamine. When the code and site surfaced publicly in March 2014, 'a little over 80%' of Bytecoin's total emission was already mined, under a claimed July 2012 launch nobody had observed. About 80% of the 184.47B emission against ~184.07B current supply gives about 80%. source |
| Fundraising | 10 | No sale of the coin source |
| Developer share (after launch) | 10 | No developer share: every new coin goes to the miners or validators who produce blocks. No cut. CryptoNote emission (all block rewards) goes to miners; there is no developer fee or treasury in the emission rules. The early instamine is counted as premine, not a cut. source |
| Supply & Demand | 2.3 | group average |
| Supply & Demand (Source) | 0.5 | average of 4 measures |
| Exchanges (10 or more: 10) | 0 | no exchange the site reads trades it |
| Daily volume ($10K 0, $1B or more 10) | 0 | $0 traded in 24 hours; #4317 by volume |
| Turnover (volume ÷ market cap, 5% a day: 10) | 0 | 0.00% of its market cap a day |
| Order-book depth (bids and asks within 2% ÷ market cap, 1%: 10) | – | no order book on the nine exchanges read |
| Market cap ($1M 0, $10B or more 10) | 1.8 | $5.1M, 1.8 on a scale of 2.5 points per tenfold |
| Paper trading (futures, options and margin ÷ market cap, 0%: 10, 100%: 0) | – | not measured |
| Supply (smaller is better) | 4.1 | fixed maximum supply of 184 billion |
| Record | 6.7 | 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 | 12 full years since 2014-06-17, the first day with a recorded price (genesis not yet researched, so the age can only be understated). |
| Development (work, improvements, unfixed issues) | 0 | 0 positive, 1 negative source |
| Negative | ||
| Steady work, 0 of 6 | ✗ | 0 commits in 0 of the last 12 months (github.com/bcndev/bytecoin); bytecoin v3.5.1, 18 Jul 2019; no release in seven 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.
184,066,828,814 of a maximum 184,470,000,000 BCN are in circulation — effectively all of them.
| Premine (allocated at launch) | 80% of today's supply |
|---|---|
| Developer share received since launch | 0% of today's supply |
| Developer share of new coins today | 0% |
| Fundraising | No sale and no investor round |
A documented instamine. When the code and site surfaced publicly in March 2014, 'a little over 80%' of Bytecoin's total emission was already mined, under a claimed July 2012 launch nobody had observed. About 80% of the 184.47B emission against ~184.07B current supply gives about 80%.
No formal sale. The insider-mined coins were never disclosed or accounted for.
No cut. CryptoNote emission (all block rewards) goes to miners; there is no developer fee or treasury in the emission rules. The early instamine is counted as premine, not a cut.
The 80% figure comes from community analysis of the blockchain (2014 bitcointalk critique), not an audit. The team was pseudonymous. How much of the instamine was later sold is unknown.
Sources: github.com · github.com · gwern.net · cryptobriefing.com · en.wikipedia.org. Researched 2026-10-24, medium confidence.
No source we can reach publishes a hashrate for Bytecoin.
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.
Bytecoin is #172 among cryptocurrencies and #1227 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 1055 places between Bytecoin'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).