Steem ranks #109 of 504 cryptocurrencies. On a list that also counts tokens, memecoins, wrapped coins, staked derivatives and stablecoins it appears at #714: 605 of the 713 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 719 non-native assets CoinSpectrum lists above it by market cap, about 62% are tokens, 29% are claims on other assets and 9% are memecoins.
| CoinSpectrum Grade | pending — launch under review |
|---|---|
| Rank among cryptocurrencies | #109 |
| Rank counting claims | #714 |
| Market capitalisation | $27M |
| Price | $0.0489 |
| Circulating supply | 561,702,053 STEEM |
| Maximum supply | no fixed cap |
| Consensus family | Proof of Stake |
| Consensus mechanism | DPoS (21 witnesses) |
| Ledger type | Multi-asset ledger |
Market figures from the 28 October 2026 build. Open the live view for every exchange's price, and charts.
Grade pending. Steem's launch — how much went to insiders, whether it was sold to investors — is still being researched. 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) | 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) | 4.6 | group average, 10 of 13 measured |
| Sound Money Qualities (6 checks) | 4 | 2.4 of 6 points source |
| Scarcity: a fixed cap that holds, and a supply near 21 million | 4.1 | no fixed maximum; 562 million in circulation: supply scale 8.1, cap 0 |
| Durability: five years or more with no halt, freeze or reversal | ✓ | 10 full years since genesis, 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: Hard fork 22.2 (May 2020), run by the Sun-backed witness set, moved about 23.6M STEEM out of 64 users' accounts, so the witness set can claw back ordinary users' coins. |
| Divisibility: the smallest unit worth a cent or less | ✓ | 3 decimal places, the smallest unit worth $0.000049 |
| Portability: fees of a cent or less and capacity for real demand | ✗ | typical fee $0; about 109 transactions a second (4.9 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 by an existing account paying the creation fee; steemd carries no identity check. |
| 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) | ✗ | steemd p2p gossip with no Dandelion or built-in Tor. |
| Hidden amounts (confidential transactions, RingCT, shielded pools, Mimblewimble) | ✗ | Transfers are public. |
| Hidden sender and receiver (ring signatures or zero-knowledge proofs, one-time or stealth addresses) | ✗ | Account names are public. |
| Scalability (fees, throughput, block time, block space, features) | 5 | 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) | 4.9 | about 109 simple transactions a second |
| Block time (10 minutes 10, less either side) | 1.7 | a block every 3 seconds |
| Block space per 10 minutes (32 MB or more 10) | 8.5 | 0.0655 MB limit, 13.1 MB per 10 minutes |
| Features (3 checks) | 0 | 0 of 3 passed |
| Payments safe to accept within seconds | ✗ | Blocks are 3 seconds, but irreversibility needs two-thirds of the 21 witnesses to build on a block, about 45 seconds. |
| Pruned nodes: a full node can validate and drop old history | ✗ | steemd keeps the full block_log to replay and validate; no pruning mode in its last release (HF23 era). |
| Light clients verify payments from headers or proofs, without a trusted server | ✗ | No light-client protocol; apps query API nodes. |
| 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% | ✓ | 4.8% |
| Largest three under 75% | ✓ | 14.3% |
| More than one maintained client | ✗ | 0 |
| Node software is open source | ✓ | steemd (MIT) is controlled by Steemit Inc., owned by Justin Sun's TRON group since 2020; its last release was 0.23.0 in June 2020. |
| Real on-chain use: 1,000+ transactions a day | ✓ | about 77,000 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 through a metaprotocol | 1 | Steem Engine tokens: read by indexers, not validated by the chain's nodes |
| Smart contracts | 0 | Fixed Graphene operations only; Smart Media Tokens were never activated. |
| Multisig and time locks | ✗ | Weighted owner/active authorities with weight_threshold give native multisig, but there is no user time lock: escrow needs an agent and savings carry a fixed three-day withdrawal delay. |
| Atomic swaps with other chains | ✗ | No hash-lock operation exists. |
| An exchange built into the protocol | ✓ | The internal market (limit_order_create matched against open orders) for STEEM and SBD is part of 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 | 5.6 | section average, 5 of 8 measured |
| Censorship resistant (Source) | 0 | An authority can halt the chain or freeze funds: Hard fork 22.2 (May 2020), run by the Sun-backed witness set, moved about 23.6M STEEM out of 64 users' accounts, so the witness set can claw back ordinary users' coins. source |
| No central team (Source) | 0 | A central team directs it: steemd (MIT) is controlled by Steemit Inc., owned by Justin Sun's TRON group since 2020; its last release was 0.23.0 in June 2020. source |
| Who can mint (Source) | 8.6 | Proof of stake: 8.6 of 10 on the ladder of who produces blocks |
| Nodes (Source) | — | Not yet counted |
| Holder concentration (Source) | — | Not yet measured |
| Premine (allocated at launch) | — | Not established: there was no formal genesis allocation, but the founders (Steemit Inc) launched the chain without notice in Mar 2016 and 'ninja-mined' about 80% of the early supply before the public could mine. The stake still held in 2020 was about 65-74M STEEM (about 12-13% of today's about 561M), but the original mined amount is not documented. |
| Fundraising | 10 | No sale of the coin source |
| Developer share (after launch) | 9.6 | Developer share: about 4% of today's supply received so far; 10% of each new block reward goes to them today. Since HF21 (Aug 2019), 10% of new STEEM inflation goes to the steem.dao treasury (Steem Proposal System), paid as new SBD (STEEM_PROPOSAL_FUND_PERCENT_HF21; live sps_fund_percent = 1000). Content rewards fell from 75% to 65% to fund it; 15% goes to stakers and 10% to witnesses. Inflation fell from ~8.35% to ~5.36% between blocks ~35.9M and 110.7M, which takes virtual supply from ~383M to 623.8M (~241M issued); 10% is ~24M, or ~4% of supply (3.9% of virtual supply, 4.3% of STEEM supply). Content rewards to authors and curators are not counted as a cut. source |
| Supply & Demand | 7.6 | group average |
| Supply & Demand (Source) | 7.1 | average of 6 measures |
| Exchanges (10 or more: 10) | 8 | 8 exchanges |
| Daily volume ($10K 0, $1B or more 10) | 4.6 | $2,692,925 traded in 24 hours; #449 by volume on the exchanges the site reads (scored on the median day of the last 30, $2,016,122) |
| Turnover (volume ÷ market cap, 5% a day: 10) | 9.5 | 6.3% of its market cap a day, median of the last 30 days |
| Order-book depth (bids and asks within 2% ÷ market cap, 1%: 10) | 10 | $413,548 within 2% of the price on 3 exchanges, 1.5% of its market cap, median of the last 2 days |
| Market cap ($1M 0, $10B or more 10) | 3.6 | $27M, 3.6 on a scale of 2.5 points per tenfold |
| Paper trading (futures, options and margin ÷ market cap, 0%: 10, 100%: 0) | 6.7 | futures, options and margin positions 11% of its market cap |
| Supply (smaller is better) | 8.1 | no fixed maximum; 562 million in circulation |
| Record | 7.7 | 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 | 10 full years since genesis. Mainnet launched 24 March 2016. |
| Development (work, improvements, unfixed issues) | 3 | 1 positive, 0 negative source |
| Positive | ||
| Steady work, 3 of 6 | ✓ | 14 commits in 6 of the last 12 months (github.com/steemit/steem); Last steemd release 0.23.0 on 2020-06-10; api.steemit.com still reports blockchain_version 0.23.0. |
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.
561,702,053 STEEM are in circulation, against no fixed cap — issuance has no defined end.
| Developer share received since launch | 4% of today's supply |
|---|---|
| Developer share of new coins today | 10% |
| Fundraising | No sale and no investor round |
Not established: there was no formal genesis allocation, but the founders (Steemit Inc) launched the chain without notice in Mar 2016 and 'ninja-mined' about 80% of the early supply before the public could mine. The stake still held in 2020 was about 65-74M STEEM (about 12-13% of today's about 561M), but the original mined amount is not documented.
No ICO, token sale or investor token round found. Justin Sun bought Steemit Inc (and its stake) for just under $8M in Feb 2020; that was an acquisition, not a fundraise.
Since HF21 (Aug 2019), 10% of new STEEM inflation goes to the steem.dao treasury (Steem Proposal System), paid as new SBD (STEEM_PROPOSAL_FUND_PERCENT_HF21; live sps_fund_percent = 1000). Content rewards fell from 75% to 65% to fund it; 15% goes to stakers and 10% to witnesses. Inflation fell from ~8.35% to ~5.36% between blocks ~35.9M and 110.7M, which takes virtual supply from ~383M to 623.8M (~241M issued); 10% is ~24M, or ~4% of supply (3.9% of virtual supply, 4.3% of STEEM supply). Content rewards to authors and curators are not counted as a cut.
Sources: github.com · api.steemit.com · steemit.com · decrypt.co · fxstreet.com · steemit.com. Researched 2026-10-24, medium 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.
Steem is #109 among cryptocurrencies and #714 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 605 places between Steem'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).