Originally published at https://mrnasdog.com/research/tao/inflation
➜ Start with the Bittensor coin page for the short answer (should you buy TAO?) and its price drivers: mrnasdog.com/research/tao
TAO Inflation Analysis · October 2026 · Supply growing · projected to keep growing
TAO, the coin of the Bittensor AI network, is inflationary: its supply grew +4.31% between Jul 24 and Oct 22 2026, and we project about +2.78% for the next 90 days. Block rewards created 324,000 TAO, a one-time network fix on Sep 15 2026 minted 172,001 TAO more, and fee and registration recycling took back only 7,722 TAO. Bittensor has a hard cap of 21M TAO and halves its block reward when issuance crosses set levels; the next halving is about three years away, and other trackers show +18.14% only because of a one-day recount of their supply figure.
The verdict, in one paragraph
Over the last 90 days TAO supply rose by a net 488,279 TAO, or +4.31% of the 11.34M TAO in circulation. Other trackers read +18.14% for the same 90 days, a gap of 13.84 percentage points, so the page carries a ⚠ note. The gap is not new TAO: the supply figure those trackers use sat near 9.6M TAO until Sep 14 2026 and then jumped 1.75M TAO in one day on Sep 15 2026 to catch up with the chain, so their 90-day starting point is far too low. On-chain, TAO issuance stood at 11.16M on Jul 24 2026 and 11.65M on Oct 22 2026. Without the one-time mint, the next 90 days fall back to about +2.78%. The label for TAO today: a capped, halving-schedule coin in its high-issuance years, with a small recycling offset.
Sell pressure: where new TAO comes from
Protocol inflation is the main source. Every Bittensor block, about every 12 seconds, creates 0.5 TAO. Between Jul 24 and Oct 22 2026 the chain produced 648,000 blocks, so block rewards added 324,000 TAO, about 3,600 TAO a day. That TAO flows into the subnets, where it is paid out to miners, validators, subnet owners and stakers. Blocks ran slightly slower than 12 seconds on average, so the next 90 days should bring about 323,692 TAO. The reward was cut from 1 TAO to 0.5 TAO at the first halving, when issuance passed 10.5M; the next cut, to 0.25 TAO, comes when issuance reaches 15.75M TAO, roughly three years from now at today’s pace.
A one-time root pot mint added 172,001 TAO. On Sep 15 2026 a Bittensor network upgrade minted 172,001 TAO into the root staking pool. For a long time, rewards to root stakers had been credited to their balances without real TAO moving into the pool behind them, so the last stakers trying to leave could not be paid. The upgrade filled that hole once. It is written to run a single time, so it adds nothing to the next 90 days, but it explains why the last 90 days look much heavier than the next.
Vesting unlocks are zero. TAO launched without a presale, a team share or an investor share: every coin in existence was earned through block rewards, so there is no unlock calendar and no cliff. Foundation and unscheduled unlocks are zero for the same reason: the Opentensor Foundation received no allocation and holds no reserve outside the circulating count. Long-term locked or bankruptcy supply is zero: no court-held or estate TAO waits to be released.
Buy pressure: where new TAO goes
Protocol recycling took back 7,722 TAO. Since Aug 12 2026 Bittensor no longer pays transaction fees to the validators that produce blocks; it removes them from supply. Registration costs and some money from subnet pools are taken out of supply the same way. Together these removed 7,722 TAO in the 90 days, about 2% of what blocks created. Fees alone come to roughly 20 TAO a day after they were halved on Sep 18 2026; the rest arrives in lumps, such as a single recycle of about 869 TAO on Sep 26 2026. At the rate seen since late September we expect about 8,641 TAO of recycling in the next 90 days. Recycled TAO lowers issuance, which also pushes the next halving slightly later.
There is no programmatic buyback of TAO. Subnets buy back their own subnet tokens, which leaves TAO supply unchanged. Foundation buying is zero: the Foundation does not buy TAO, and listed TAO treasury companies and the Grayscale Bittensor trust buy coins that already circulate. New long-term locks are zero as well: about 7.45M TAO is staked, but staked TAO still counts as circulating, so staking takes nothing out of the count.
Foundation and overhang
Bittensor has no team-controlled overhang in the usual sense. There was no premine, no foundation treasury carved out at launch and no vesting contract, so every TAO that exists already sits in the circulating count, whether it is held, staked or traded. The Opentensor Foundation earns TAO the same way any other validator does, and companies that hold TAO on their balance sheets bought it on the open market. One of them, TaoWeave, sold part of its holdings in 2026 to pay its costs; such sales move coins that are already counted and do not add new supply. The root staking pool that received the Sep 15 2026 mint is also inside the count. We re-check issuance on-chain at every rebuild. If a future network upgrade mints or recycles TAO outside the normal block reward, that change enters the ledger at the next refresh.
How TAO compares to other capped, halving-schedule chains
TAO copies Bitcoin’s shape: a hard cap of 21M coins and a block reward that halves over time. The difference is the trigger. Bitcoin halves every 210,000 blocks, about every four years, no matter what happens on the chain. Bittensor halves when total issuance crosses set levels, 10.5M then 15.75M, and recycled TAO lowers issuance, so recycling pushes the halving later. TAO also sits much earlier in its curve: only a little more than half of its cap exists, against roughly 95% for Bitcoin, which is why TAO’s supply grows near 11% a year after its first halving while Bitcoin’s grows under 1%.
Against uncapped proof-of-stake chains such as Ethereum or Solana, TAO looks different again. Those chains pay stakers from an open-ended issuance and lean on fee burns to offset it; TAO’s offset, fee and registration recycling, is small, about 2% of new coins. What TAO has instead is a known end point: issuance keeps halving toward the 21M cap. Unlike most new tokens, TAO has no investor or team unlocks at all, so every new TAO comes from block rewards paid to the people running the network.
What to watch in the next 90 days
Network upgrades. Bittensor ships runtime upgrades every few days. The Sep 15 2026 upgrade minted 172,001 TAO in one block, so we will watch each new release for any other one-time mint or recycle.
eTAO, live since Oct 20 2026. Subnet owners can now set how their subnet’s own token is split between the owner, validators and miners. It does not change the 0.5 TAO made per block, but it can change who receives new TAO and how much of it gets sold.
Recycling. Fees were halved on Sep 18 2026, and since Oct 7 2026 subnets can let new members join by proof of work instead of paying a registration cost. Both could shrink the 8,641 TAO of recycling we expect.
The tracker recount. Other trackers’ 90-day reading should fall back toward ours around Dec 14 2026, once their starting point moves past the Sep 15 2026 jump.
Summary
TAO is inflationary: Bittensor supply grew +4.31% in the 90 days to Oct 22 2026 and should grow about +2.78% in the next 90 days. Nearly all new TAO comes from the 0.5 TAO block reward, about 3,600 TAO a day, plus a one-time 172,001 TAO mint on Sep 15 2026; recycling takes back only about 2%. There are no vesting unlocks and no team reserve. The key risk is steady new supply, around 1.3M TAO a year, that buyers have to absorb; the ceiling is the 21M TAO cap, with the next halving to 0.25 TAO per block about three years away.
MrNasDog Pressure Framework analysis of TAO, Metric 1 — Inflation. Data + explanation only. Not financial advice. Checked Oct 22 2026.
Original: https://mrnasdog.com/research/tao/inflation · Data + explanation only. Not financial advice.