Protocol issuance · August 2026

Bitcoin inflation rate

Bitcoin’s inflation rate is 0.82% per year as of August 2026. That is the annualized pace at which new bitcoin are created, after the 20 April 2024 halving cut the block subsidy to 3.125 BTC. It is often rounded to 0.83%, the rate at the moment of the halving, and it is not the same thing as consumer-price inflation or the price of goods measured in bitcoin.

Annual supply inflation

0.82%

Block subsidy

3.125 BTC

Daily issuance

~450 BTC

Next halving

~0.40% in April 2028

Annualized target issuance as a share of supply. Paired points show the drop immediately before and after each halving; the dashed path shows projected rates if blocks continue to arrive near the 10-minute target.

What Bitcoin’s inflation rate measures

The usual meaning of “bitcoin inflation rate” is the protocol figure: annualized new issuance divided by existing supply. That is monetary inflation, in the same family of measures as gold mine production relative to above-ground stock or M2 growth. It is not the Consumer Price Index, and it is not a forecast of bitcoin’s purchasing power.

The term is commonly used for three different measures:

• Supply inflation — bitcoin created by the block subsidy, currently 0.82% a year.
• Consumer-price inflation — the price of a basket of goods in dollars or another national currency, published as CPI or a similar index.
• Prices measured in bitcoin — whether a home, an ounce of gold, or an equity index costs more or fewer bitcoin than it did a year ago. That is what this index charts.

Bitcoin can have low, falling supply inflation and still see goods get more expensive in bitcoin during a price drawdown. The reverse is also true. Keeping the measures separate avoids a category error.

How the Bitcoin inflation rate is calculated

The annualized rate used on this page is the current block subsidy times the number of blocks implied by a 10-minute target, divided by issued supply:

Annualized supply inflation = (block subsidy × 144 × 365.25) / issued supply

At 3.125 BTC per block, the network targets 450 new BTC a day, or about 164,363 BTC a year. Against 20,071,518 BTC outstanding as of August 2026, that is 0.82%:

164,363 BTC / 20,071,518 BTC = 0.82%

A second method uses the trailing twelve-month change in issued supply. The two answers diverge when blocks arrive faster or slower than ten minutes. Difficulty adjusts every 2,016 blocks to bring expected block production back toward the target, but actual issuance over any twelve-month period can still differ from this annualized estimate.

Sources that still print 0.83% are using the rate at block 840,000, when issued supply was 19,687,500 BTC. The subsidy has not changed since then. The denominator has. Each new coin makes the same target annual issuance of 164,363 BTC a slightly smaller percentage of the stock, until the next halving resets the numerator.

Issued supply

20,071,518 BTC

Share of 21 million issued

95.58%

Remaining to issue

928,482 BTC

Stock-to-flow

~122

Stock-to-flow is the reciprocal of the inflation rate: 1 / 0.82% ≈ 122. It describes scarcity of new flow relative to the stock. It is not a price model.

Inflation by halving epoch

The subsidy halves every 210,000 blocks. The inflation rate at the start of each epoch is the new annual issuance divided by supply at that height. Inside an epoch the rate drifts down as the denominator grows; the next halving cuts it in half.

The first epoch has no inflation rate in this table because supply started at zero. Later dates after 2024 assume blocks continue to arrive near target; the calendar date of a future halving moves if hash rate runs persistently ahead of or behind that target.

Bitcoin vs gold vs the dollar

The useful comparison for Bitcoin’s 0.82% is other supply-growth rates, not CPI. Gold is the closest monetary analog: new metal added to a large above-ground stock.

The World Gold Council recorded 3,672 tonnes of mine production in 2025. Against an estimated 220,700 tonnes of above-ground gold, that is about 1.7% supply growth — and mine output can rise if a higher gold price brings marginal deposits into production, usually with a lag. Bitcoin’s subsidy per block does not respond to price, although issuance per unit of time varies with block timing. That is why Bitcoin’s stock-to-flow overtook gold’s after the 2024 halving, and why the 2028 halving is scheduled to roughly double it again.

The US dollar is a different object. CPI and PCE measure changes in consumer prices. M2 measures a quantity of money. Their growth rates can diverge because prices also depend on spending, production, credit conditions, and money velocity. Putting 0.82% next to a CPI or PCE print without that caveat compares a supply-growth measure with a price index.

The Federal Reserve’s 2% inflation target is a longer-run goal for PCE inflation, not a cap on dollar issuance. Bitcoin’s annualized supply-growth rate fell below 2% at the May 2020 halving and below 1% at the April 2024 halving. It is scheduled to fall below 0.5% in April 2028. Those thresholds describe bitcoin creation, not future consumer-price inflation.

Prices measured in bitcoin

If the question is “is life getting more expensive in bitcoin?”, the protocol rate cannot answer it. The Bitcoin Inflation Index does: it divides a documented dollar benchmark by the BTC/USD close for each month. A falling bitcoin line means fewer bitcoin are needed to buy the same benchmark; a rising line means more are required.

That series is volatile because bitcoin’s dollar price is volatile. Over the latest twelve-month window in the index, the benchmarks below became more expensive in bitcoin as the dollar price of bitcoin fell. The block subsidy did not change, although the annualized supply-growth rate continued to drift lower.

Issuance answers how fast the stock is growing. It does not answer whether a home, an ounce of gold, or the S&P 500 is getting cheaper or dearer in bitcoin. Those charts use the same monthly method as the rest of this index.

Lost coins, the 21 million cap, and effective supply

About 95.58% of the nominal 21 million cap is already issued. The remaining 928,482 BTC is scheduled across more than a century of decaying subsidies, not a few years of inventory. Integer satoshi math means slightly less than 21 million BTC will ever exist; 21 million is the asymptotic ceiling, not a mintage target the network will print in full.

The number of permanently lost bitcoin cannot be observed: a coin that has not moved since 2011 may be lost, or it may move tomorrow. Lost coins do not change scheduled issuance, but they do reduce the spendable stock. If an estimate of lost coins is excluded from the denominator, the same 450 BTC of target daily issuance is a larger share of the estimated spendable supply.

That is also why “Bitcoin is already deflationary because coins are lost” overreaches. Losses are a poorly measured stock. Issuance is a known flow. Until that flow reaches zero, cumulative nominal issuance is still rising.

Disinflation, not deflation

Bitcoin is often called a deflationary asset. In the monetary-supply sense that is incorrect today. Deflation of the money supply would mean the number of bitcoin is falling. The number is still rising, just more slowly after each halving. The correct term for a falling positive inflation rate is disinflation.

Prices denominated in bitcoin are a separate question. If bitcoin’s purchasing power rises, a basket of goods deflates in bitcoin terms even while the coin supply inflates. If bitcoin’s dollar price falls faster than the dollar price of that basket, the basket inflates in bitcoin terms. Both have happened, repeatedly. The issuance schedule does not prevent either.

The whitepaper’s own language is narrower. Once the subsidy ends, miner incentives “can transition entirely to transaction fees and be completely inflation free.” That sentence is about the block subsidy reaching zero around 2140, not about consumer prices in 2026.

After 2028, and toward 2140

The next scheduled cut is block 1,050,000, expected around April 2028 if block times stay near ten minutes. The subsidy falls to 1.5625 BTC, daily issuance to about 225 BTC, and annualized inflation to about 0.40%. The 2032 halving halves that again, to roughly 0.20%.

Each step also changes miner revenue. The subsidy share of block rewards declines; transaction fees would need to carry more of the security budget. That transition is part of the monetary design, not a side effect. It does not alter the inflation formula, but it is why a zero-subsidy network is not the same object as today’s 0.82% issuance regime.

None of those future rates is a reason to treat bitcoin as a guaranteed store of purchasing power. They are reasons the supply side is knowable. Demand is not.

Frequently asked questions

Supply figures are a dated snapshot of cumulative issuance plus the protocol issuance schedule. Asset comparisons use the latest monthly observation in each series and do not represent an offer, recommendation, or investment return. Source data may be revised.