Counterparty ranks #139 of 504 cryptocurrencies. On a list that also counts tokens, memecoins, wrapped coins, staked derivatives and stablecoins it appears at #915: 776 of the 914 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 1153 non-native assets CoinSpectrum lists above it by market cap, about 68% are tokens, 23% are claims on other assets and 8% are memecoins.
| CoinSpectrum Grade | C · 61/100 · provisional |
|---|---|
| Rank among cryptocurrencies | #139 |
| Rank counting claims | #915 |
| Market capitalisation | $11M |
| Price | $4.29 |
| Circulating supply | 2,586,538 XCP |
| Maximum supply | no fixed cap |
| Consensus family | Other |
| Consensus mechanism | Bitcoin-anchored metaprotocol (SHA-256) |
| Ledger type | Multi-asset ledger |
| Launch distribution | No premine |
Market figures from the 28 October 2026 build. Open the live view for every exchange's price, and charts.
C — 61 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 55 to 67 (C to B).
| 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) | 5.4 | group average, 11 of 13 measured |
| Sound Money Qualities (6 checks) | 6.8 | 3.4 of 5 points, 1 not yet measured source |
| Scarcity: a fixed cap that holds, and a supply near 21 million | 4.1 | no fixed maximum; 2.59 million in circulation: supply scale 8.2, cap 0 |
| 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 $4.3e-8 |
| Portability: fees of a cent or less and capacity for real demand | ✗ | typical fee $0.2; about 7 transactions a second (0.3 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 |
| Privacy (5 checks) | 2 | 1 of 5 passed source |
| Whitepaper privacy: keys are not tied to an identity | ✓ | Anyone can generate keys and receive and send coins; the consensus rules carry 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) | ✗ | Counterparty transactions are ordinary Bitcoin transactions relayed by Bitcoin nodes; no extra origin hiding. |
| Hidden amounts (confidential transactions, RingCT, shielded pools, Mimblewimble) | ✗ | Asset amounts are public. |
| Hidden sender and receiver (ring signatures or zero-knowledge proofs, one-time or stealth addresses) | ✗ | Bitcoin addresses are public. |
| Scalability (fees, throughput, block time, block space, features) | 3.8 | average of 5 parts source |
| Fees ($0.001 or less 10, $1 or more 0) | 2.3 | typical fee $0.2 |
| Throughput (2,478 a second, the busiest network's peak day, 10; 119, the median of the ten busiest, 5) | 0.3 | about 7 simple transactions a second |
| Block time (10 minutes 10, less either side) | 9.9 | a block every 9.4 minutes |
| Block space per 10 minutes (32 MB or more 10) | 6.5 | 4 MB limit, 4.26 MB per 10 minutes |
| Features (3 checks) | 0 | 0 of 2 passed, 1 not yet researched |
| Payments safe to accept within seconds | ✗ | Counterparty transactions settle only when the carrying Bitcoin transaction is mined (about 10 minutes or more). |
| Pruned nodes: a full node can validate and drop old history | – | Not established. |
| Light clients verify payments from headers or proofs, without a trusted server | ✗ | Counterparty state is derived by parsing every Bitcoin block with counterparty-core; a light client cannot verify Counterparty balances from headers. |
| 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% | ✓ | 27.9% |
| Largest three under 75% | ✓ | 63.1% |
| More than one maintained client | ✗ | 1 |
| Node software is open source | ✓ | The Counterparty Core team maintains counterparty-core (MIT), the only implementation of the protocol. |
| Real on-chain use: 1,000+ transactions a day | ✗ | about 376 a day |
| No 51% attack or deep reorganisation in five years | ✓ | |
| Programmability (tokens, contracts, 5 checks) | 1.4 | 1 of 7 points, 2 not yet researched source |
| Token issuance through a metaprotocol | 1 | Counterparty assets: read by indexers, not validated by the chain's nodes |
| Smart contracts | 0 | Counterparty is a metaprotocol whose rules are applied by Counterparty nodes, not by Bitcoin full nodes; its EVM was removed long ago. |
| Multisig and time locks | – | Not established: Bitcoin Script guards the carrier transactions, but whether time-locked conditions can bind XCP balances was not found in a source. |
| Atomic swaps with other chains | – | Not established: no source shows a hash-locked swap of XCP with another chain. |
| An exchange built into the protocol | ✗ | Its order-matching DEX and dispensers are metaprotocol features that Bitcoin nodes do not validate. |
| Cross-chain messaging the chain verifies itself | ✗ | No cross-chain feature. |
| Non-fungible tokens | ✗ | Indivisible one-unit assets are metaprotocol records read by Counterparty nodes, not Bitcoin consensus. |
| Decentralisation | 6.9 | section average, 6 of 8 measured |
| Censorship resistant (Source) | 10 | No authority can halt the chain or freeze funds: XCP itself cannot be frozen; asset issuers can lock or reset only their own assets. source |
| No central team (Source) | 0 | A central team directs it: The Counterparty Core team maintains counterparty-core (MIT), the only implementation of the protocol. source |
| Who can mint (Source) | 1.4 | Other: 1.4 of 10 on the ladder of who produces blocks |
| Nodes (Source) | — | Not yet counted |
| Holder concentration (Source) | — | Not yet measured |
| Premine (allocated at launch) | 10 | 0% of today's supply allocated at launch to founders, a company, a foundation or investors. There was no allocation. All ~2.65M XCP came from a month-long proof-of-burn in January 2014: ~2,125-2,140 BTC sent to an unspendable address, open to anyone on equal terms, founders included. Supply has since only fallen (fees and burns), to ~2.587M. 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 and no issuance: all XCP was created by the January 2014 proof-of-burn, and supply has only fallen since. source |
| Supply & Demand | 4.8 | group average |
| Supply & Demand (Source) | 1.3 | average of 2 measures |
| 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) | – | no order book on the nine exchanges read |
| Market cap ($1M 0, $10B or more 10) | 2.6 | $11M, 2.6 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) | 8.2 | no fixed maximum; 2.59 million in circulation |
| Record | 9.7 | 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 2014-02-15, 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 | ✓ | 717 commits in 11 of the last 12 months (github.com/CounterpartyXCP/counterparty-core); counterparty-core v11.5.0, 30 Sep 2026; 22 stable releases in the last 24 months. |
| Shipped a security fix in two years, +1 | ✓ | counterparty-core v11.4.0 (Sep 2026) fixed remotely triggerable chain halts (GHSA-pmfx-7qj5-fx6c); v11.5.0 (30 Sep 2026) fixed GHSA-q27c-r246-f6qw. |
| Shipped a scaling upgrade in two years, +1 | ✓ | v11.0.0, block 902,000 (Jun 2025): Taproot envelope data encoding replacing P2SH encoding to cut fees for larger messages. |
| Shipped a new capability for users in two years, +1 | ✓ | v11.1.0, block 952,500 (May 2026): AMM liquidity pools and indefinite DEX orders; v11.0.0 (Jun 2025): P2TR/P2WSH addresses and ordinals inscriptions. |
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.
2,586,538 XCP are in circulation, against no fixed cap — issuance has no defined end.
| Premine (allocated at launch) | 0% 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 |
There was no allocation. All ~2.65M XCP came from a month-long proof-of-burn in January 2014: ~2,125-2,140 BTC sent to an unspendable address, open to anyone on equal terms, founders included. Supply has since only fallen (fees and burns), to ~2.587M.
No sale. Coins were bought by destroying BTC, so no party received the proceeds.
No cut and no issuance: all XCP was created by the January 2014 proof-of-burn, and supply has only fallen since.
Proof-of-burn is treated as an open launch, like mining: nobody received funds and there was no team reserve. If burns were counted as purchases, soldPct would be ~100.
Sources: docs.counterparty.io · counterparty.io · en.wikipedia.org · counterparty.io. Researched 2026-10-24, 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.
Counterparty is #139 among cryptocurrencies and #915 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 776 places between Counterparty'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).