NEM ranks #196 of 504 cryptocurrencies. On a list that also counts tokens, memecoins, wrapped coins, staked derivatives and stablecoins it appears at #1484: 1288 of the 1483 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 1714 non-native assets CoinSpectrum lists above it by market cap, about 75% are tokens, 20% are claims on other assets and 6% are memecoins.
| CoinSpectrum Grade | C · 54/100 · provisional |
|---|---|
| Rank among cryptocurrencies | #196 |
| Rank counting claims | #1484 |
| Market capitalisation | $3M |
| Price | $0.000319 |
| Circulating supply | 8,999,999,999 XEM |
| Maximum supply | 8,999,999,999 XEM |
| Consensus family | Other |
| Consensus mechanism | Proof of Importance |
| 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.
C — 54 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 49 to 59 (D to C).
| Criterion | Score | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| Leading Consensus Mechanisms (Source) | 6.4 | group average |
| Consensus: leader ladder | 6.4 | Other: 6.4 of 10 on the ladder of consensus families ranked by their largest chain's market cap |
| Consensus: family ladder | 6.4 | Other: 6.4 of 10 on the ladder of families ranked by the combined market cap of their chains |
| Cryptocurrency Standards (Source) | 4.3 | group average, 11 of 13 measured |
| Sound Money Qualities (6 checks) | 6.3 | 3.8 of 6 points source |
| Scarcity: a fixed cap that holds, and a supply near 21 million | 8.3 | fixed maximum supply of 9 billion: supply scale 6.5, cap 10 |
| Durability: five years or more with no halt, freeze or reversal | ✓ | 11 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 | ✓ | 6 decimal places, the smallest unit worth $3.2e-10 |
| Portability: fees of a cent or less and capacity for real demand | ✗ | typical fee $0.000029; about 2 transactions a second (0 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 | ✓ | Accounts are created from keys users generate themselves; transfers are validated by signature, with no identity condition in the protocol. |
| 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) | ✗ | NIS nodes relay transactions directly; no Dandelion or Tor. |
| Hidden amounts (confidential transactions, RingCT, shielded pools, Mimblewimble) | ✗ | Balances and transfers are public. |
| Hidden sender and receiver (ring signatures or zero-knowledge proofs, one-time or stealth addresses) | ✗ | Sender and receiver accounts are public. |
| Scalability (fees, throughput, block time, block space, features) | 4.1 | average of 5 parts source |
| Fees ($0.001 or less 10, $1 or more 0) | 10 | typical fee $0.000029 |
| Throughput (2,478 a second, the busiest network's peak day, 10; 119, the median of the ten busiest, 5) | 0 | about 2 simple transactions a second |
| Block time (10 minutes 10, less either side) | 6.4 | a block every 1 minute |
| Block space per 10 minutes (32 MB or more 10) | 4.3 | 0.123 MB limit (converted from its gas, compute, mass or count limit), 1.23 MB per 10 minutes |
| Features (3 checks) | 0 | 0 of 3 passed |
| Payments safe to accept within seconds | ✗ | Blocks target 60 s (about 79 s on average over the last 30 days) with probabilistic finality, so a payment needs at least a minute. |
| Pruned nodes: a full node can validate and drop old history | ✗ | NIS nodes keep the full block history. |
| Light clients verify payments from headers or proofs, without a trusted server | ✗ | No proof-based light client; wallets query NIS nodes. |
| Security (miner pay and 7 checks) | 4 | 4 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% | ✓ | 25% |
| Largest three under 75% | ✓ | 41.3% |
| More than one maintained client | ✗ | 1 |
| Node software is open source | ✓ | NIS (MIT licence) is maintained in the NemProject GitHub organisation by the same small core team as Symbol, which came from the now-defunct NEM Group; whether any organisation still controls it is not established. |
| Real on-chain use: 1,000+ transactions a day | ✗ | about 30 a day |
| No 51% attack or deep reorganisation in five years | ✓ | |
| Programmability (tokens, contracts, 5 checks) | 3.3 | 3 of 9 points source |
| Token issuance at protocol level, validated by its own nodes | 2 | Mosaics, native NIS1 tokens that any account can create for a fee with its namespace. |
| Smart contracts | 0 | NIS1 has only fixed transaction types (transfer, multisig, namespace, mosaic definition and supply change); no script or VM. |
| Multisig and time locks | ✗ | Native m-of-n multisig accounts (minimum cosignatories in the v2 modification), but NIS1 has no time-locked or hash-locked transaction type. |
| Atomic swaps with other chains | ✗ | No hash lock or time lock in NIS1 (secret locks arrived only on Symbol, a separate chain). |
| 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 | ✓ | Mosaics, a native ledger asset type, can be defined with divisibility 0, a supply of 1 and immutable supply, giving unique tokens. |
| Decentralisation | 4.6 | section average, 6 of 8 measured |
| Censorship resistant (Source) | 10 | No authority can halt the chain or freeze funds: No protocol party can freeze, blacklist or claw back XEM or halt the chain. source |
| No central team (Source) | — | Not yet researched |
| Who can mint (Source) | 1.4 | Other: 1.4 of 10 on the ladder of who produces blocks |
| Nodes (Source) | 6.5 | 88 reachable nodes (source: nodewatch.symbol.tools/api/nem/nodes,) |
| Holder concentration (Source) | — | Not yet measured |
| Premine (allocated at launch) | 0 | 100% of today's supply allocated at launch to founders, a company, a foundation or investors. All 8,999,999,999 XEM were created at the 2015 genesis (nemesis); there is no minting, and harvesters earn only fees. Shares: stakeholders ~53% (2.25M XEM per stake, ~2,100 stakes redeemed), development fund ~21%, sustainability fund ~26% (including ~2.35B from unclaimed and forfeited stakes). source |
| Fundraising | 0 | Sold by its issuer or insiders: 100% of supply was theirs to sell, 53% sold so far. 2014 call for participation: stakes bought for about 0.05 BTC or 450 NXT each, via Bitcointalk or the NXT Asset Exchange. Roughly 1,600 participants; 3,000 stakes planned, 2,840 issued, 572 forfeited as sock puppets. source |
| Developer share (after launch) | 10 | No developer share: every new coin goes to the miners or validators who produce blocks. All 8,999,999,999 XEM were created in the 2015 nemesis block, and harvesters earn only fees. There is no new issuance to cut. source |
| Supply & Demand | 5.9 | group average |
| Supply & Demand (Source) | 5.2 | average of 6 measures |
| Exchanges (10 or more: 10) | 3 | 3 exchanges |
| Daily volume ($10K 0, $1B or more 10) | 2.5 | $41,096 traded in 24 hours; #1260 by volume on the exchanges the site reads (scored on the median day of the last 30, $177,904) |
| Turnover (volume ÷ market cap, 5% a day: 10) | 9.8 | 4.6% of its market cap a day, median of the last 30 days |
| Order-book depth (bids and asks within 2% ÷ market cap, 1%: 10) | 4.7 | $765 within 2% of the price on 1 exchange, 0.03% of its market cap, median of the last 2 days |
| Market cap ($1M 0, $10B or more 10) | 1.1 | $2.9M, 1.1 on a scale of 2.5 points per tenfold |
| Paper trading (futures, options and margin ÷ market cap, 0%: 10, 100%: 0) | 10 | no futures, options or margin on the exchanges read |
| Supply (smaller is better) | 6.5 | fixed maximum supply of 9 billion |
| Record | 8.5 | 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 2015-04-01, the first day with a recorded price (genesis not yet researched, so the age can only be understated). |
| Development (work, improvements, unfixed issues) | 5.5 | 1 positive, 0 negative source |
| Positive | ||
| Steady work, 5.5 of 6 | ✓ | 140 commits in 11 of the last 12 months (github.com/NemProject/nem); NIS client v0.6.102 (github.com/NemProject/nem, released 2025-04-07) is the only release in the last 24 months; the previous one, v0.6.101, dates from 2023-02-28. 81 of 88 nodes on nodewatch run 0.6.102. |
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.
8,999,999,999 of a maximum 8,999,999,999 XEM are in circulation — effectively all of them.
| Premine (allocated at launch) | 100% of today's supply |
|---|---|
| Sold by the issuer or insiders | 53% of today's supply |
| Developer share received since launch | 0% of today's supply |
| Developer share of new coins today | 0% |
| Nodes or validators | 88 |
| Fundraising | Public sale |
All 8,999,999,999 XEM were created at the 2015 genesis (nemesis); there is no minting, and harvesters earn only fees. Shares: stakeholders ~53% (2.25M XEM per stake, ~2,100 stakes redeemed), development fund ~21%, sustainability fund ~26% (including ~2.35B from unclaimed and forfeited stakes).
2014 call for participation: stakes bought for about 0.05 BTC or 450 NXT each, via Bitcointalk or the NXT Asset Exchange. Roughly 1,600 participants; 3,000 stakes planned, 2,840 issued, 572 forfeited as sock puppets.
All 8,999,999,999 XEM were created in the 2015 nemesis block, and harvesters earn only fees. There is no new issuance to cut.
Agrees with the 'presale' label. The total raised was tiny, on the order of ~100 BTC (implied, not documented). The 53/21/26 split comes from an aggregator and matches the forum's stake arithmetic (unclaimed 2,354,280,307 XEM = about 1,046 stakes x 2.25M).
Sources: nemplatform.com · docs.nem.io · forum.nem.io · crypto.com. Researched 2026-10-26, 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.
NEM is #196 among cryptocurrencies and #1484 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 1288 places between NEM'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).