Monero's monetary policy is unusual: its supply grows forever, by a small fixed amount of 0.6 XMR per block, with no hard cap. A larger main emission finished in 2022, leaving only that permanent tail. Because the tail is fixed while the total supply keeps rising, the inflation rate stays under one percent and keeps falling toward zero.
That permanent trickle is called the tail emission, and it is a deliberate design choice, not an oversight. Its job is to keep paying the miners who secure the network once most of the coins have already been issued. So Monero trades a hard supply cap for a standing guarantee that mining always earns a reward.
That trade is Monero's answer to a problem a fixed cap like Bitcoin's eventually runs into, and it is worth seeing how the pieces fit together.
How new Monero enters circulation
New Monero is created only by mining. Every couple of minutes, miners compete to add a block, and whoever wins receives a reward of freshly issued XMR. That block reward is the single source of new coins, so Monero's monetary policy is really just the rules for how big the reward is and how it changes.
Monero is designed to work as private electronic cash (source: Monero project, What is Monero), and like any cash system, new units have to enter circulation somehow. Monero uses a mining algorithm called RandomX that runs on ordinary computers, which spreads issuance across many participants instead of a few large operations (source: Moneropedia, RandomX). If mining as a way of issuing coins is new to you, the primer on proof of work covers the mechanism this builds on. The point for tokenomics is that there is no other tap. No coins were pre-created, no team was allocated a share, and no new XMR appears except through a mined block, which is what makes the supply schedule predictable: you can work out how many coins exist at any block height purely from the rules, without trusting anyone's word for it.
The two phases of Monero's supply
Monero's issuance runs in two phases. The first was the main emission, a front-loaded release that put roughly 18.132 million XMR into circulation by the end of May 2022. The second is the tail emission, a permanent flat reward of 0.6 XMR per block that began when the main emission finished.
The design is easiest to picture as a curve that falls and then flattens. During the main emission, each block paid a steadily shrinking reward, so most of the total supply was issued in roughly the first eight years, front-loaded on purpose to bootstrap the network while it was young and least secure (source: Monero project, About). As that reward decayed, it was always heading toward a floor rather than toward zero. When it reached 0.6 XMR, it stopped shrinking and locked in place. Every block from then on mints 0.6 XMR to its miner, or slightly less if a block runs oversized, the full reward goes to miners with no cut for a company or foundation, and because there was no premine and no instamine, nobody started with a hidden pile. The result is a supply that keeps growing, but by a smaller and smaller percentage each year.
One more thing sets Monero's tokenomics apart from most newer coins: there is no team allocation, no venture-capital tranche, and no foundation treasury sitting on a large reserve. Because the launch had no premine and every block reward goes to whoever mined it, coins were distributed to miners from the very start rather than parceled out to insiders on a vesting schedule. That makes the ownership base harder to concentrate, and it removes the risk of a large pre-allocated block being sold onto the market years later. Development is instead funded through open community crowdfunding, one proposal at a time, so there is no standing war chest of founder coins hanging over holders. It is a quieter feature than the tail emission, but for judging a coin's economics it matters just as much.
Why Monero has a permanent tail emission
The tail emission exists to solve a security problem: miners need a reason to keep working after most coins are issued. If a block reward falls to zero, mining has to be paid by transaction fees alone, and if those fees run too low, miners leave and the network gets easier to attack. A small permanent reward prevents that.
Monero's own reasoning is that a steady reward keeps mining profitable enough to stay secure, and that it lets a healthy fee market develop instead of forcing fees to shoulder the entire cost of security (source: Moneropedia, tail emission). The switch to a permanent tail was a scheduled 2022 network upgrade rather than a spur-of-the-moment change (source: Wikipedia, Monero). There is a subtler benefit too. Because the reward is fixed at 0.6 XMR forever, it also replaces coins that drop out of circulation over time when people lose keys, which quietly offsets the slow disappearance of supply that every cryptocurrency suffers. The trade is honest: holders accept a little permanent issuance in return for a network that can always afford to defend itself, rather than betting that fees alone will be enough decades from now.
Monero has no supply cap, unlike Bitcoin
Monero has no maximum supply, while Bitcoin is fixed at 21 million coins. That single difference drives most of what makes the two monetary policies feel different. Bitcoin's issuance keeps halving until it reaches the cap and stops, whereas Monero's settles at a permanent flat rate and never stops.
Bitcoin's 21 million limit is a core part of its design, with the block reward cut roughly every four years until new issuance ends entirely (source: the Bitcoin project FAQ). Monero took the opposite view, deciding that a hard cap eventually forces a network to fund its security on fees alone. The table sets the two side by side.
| Trait | Monero (XMR) | Bitcoin (BTC) |
|---|---|---|
| Supply cap | None, grows forever | Fixed at 21 million |
| Issuance in the long run | Permanent 0.6 XMR per block | Halves every four years toward zero |
| Who pays miners later | Tail emission plus fees | Transaction fees alone |
| Inflation rate | Under 1% and falling toward zero | Falls to zero at the cap |
| Block size | Dynamic, no fixed maximum | Effectively fixed |
Neither approach is simply better; they are different answers to the same question of how to keep a network secure for decades. Bitcoin bets that a rich fee market will exist by the time its subsidy ends, while Monero refuses to make that bet and pays a permanent subsidy instead. If you want the other side of the comparison, the overview of what Bitcoin is covers its capped model in more depth.
How Monero's inflation rate works out
Even though the supply grows forever, Monero's inflation rate is low and keeps shrinking. A fixed amount of new coins spread over an ever-larger base is, by definition, a falling percentage. So the "infinite supply" that sounds alarming actually produces a mild and predictable inflation rate.
The math is straightforward once the pieces are in place. A block arrives about every two minutes, which works out to roughly 262,800 blocks a year. At 0.6 XMR per block, that is about 157,700 newly issued XMR a year. Spread over a base of more than 18 million coins, it comes to roughly 0.8 percent annually, and that figure falls every year as the base keeps growing. Because that fixed amount always sits on an ever-larger base, the percentage only heads one way, toward zero, without ever quite reaching it. It is worth putting the number in context: an issuance rate under one percent is lower than the inflation target most central banks set for national currencies, and unlike those targets, Monero's is fixed by rule rather than adjusted by a committee. This is why Monero describes its long-run inflation as staying under one percent and trending toward nothing. The current circulating total changes every block, so for a live figure you would check an up-to-date on-chain source rather than any static number in a guide like this.
What tail emission means for you as a holder
For a holder, tail emission means a small, predictable dilution in exchange for a network that stays permanently funded to defend itself. It is not a hidden tax or a surprise release, but a fixed rule everyone can see, and it cannot change without a network-wide upgrade. Whether that trade appeals to you is a personal call.
From BloFin's vantage as an exchange operator, a predictable, low, and falling issuance schedule is the kind of monetary policy that tends to make a coin easier to reason about than one with erratic token releases or a large team allocation, because the supply side is fixed by rule rather than by a company's decisions. That does not tell you where the price will go, but it removes one common source of nasty surprises. It also means the dilution is transparent: you can calculate exactly how much new supply arrives each year, which is not true of assets whose insiders can release large tranches on a schedule you cannot see.
The supply side is only half the story. What actually moves the price is a separate question, driven by demand, liquidity, and sentiment, and it is covered in the guide to what moves the XMR price. For how those forces have played out over past cycles, see Monero's price history and cycles.
To step back to the basics of the asset itself, the hub guide on what Monero is ties the monetary policy back to the coin. And for the generic idea of a coin's economics, separate from Monero's specifics, the primer on what tokenomics means is a useful companion.
Frequently asked questions
Will Monero's supply ever stop growing?
No. Unlike Bitcoin, Monero has no maximum supply, so new coins keep being issued indefinitely at 0.6 XMR per block. What stopped was the shrinking of the reward: during the main emission the reward fell block by block, but once it reached 0.6 XMR it flattened out and stays there for good. So the supply grows forever, but at a fixed amount per block rather than an accelerating one, which means the percentage growth keeps falling toward zero even though the raw number never stops rising.
Isn't an uncapped supply inflationary and bad for the price?
Not in the way that phrase suggests. Inflation here is a rate, not a raw amount, and a fixed 0.6 XMR per block against a growing base produces a rate under one percent that keeps falling. Many established national currencies target higher inflation than that. The design also funds network security forever, which a hard cap cannot do without relying entirely on fees. Whether it is good for the price depends on demand, which the tokenomics do not control, so this guide makes no price prediction either way.
Can I stake Monero to earn a share of the new supply?
No. Monero uses proof-of-work mining, not proof-of-stake, so there is no staking and no way to earn the tail emission just by holding coins. Every new 0.6 XMR goes to the miner who found the block, in return for the computing work that secures the network. If you wanted exposure to that new issuance, you would have to mine XMR yourself rather than stake it. For most holders, the tail emission is something that happens around them, not a yield they collect, which is a common point of confusion for people used to proof-of-stake coins.
How much XMR exists right now?
That figure changes with every block, so any number printed in a guide would be out of date almost immediately. The structural facts are stable: about 18.132 million XMR were issued by the end of the main emission in May 2022, and the supply has grown by 0.6 XMR per block since. For the exact current circulating supply, check a live on-chain source or block explorer rather than a static article, since only real-time data can give you an accurate count at the moment you look.
If transactions are private, how can anyone know the total supply?
This is one of Monero's neat tricks. Individual transaction amounts are hidden, but the block reward is not, because it follows a fixed, public rule: a known main-emission curve followed by 0.6 XMR per block. Anyone can add up the rewards from block zero to the current height and get the exact total ever issued, without seeing a single private amount. So Monero can be fully private at the transaction level while its overall supply stays perfectly auditable, which is important for trusting that no extra coins are being created in secret.
Does tail emission slowly erode my holdings?
It dilutes the total supply by a small, fixed amount, but that overstates it. Your number of coins does not shrink; the share of the total each coin represents falls very slowly, by under one percent a year and less each year. Part of that new issuance also replaces coins lost to forgotten keys, which quietly removes supply over time. Whether the dilution matters to you depends on whether demand grows faster than the sub-one-percent issuance, which is a market question, not a tokenomics one.
Why 0.6 XMR specifically, and can it change?
The 0.6 XMR figure was set by the Monero community as the level judged high enough to keep mining secure without meaningfully inflating the supply. It is written into the protocol rules, so it applies to every block automatically and equally. It is not fixed by any company, and it could in principle be changed, but only through a network-wide upgrade that node operators, miners, and the wider community would all have to accept. In practice, changing a core monetary rule like this would be a major, contested decision rather than a routine tweak.
Researched and written by the BloFin Academy editorial team with AI-assisted drafting. Updated July 2026. Primary sources: the official Monero documentation and Moneropedia at getmonero.org, the Monero entry on Wikipedia, and bitcoin.org for Bitcoin's supply cap. All facts independently verified against cited documentation current as of July 2026.
This article is educational and general in nature, not financial, legal, or tax advice. Cryptocurrencies like Monero carry real risks, including price volatility, regulatory changes, and the permanent loss of funds through user error. Supply figures other than the structural rules described here change continuously, so confirm any live number with a current on-chain source. Nothing here is a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any asset. Do your own research, and consider a licensed professional before making financial decisions. BloFin does not provide investment advice.