What is the Ethereum Classic (ETC) inflation rate?

+2.41% a year, and +0.59% in the next 90 days. That is new ETC minus what is burned or bought back, checked Oct 14 2026.

Is ETC inflationary or deflationary?

Inflationary: ETC's supply is growing, about +2.41% a year.

Where does new ETC supply come from?

Mining is the only new supply: 960,257 ETC to proof-of-work miners in 90 days. The block reward fell 20% to 1.6384 ETC on Jul 22 2026, so about 942,365 ETC come next. No vesting, no team reserve.

MrNasdog Pressure Framework · Inflation Analysis

ETC Inflation Analysis · October 2026 · Supply growing · projected to keep growing

Ethereum Classic (ETC) is mildly inflationary, and only one thing drives it: the proof-of-work block reward. Miners received 960,257 new ETC in the last 90 days while nothing was burned or bought back, so supply grew +0.60%. After the 20% block-reward cut of Jul 22 2026, the next 90 days bring about 942,365 ETC, or +0.59%. ETC has a hard ceiling of about 210.7M coins, and each cut every 5M blocks slows the pace further.

The verdict, in one paragraph

Our ledger reads +0.60% net new ETC over the 90 days from Jul 16 to Oct 14 2026, against a circulating supply of 158.77M ETC. The supply monitor read +1.38%, a gap of 0.77 percentage points, which is above our 0.5-point line, so we walked every source again. The gap closed: the supply figure the monitor reads sat about 1.09M ETC below the chain on Jul 11 2026 and caught up in one day on Jul 17 2026. That is a recount of coins that already existed, not new coins, so no warning chip is shown. The forward reading is +0.59% in the next 90 days. Label: a proof-of-work chain with a steady, shrinking mining subsidy and no burn.

Sell pressure: where new ETC comes from

Protocol inflation: 960,257 ETC. Ethereum Classic pays the miner of every block a fixed subsidy set by its monetary policy, ECIP-1017, which cuts the reward by 20% every 5,000,000 blocks. The window held one of those cuts: at block 25,000,001 on Jul 22 2026 the reward fell from 2.048 ETC to 1.6384 ETC. We read miner balances on the chain on both sides of that block and saw the new pay land exactly. The window had 573,847 blocks, 42,975 at the old reward and 530,872 at the new one.

Ethereum Classic also pays for stale blocks, called uncles. When a block includes an uncle, the uncle's miner gets one thirty-second of the block reward and the including miner gets another thirty-second. We counted every block in the window and found 23,631 uncles, which added 2,463 ETC. Blocks arrived every 13.55 seconds on average, a little slower than the 13-second target. At the new reward and that pace, the next 90 days bring about 942,365 ETC, close to 10,500 ETC a day.

Vesting unlocks: 0. ETC has no vesting schedule. The coins created at launch in 2015 were free to move from day one, and the mining reward goes to whoever mines, with no cut for a team or investors. Foundation and unscheduled unlocks: 0. No foundation, company or DAO holds a reserve of Ethereum Classic. Long-term locked or bankruptcy: 0. No bankruptcy estate or trustee is paying out ETC.

Buy pressure: where new ETC goes

Every buy row is 0. Programmatic buyback: 0 — nothing buys ETC back. Protocol fee burn: 0 — Ethereum Classic never adopted the base-fee burn; blocks carry no base fee and every transaction fee goes to the miner. Known dead addresses picked up only about 11 ETC across the 90 days, too small to count as a mechanism. A fee-market upgrade called Olympia is written up as a draft, but it has no activation block, and as drafted it would send the base fee to a vault rather than burn it.

Foundation buy: 0 — there is no treasury buying ETC. New long-term lock: 0 — Ethereum Classic is proof of work, so there is no staking contract to pull coins out of the market. Every new ETC a miner receives is free to sell the same day.

Foundation and overhang

Ethereum Classic has no team-controlled overhang. Circulating supply of 158.77M ETC sits within about 379 ETC of total supply, so no wallet can be holding a reserve that is outside the market today. The biggest single holder we track is a listed fund that reported about 10.85M ETC on Jun 30 2026; it bought those coins in the market, they already count as circulating, and a sale by the fund would move coins between holders without adding supply. The one future change to watch is the planned Olympia vault: if it ever goes live and starts holding fees outside the market, we will test it again at each rebuild. If any such balance falls between refreshes, the outflow enters the Foundation and unscheduled unlocks row at the next refresh.

How ETC compares to other proof-of-work chains

Ethereum Classic sits closest to Bitcoin and Litecoin: all three pay miners a subsidy that steps down on a fixed block schedule toward a hard cap. The difference is the step. Bitcoin halves its reward every 210,000 blocks, about four years. Ethereum Classic cuts 20% every 5,000,000 blocks, about two years, so its supply curve is smoother, with more frequent and smaller cuts. ETC's cap is about 210.7M coins against Bitcoin's 21M, and ETC is further from it: roughly 75% mined versus about 95%.

Against Ethereum (ETH), the chain it split from in 2016, ETC is the opposite design on two counts. ETH moved to proof of stake, has no supply cap, and burns part of every fee; ETC kept proof of work, keeps a hard cap and burns nothing. On a 90-day view the two land near each other today, because ETH's burn is small and ETC's subsidy keeps shrinking. Against tail-emission coins such as Monero, ETC's emission is set to keep falling rather than settle at a fixed floor.

What to watch in the next 90 days

Block pace. New supply follows how fast blocks arrive. If hash power leaves and blocks slow down, fewer ETC are mined, and the reverse holds too. One large mining pool announced it will stop on Nov 10 2026, and its miners must move elsewhere.

The Olympia fee upgrade. The base-fee and vault drafts still list no mainnet block. A set activation block would add a new flow to track, though it would not burn coins as drafted.

The fund holder's next filing.The listed fund's next quarterly report should show its ETC balance at Sep 30 2026. A sale moves coins inside the market and adds no new supply.

The next reward cut. It comes at block 30,000,001, about two years away, when the reward falls from 1.6384 to 1.31072 ETC. Nothing changes the reward inside the next 90 days.

Summary

Ethereum Classic (ETC) grows its supply only through the proof-of-work mining reward: 960,257 ETC in the last 90 days, +0.60%, and about 942,365 ETC, +0.59%, in the next 90 days after the Jul 22 2026 reward cut. Nothing is burned, bought back, staked or vested, so every new coin goes to miners who can sell it. The main risk is steady miner selling with no buyer built into the protocol. The ceiling is the ECIP-1017 schedule, which cuts the reward 20% every 5M blocks toward a cap of about 210.7M ETC.

MrNasdog Pressure Framework analysis of ETC, Metric 1 — Inflation. Data + explanation only. Not financial advice. Checked Oct 14 2026.