Novacoin ranks #374 of 504 cryptocurrencies. On a list that also counts tokens, memecoins, wrapped coins, staked derivatives and stablecoins it appears at #5399: 5025 of the 5398 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.
| CoinSpectrum Grade | pending — launch under review |
|---|---|
| Rank among cryptocurrencies | #374 |
| Rank counting claims | #5399 |
| Price | $0.0169 |
| Circulating supply | 0 NVC |
| Maximum supply | no fixed cap |
| Consensus family | Hybrid |
| Consensus mechanism | Scrypt PoW + PoS (Peercoin-derived) |
| Own hashrate | — |
| 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 Novacoin'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) | 4.5 | group average |
| Consensus: leader ladder | 4.5 | Hybrid: 4.5 of 10 on the ladder of consensus families ranked by their largest chain's market cap |
| Consensus: family ladder | 4.5 | Hybrid: 4.5 of 10 on the ladder of families ranked by the combined market cap of their chains |
| Cryptocurrency Standards (Source) | 5.3 | group average, 10 of 13 measured |
| Sound Money Qualities (6 checks) | 4 | 2 of 5 points, 1 not yet measured source |
| Scarcity: a fixed cap that holds, and a supply near 21 million | – | |
| Durability: five years or more with no halt, freeze or reversal | ✓ | 13 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 | ✗ | an authority can freeze funds: The node enforces Peercoin-style sync checkpoints signed by a hard-coded master key (strMasterPubKey) in strict mode by default, so the key holder can dictate which branch nodes accept; the code also carries a block banlist (CheckBanned). |
| Divisibility: the smallest unit worth a cent or less | ✓ | 6 decimal places, the smallest unit worth $1.7e-8 |
| Portability: fees of a cent or less and capacity for real demand | ✗ | typical fee $0.000017; about 7 transactions a second (0.4 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) | 4 | 2 of 5 passed source |
| Whitepaper privacy: keys are not tied to an identity | ✓ | Novacoin's Bitcoin-derived node (novacoin-project/novacoin) has no identity rule: anyone generates keys and receives and sends the coin. |
| 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) | ✗ | Novacoin v0.5.10 (Feb 2022, PPCoin-era code): no Dandelion; Tor is only used if the operator runs and configures it. |
| Hidden amounts (confidential transactions, RingCT, shielded pools, Mimblewimble) | ✗ | Transparent Bitcoin-style amounts; no confidential transactions. |
| Hidden sender and receiver (ring signatures or zero-knowledge proofs, one-time or stealth addresses) | ✗ | Transparent addresses and inputs; no ring signatures or stealth addresses. |
| Scalability (fees, throughput, block time, block space, features) | 4.9 | average of 5 parts source |
| Fees ($0.001 or less 10, $1 or more 0) | 10 | typical fee $0.000017 |
| Throughput (2,478 a second, the busiest network's peak day, 10; 119, the median of the ten busiest, 5) | 0.4 | about 7.4 simple transactions a second |
| Block time (10 minutes 10, less either side) | 10 | a block every 10 minutes |
| Block space per 10 minutes (32 MB or more 10) | 4 | 1 MB limit |
| Features (3 checks) | 0 | 0 of 3 passed |
| Payments safe to accept within seconds | ✗ | 30-minute PoW and 10-minute PoS spacing with probabilistic confirmation; no instant-lock or double-spend-proof mechanism. |
| Pruned nodes: a full node can validate and drop old history | ✗ | Novacoin v0.5.10 (Feb 2022, PPCoin-era code) has no pruning mode; nodes keep every block. |
| Light clients verify payments from headers or proofs, without a trusted server | ✗ | Novacoin (PoW/PoS) (pre-BIP37 code) serves no Merkle proofs or block filters, so light wallets trust servers. |
| Security (miner pay and 7 checks) | — | 2 of 4 points, 5 not yet measured source |
| Miners paid a day ($1,000 0, $10 million or more 10), 2 points | – | |
| 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 | ✓ | Developed by founder Balthazar (CryptoManiac) in the novacoin-project repository, who also holds the sync-checkpoint master key. |
| Real on-chain use: 1,000+ transactions a day | ✗ | about 83 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 | 0 | No token issuance on the chain itself |
| Smart contracts: scripting for spending conditions | 1 | Novacoin runs Bitcoin-style Script limited to spending conditions (signatures, hash locks, multisig); no contract VM or token introspection. |
| Multisig and time locks | ✓ | OP_CHECKMULTISIG plus CLTV (enforced for transactions after 20 April 2016) and CSV (after 25 February 2022), per CHECKLOCKTIMEVERIFY_SWITCH_TIME and CHECKSEQUENCEVERIFY_SWITCH_TIME. |
| Atomic swaps with other chains | ✓ | HTLCs built from Script hash locks (OP_SHA256/OP_HASH160) with a CLTV refund branch are standard Script, so cross-chain hash-locked swaps work on Novacoin. |
| An exchange built into the protocol | ✗ | No exchange or order book in the Novacoin consensus rules. |
| Cross-chain messaging the chain verifies itself | ✗ | Novacoin nodes verify no other chain; no protocol-level cross-chain messaging. |
| Non-fungible tokens | ✗ | No token or NFT type in the Novacoin consensus rules. |
| Decentralisation | 6.1 | section average, 6 of 8 measured |
| Censorship resistant (Source) | 0 | An authority can halt the chain or freeze funds: The node enforces Peercoin-style sync checkpoints signed by a hard-coded master key (strMasterPubKey) in strict mode by default, so the key holder can dictate which branch nodes accept; the code also carries a block banlist (CheckBanned). source |
| No central team (Source) | 0 | A central team directs it: Developed by founder Balthazar (CryptoManiac) in the novacoin-project repository, who also holds the sync-checkpoint master key. source |
| Who can mint (Source) | 7.1 | Hybrid: 7.1 of 10 on the ladder of who produces blocks |
| Nodes (Source) | — | Not yet counted |
| Holder concentration (Source) | — | Not yet measured |
| Premine (allocated at launch) | 9.8 | 1.9% of today's supply allocated at launch to founders, a company, a foundation or investors. Launched 2013-02-09 with rewards up to 100 NVC per block (252k NVC mined by block 5,000 on 2013-02-12); BTC-e announced it held 110,000 NVC in a 'guarantee fund' two days after launch, coins attributed to the developer's self-mining, and on 2013-02-14 said it had destroyed them. 110,000 / ~5.74M current supply = 1.9%, counted as a documented instamine; if the destruction claim is accepted, the figure is 0. 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. PoW subsidy (max 100 NVC, falling with difficulty) and PoS interest go to the block producer; no developer or treasury output in the code. source |
| Supply & Demand | 0 | group average, 1 of 2 measured |
| Supply & Demand (Source) | 0 | average of 1 measure |
| Exchanges (10 or more: 10) | 0 | no exchange the site reads trades it |
| Daily volume ($10K 0, $1B or more 10) | – | no volume reported |
| Turnover (volume ÷ market cap, 5% a day: 10) | – | not measured |
| Order-book depth (bids and asks within 2% ÷ market cap, 1%: 10) | – | not measured |
| Market cap ($1M 0, $10B or more 10) | – | not measured |
| Paper trading (futures, options and margin ÷ market cap, 0%: 10, 100%: 0) | – | not measured |
| Supply (smaller is better) | — | Supply not reported |
| 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 | 13 full years since 2013-04-28, the first day with a recorded price (genesis not yet researched, so the age can only be understated). |
| Development (work, improvements, unfixed issues) | 0 | 1 positive, 4 negative source |
| Positive | ||
| Steady work, 1 of 6 | ✓ | 10 commits in 2 of the last 12 months (github.com/novacoin-project/novacoin); Last release nvc-v0.5.10 on 2022-02-11 (no release in the last 24 months), although commits to novacoin-project/novacoin master continue (latest 2026-10-04) and the code reports version 0.7.6.9. |
| Negative | ||
| Unfixed vulnerability, disclosed 2024-07-03, −1 | ✗ | CVE-2024-52914: crafted orphan transactions can stall the node for hours in the uninterruptible orphan-resolution loop; still in Novacoin nvc-v0.5.10. |
| Unfixed vulnerability, disclosed 2024-07-03, −1 | ✗ | CVE-2020-14198: misbehaving peers are auto-banned into an unbounded ban list, so many attacker addresses can exhaust CPU and memory; still in Novacoin nvc-v0.5.10. |
| Unfixed vulnerability, disclosed 2024-07-31, −1 | ✗ | CVE-2024-52919: addr-message spam can overflow the address manager's 32-bit id counter and crash the node, with no addr rate limit; still in Novacoin nvc-v0.5.10. |
| Unfixed vulnerability, disclosed 2024-09-18, −1 | ✗ | CVE-2019-25220: a long low-difficulty header chain can exhaust memory because the node has no headers pre-synchronisation; still in Novacoin nvc-v0.5.10. |
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.
0 NVC are in circulation, against no fixed cap — issuance has no defined end.
| Premine (allocated at launch) | 1.9% of today's supply |
|---|---|
| Sold by the issuer or insiders | 0% 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 |
Launched 2013-02-09 with rewards up to 100 NVC per block (252k NVC mined by block 5,000 on 2013-02-12); BTC-e announced it held 110,000 NVC in a 'guarantee fund' two days after launch, coins attributed to the developer's self-mining, and on 2013-02-14 said it had destroyed them. 110,000 / ~5.74M current supply = 1.9%, counted as a documented instamine; if the destruction claim is accepted, the figure is 0.
No fundraising; the launch controversy concerned early self-mined coins handed to the BTC-e exchange.
No ICO or sale documented; the 110k NVC handed to BTC-e was reportedly destroyed rather than sold.
PoW subsidy (max 100 NVC, falling with difficulty) and PoS interest go to the block producer; no developer or treasury output in the code.
clients is 0 because the only implementation has had no release in 24 months. The input's 2.34M circulating figure is stale: the README states ~5,742,051 coins mined and cryptoID shows ~5.8M. cryptoID's supply also jumps by ~213k NVC at block 1,100,812 (2026-10-02) because it counts a transaction with unresolved inputs as newly created, which is an explorer artefact, so inflation uses figures before that block. The premine evidence is secondary (99bitcoins, Peercoin forum); the original BitcoinTalk posts were not retrieved.
Sources: github.com · raw.githubusercontent.com · chainz.cryptoid.info · 99bitcoins.com · talk.peercoin.net · github.com. Researched 2026-10-26, low confidence.
No source we can reach publishes a hashrate for Novacoin.
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.
Novacoin is #374 among cryptocurrencies and #5399 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 5025 places between Novacoin'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).