Originally published at https://mrnasdog.com/research/btc/inflation

This is the long supply read. For the signal, the price drivers and the questions people ask about Bitcoin, see mrnasdog.com/research/btc.

BTC Inflation Analysis · October 2026 · Mixed flows · supply roughly steady

Bitcoin supply grows by a small, fixed trickle and nothing ever shrinks it. In the 90 days to Oct 20 2026, BTC miners were paid 41,100 BTC in new coins, while buybacks, fee burns and locks removed 0 BTC, so net supply rose +0.20%, and the MrNasDog Pressure Framework projects the same +0.20% for the next 90 days. With 20.10M of the 21M hard cap already mined, the Bitcoin halving schedule, not any team or treasury, decides how much new BTC reaches the market.

The verdict, in one paragraph

We read BTC at +0.20% net over the last 90 days and +0.20% over the next 90. The independent inflation monitor reads +0.21% for the same window, a gap of 0.004 percentage points, so the two readings agree and the coin page carries no ⚠ monitor gap note. Every new bitcoin in the window came from a mined block, and no coin left the market for good: there is no Bitcoin burn, no buyback and no staking lock. The one-line label for BTC is slow, capped mining inflation with an empty buy side.

Sell pressure: where new BTC comes from

Protocol inflation is the whole Bitcoin sell side. Every block pays its miner a subsidy of 3.125 BTC, the rate set by the April 2024 halving. Between Jul 22 2026 and Oct 20 2026 miners found 13,152 blocks, about 146 a day, which is a little faster than the 144-a-day design pace because mining power kept rising faster than the difficulty could catch up. That gives 41,100 BTC of new supply. The pace picked up through the window: about 4,283 blocks in the first 30 days, 4,398 in the second and 4,471 in the third. The supply count read on-chain at both ends of the window rose by exactly that amount, to the coin.

Vesting unlocks are 0 and always will be. Bitcoin launched on Jan 3 2009 with no presale, no founder allocation and no investor tranche, so there is no unlock calendar to track. Foundation and unscheduled unlocks are also 0: Bitcoin has no foundation, no company and no treasury, and circulating supply equals total supply. Long-term locked or bankruptcy supply books 0 too. The Mt. Gox estate still holds about 34,388 BTC, and on Oct 16 2026 its trustee moved the payout deadline from Oct 31 2026 to Oct 31 2027. Those coins, like the seized BTC held by the US and UK governments, were mined years ago and already sit inside circulating supply, so a payout or a government sale moves bitcoin between holders without adding a single new coin.

Buy pressure: where new BTC goes

The Bitcoin buy side is empty by design. Programmatic buyback is 0: no protocol or company earns revenue in BTC and buys coins back. Protocol fee burn is 0: Bitcoin has no fee burn, and every transaction fee goes to the miner who wins the block. Voluntary sends to unspendable addresses came to about 0.004 BTC in the window, far too small to count. Foundation buy is 0 because there is no foundation.

New long-term lock is 0 as well, even though big buyers are active. Spot bitcoin funds took in money again, with one fund drawing $665M on Oct 19 2026; a listed company held about 848,250 BTC on Oct 11 2026; and a US bill to hold the government’s bitcoin for 20 years cleared a House committee on Sep 16 2026. All of that is real demand, but every one of those coins still counts as circulating, so none of it takes BTC out of the supply count. Buying changes who holds bitcoin, not how much bitcoin exists.

Foundation and overhang

There is no team-controlled overhang in Bitcoin. No foundation, labs company, DAO or vesting contract holds unreleased BTC, and total supply equals circulating supply, so there is no locked bucket that could later flood the market. The large balances people watch are third-party holders whose coins are already in the float: the Mt. Gox estate at about 34,388 BTC with its new Oct 31 2027 deadline, government wallets that moved about $1B of seized BTC on Oct 7–8 2026 with no sale confirmed, the UK’s 61,245 seized BTC, corporate treasuries and early wallets that have not moved in a decade. We re-check the supply split at every rebuild. If a part of supply ever showed up outside circulating supply and then began to flow out, that outflow would enter the Foundation and unscheduled unlocks row at the next refresh.

How BTC compares to other proof-of-work chains

Among proof-of-work coins, Bitcoin sits at the strict end. Its 21M cap and its halving every 210,000 blocks are written into the protocol, so BTC inflation falls by half roughly every four years and heads toward zero. Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin SV copied the same 21M cap and halving schedule, so their supply curves match Bitcoin’s in shape. Litecoin uses the same halving idea on a larger 84M cap with faster blocks. None of these chains burns fees, so for all of them the sell side is the block subsidy and the buy side is close to empty.

The contrast is sharper with uncapped designs. Dogecoin pays a fixed 10,000 DOGE per block forever, with no cap and no halving, so its new supply never shrinks in coin terms. Monero ended its main emission and now pays a permanent tail of 0.6 XMR per block, choosing a small endless issuance to keep paying miners. Ethereum left proof-of-work and now pays validators while burning part of every fee, so its net supply can rise or fall. Bitcoin has none of these levers: no tail emission, no burn and no governance vote that can change the cap, which is why BTC inflation is the most predictable number in crypto.

What to watch in the next 90 days

The Mt. Gox estate is the largest single BTC balance tied to a deadline, now Oct 31 2027; any payouts before then move coins between holders but can still bring selling headlines.

US government wallets moved about $1B of seized bitcoin on Oct 7–8 2026; a confirmed sale would add selling into the market without changing BTC supply.

The US bill to hold federal bitcoin for 20 years still needs a House floor vote and the Senate; if it passes, a large block of BTC would be held long term, but those coins stay in the supply count.

BIP-361, a draft proposal to freeze coins in addresses exposed to future quantum computers, is under debate among developers; it is a draft only, and any freeze would need wide support from the network.

Block pace: if mining power keeps rising, blocks keep arriving a little faster than 144 a day and new supply runs slightly above the design rate until difficulty catches up. The next Bitcoin halving, at block 1,050,000 around April 2028, is outside this window.

Summary

Bitcoin supply grew +0.20% in the 90 days to Oct 20 2026, all of it the 41,100 BTC paid to miners, and the MrNasDog Pressure Framework projects the same +0.20% for the next 90 days. BTC has no vesting, no foundation, no burn and no buyback, so the halving schedule alone sets its inflation, and the next halving around April 2028 will cut new supply in half. The key risk is selling by large holders such as the Mt. Gox estate or governments, which moves existing coins rather than creating new ones. The ceiling is fixed: 20.10M of 21M BTC are already mined.

MrNasDog Pressure Framework analysis of BTC, Metric 1 — Inflation. Data + explanation only. Not financial advice. Checked Oct 20 2026.

Original: https://mrnasdog.com/research/btc/inflation · Data + explanation only. Not financial advice.