Nimiq ranks #183 of 504 cryptocurrencies. On a list that also counts tokens, memecoins, wrapped coins, staked derivatives and stablecoins it appears at #1319: 1136 of the 1318 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 1543 non-native assets CoinSpectrum lists above it by market cap, about 73% are tokens, 20% are claims on other assets and 6% are memecoins.
| CoinSpectrum Grade | B · 69/100 · provisional |
|---|---|
| Rank among cryptocurrencies | #183 |
| Rank counting claims | #1319 |
| Market capitalisation | $4M |
| Price | $0.000289 |
| Circulating supply | 14,496,040,900 NIM |
| Maximum supply | 21,000,000,000 NIM |
| Consensus family | Proof of Stake |
| Consensus mechanism | Nimiq Albatross (single-chain PoS) |
| Network purpose | Payments |
| 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 — 69 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 66 to 71 (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) | 6.3 | group average, 12 of 13 measured |
| Sound Money Qualities (6 checks) | 9.7 | 5.8 of 6 points source |
| Scarcity: a fixed cap that holds, and a supply near 21 million | 8 | fixed maximum supply of 21 billion: supply scale 6, cap 10 |
| Durability: five years or more with no halt, freeze or reversal | ✓ | 8 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 | ✓ | 5 decimal places, the smallest unit worth $2.9e-9 |
| Portability: fees of a cent or less and capacity for real demand | ✓ | typical fee $0; about 724 transactions a second (8 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; 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 | ✓ | 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) | ✗ | libp2p gossip relays transactions directly; no Dandelion-style relay or built-in Tor. |
| Hidden amounts (confidential transactions, RingCT, shielded pools, Mimblewimble) | ✗ | Account balances and transfers are public. |
| Hidden sender and receiver (ring signatures or zero-knowledge proofs, one-time or stealth addresses) | ✗ | Sender and receiver addresses are public. |
| Scalability (fees, throughput, block time, block space, features) | 6.9 | average of 5 parts source |
| Fees ($0.001 or less 10, $1 or more 0) | 10 | typical fee $0 |
| Throughput (2,478 a second, the busiest network's peak day, 10; 119, the median of the ten busiest, 5) | 8 | about 724 simple transactions a second |
| Block time (10 minutes 10, less either side) | 0 | a block every 1 second |
| Block space per 10 minutes (32 MB or more 10) | 10 | 0.1 MB limit, 60 MB per 10 minutes |
| Features (3 checks) | 6.7 | 2 of 3 passed |
| Payments safe to accept within seconds | ✗ | Micro blocks (~1 s) are produced by a single validator and only become final when the next Tendermint macro block (every 60 blocks, ~1 minute) is signed by 2f+1 validators, per Nimiq's protocol docs. |
| Pruned nodes: a full node can validate and drop old history | ✓ | Albatross "full" sync mode stores only max_epochs_stored (default 1) epochs of history; "history" mode keeps everything. |
| Light clients verify payments from headers or proofs, without a trusted server | ✓ | Albatross client "light" sync mode syncs from macro blocks with a zero-knowledge proof of the election chain instead of trusting a server. |
| 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% | ✓ | 8.67% |
| Largest three under 75% | ✓ | 24.84% |
| More than one maintained client | ✗ | 1 |
| Node software is open source | ✓ | The only full node, nimiq/core-rs-albatross (Apache-2.0, 'Copyright 2018 The Nimiq Foundation'), is developed by the Nimiq core team, which also sets the protocol upgrades. |
| Real on-chain use: 1,000+ transactions a day | ✓ | about 96,300 a day |
| No 51% attack or deep reorganisation in five years | ✓ | |
| Programmability (tokens, contracts, 5 checks) | 2.2 | 2 of 9 points source |
| Token issuance | 0 | No token issuance on the chain itself |
| Smart contracts | 0 | Only fixed account types (basic, vesting, HTLC, staking) in Albatross; no script or VM. |
| Multisig and time locks | ✓ | m-of-n multisig wallets built on MuSig2 over Ed25519 (2 to 16 signers), and time locks through vesting contracts and HTLC timeouts. |
| Atomic swaps with other chains | ✓ | HTLC account type (SHA-256 or Blake2b hash, timeout), used for NIM swaps with Bitcoin and other chains. |
| 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 beyond HTLCs. |
| Non-fungible tokens | ✗ | No token or NFT type in the protocol. |
| Decentralisation | 7.2 | section average, 7 of 8 measured |
| Censorship resistant (Source) | 10 | No authority can halt the chain or freeze funds: No protocol-level freeze, blacklist or halt key; supply follows a fixed curve and validators can only be jailed or deactivated by protocol rules. source |
| No central team (Source) | 0 | A central team directs it: The only full node, nimiq/core-rs-albatross (Apache-2.0, 'Copyright 2018 The Nimiq Foundation'), is developed by the Nimiq core team, which also sets the protocol upgrades. source |
| Who can mint (Source) | 8.6 | Proof of stake: 8.6 of 10 on the ladder of who produces blocks |
| Nodes (Source) | 4.9 | 30 active validators or block producers (source: Active) |
| Holder concentration (Source) | — | Not yet measured |
| Premine (allocated at launch) | 8.3 | 17.2% of today's supply allocated at launch to founders, a company, a foundation or investors. Genesis (April 2018) issued 2.52B NIM, 12% of the 21B cap: 1.05B to NET token holders (100 NIM per NET) plus creator, team, early-contributor and Foundation vesting allocations. The rest was mined openly (PoW until November 2024) or minted as PoS rewards. nim.sh reports total 14,631,543,367 NIM, of which 10.37B mined and 1.74B PoS-minted (2026-10-23). source |
| Fundraising | 8.3 | Sold by its issuer or insiders: 17.2% of supply was theirs to sell, 7.2% sold so far. Public NET token creation on Ethereum, June–July 2017: 10.5M NET to contributors, reported at about $10M. NET converted to 1.05B NIM. source |
| Developer share (after launch) | 10 | No developer share: every new coin goes to the miners or validators who produce blocks. PoW block rewards (April 2018 to Nov 2024) went entirely to miners. Under Albatross PoS, block rewards go to validators and their stakers. No foundation or developer share was ever taken from issuance; the Foundation and team allocations were in the genesis (premine). source |
| Supply & Demand | 5.4 | group average |
| Supply & Demand (Source) | 4.7 | average of 6 measures |
| Exchanges (10 or more: 10) | 2 | 2 exchanges |
| Daily volume ($10K 0, $1B or more 10) | 1 | $12,721 traded in 24 hours; #2124 by volume on the exchanges the site reads (scored on the median day of the last 30, $32,559) |
| 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 | $10,573 within 2% of the price on 2 exchanges, 0.25% of its market cap, median of the last 2 days |
| Market cap ($1M 0, $10B or more 10) | 1.6 | $4.2M, 1.6 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 | fixed maximum supply of 21 billion |
| Record | 9 | 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) | 8 | 8 full years since 2018-07-26, 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 | ✓ | 562 commits in 12 of the last 12 months (github.com/nimiq/core-rs-albatross); Reference client nimiq/core-rs-albatross Mainnet v2.2.0 released 2026-09-17; v2.1.0 (2026-08-31), v2.0.0 (2026-08-11, consensus-breaking) and v1.3-v1.7 all in 2026. |
| Shipped a security fix in two years, +1 | ✓ | Albatross Mainnet 2.0.0, Aug 2026: consensus-breaking fixes binding validator keys into the election header and skip-block state root into the aggregate proof; 1.5–1.7 (May–Jul 2026) many panic/bounds fixes. |
| Shipped a scaling upgrade in two years, +1 | ✓ | Nimiq Proof-of-Stake (Albatross) mainnet, 19 Nov 2024: replaced 1-minute PoW blocks with 1-second micro blocks. |
| Shipped a new capability for users in two years, +1 | ✓ | Nimiq PoS launch, 19 Nov 2024: native staking and validator transaction types. |
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.
14,496,040,900 of a maximum 21,000,000,000 NIM are in circulation — 69.0% of the total that will ever exist.
| Premine (allocated at launch) | 17.2% of today's supply |
|---|---|
| Sold by the issuer or insiders | 7.2% of today's supply |
| Developer share received since launch | 0% of today's supply |
| Developer share of new coins today | 0% |
| Nodes or validators | 30 |
| Fundraising | Public sale |
Genesis (April 2018) issued 2.52B NIM, 12% of the 21B cap: 1.05B to NET token holders (100 NIM per NET) plus creator, team, early-contributor and Foundation vesting allocations. The rest was mined openly (PoW until November 2024) or minted as PoS rewards. nim.sh reports total 14,631,543,367 NIM, of which 10.37B mined and 1.74B PoS-minted (2026-10-23).
Public NET token creation on Ethereum, June–July 2017: 10.5M NET to contributors, reported at about $10M. NET converted to 1.05B NIM.
PoW block rewards (April 2018 to Nov 2024) went entirely to miners. Under Albatross PoS, block rewards go to validators and their stakers. No foundation or developer share was ever taken from issuance; the Foundation and team allocations were in the genesis (premine).
The site has no label yet. Initial and total supply come from nim.sh's supply endpoint; the NET conversion from Nimiq's transparency report. Where the 200M NIM pre-staking campaign (2024) was funded from was not established; if newly minted to a team wallet it would add about 1.4 points.
Sources: github.com · nim.sh · nim.sh · medium.com · coincentral.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.
Nimiq is #183 among cryptocurrencies and #1319 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 1136 places between Nimiq'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).