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What's the M0/MB inflation rate of Bitcoin?
Note: I'm asking about multiple years in order to make this question less likely to go out of date.
How much inflation does Bitcoin have, year by year?
Answers
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Year #bitcoins Inflation per annum
2009 1,624,250 -
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2010 5,020,250 209.1%
2011 8,001,400 59.4%
2012 10,733,825 34.1%
2013 12,199,725 13.7%
2014 13,671,200 12.1%
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2015 15,029,525 9.9%
2016 16,075,400 7.0%
2017 16,750,400 4.2% (estimate)
2018 17,425,400 4.0% (estimate)
2019 18,100,400 3.9% (estimate)
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2020 18,575,200 2.6% (estimate, halvening)
2021 18,912,700 1.8% (estimate)
2022 19,250,200 1.8% (estimate)
2023 19,587,700 1.8% (estimate)
2024 19,806,350 1.1% (estimate, halvening)
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2025 19,975,100 0.9% (estimate)
2026 20,143,850 0.8% (estimate)
2026 20,312,600 0.8% (estimate)
For the past years, I have calculated the amount of bitcoins created from first block to last block per year. The numbers starting from 2017 are estimates based on the assumption that we will add 54,000 Blocks per year, which would be the result of today's block interval rounded down to the thousands, or an average block interval of 9.73 minutes. At exactly 10 minutes we'd expect 52,500 blocks per year.
Update 2017:
It turns out that 2016 had 55,184 blocks (or an average block interval of 9.51 minutes), so with 54,000 blocks I had underestimated by 1,184 blocks. Thus, inflation rates might be slightly bigger than the estimate provided here, if that interval remains accurate. New estimates were still calculated with 54,000 blocks per year.
I am not sure exactly how you want to define the money supply. The definitions of M0 and MB given here differ in whether you count physical currency held by banks and Federal Reserve account balances. I don't know what the correct analogy of those quantities is for Bitcoin, which doesn't have a Federal Reserve, and I don't know how you would define what is a bank, nor how you would find out their currency holdings (since there are no regulations forcing them to report this). Can you be more precise in your question?
– Nate Eldredge – 2015-04-25T20:07:22.983The obvious way to measure the "money supply" at any given time would simply be to determine the total number of bitcoins generated up to that time, and assume all of them are "in circulation". In that case your question should reduce to looking up some numbers and a simple computation. But it seems like maybe you are looking for something more elaborate than that. – Nate Eldredge – 2015-04-25T20:08:51.503
@NateEldredge
Can you be more precise in your question?So, for example, when the genesis block was issued, the inflation rate was infinite, because it went from 0 to 50 Bitcoins.The obvious way to measure theThat's exactly what I'm looking for. – Nick ODell – 2015-04-25T20:31:44.970So, for example, let's compute the inflation rate for the year 2010. A quick binary search shows the last block generated in 2009 was 32489. Since the reward was BTC 50 per block up to that time, after block 32489 there were 32490*50=1624500 BTC in circulation....
– Nate Eldredge – 2015-04-25T20:44:37.520The last block of 2010 was 1004090 so there were 50*(100490-32489)=3400050 BTC generated during 2010. Now 3400050/1624500 = 2.09 so Bitcoin experienced a 209% increase in the money supply during the year 2010. Is that what you are looking for?
– Nate Eldredge – 2015-04-25T20:47:04.890Bitcoin is deflationary. – Geremia – 2016-12-22T13:38:19.480
2@Geremia It may be price-deflationary (as the value of coins may go up), but it is certainly supply-inflationary (as the amount of coins in circulation goes up). – Pieter Wuille – 2016-12-22T16:18:16.740