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

PEPE has a fixed supply that nobody can add to. All 420.69 trillion PEPE were created when the Pepe token launched on Ethereum in April 2023, the contract has no mint function, and its owner key was given up, so the sell side is 0. The only flow is holders destroying coins by mistake or by choice: about 3.73B PEPE in the 90 days to Oct 3 2026, under 0.001% of supply. Net, PEPE supply moved −0.00%, and the monitor read +0.12%, a gap of 0.12 points that needs no warning flag.

The verdict, in one paragraph

Over the 90 days from Jul 5 2026 to Oct 3 2026, PEPE supply changed by −0.00% (exactly −0.0009%): no new coins at all against 3.73B PEPE of holder burns. For the next 90 days we count 0.00%, because those burns follow no plan or schedule. Our inflation monitor, which estimates supply from market value and price, read +0.12% for the same window. The gap is 0.12 percentage points, inside our 0.5-point tolerance, so no warning flag ships; the monitor number simply wobbles around a supply that cannot grow. PEPE is a frozen-supply meme coin: nothing is printed, nothing unlocks, and only a trickle of coins is lost each quarter.

Sell pressure: where new PEPE comes from

Protocol inflation is 0, and it is zero for good. The PEPE token contract on Ethereum has no mint function, makes no outside calls of any kind, and its owner address is the zero address, so even its few admin switches (a blacklist and a holding limit used at launch) can never be used again. We read the contract code this build and found no path that could ever create a coin, and no new-coin transfer appeared in the whole window.

Vesting unlocks are 0. Pepe had no presale, no investors and no unlock calendar. On day one, 93.1% of the supply went into the launch trading pool, whose pool tokens were burned, and the other 6.9% went to one team wallet meant for exchange listings and bridges. Nothing has been waiting to unlock since.

Foundation and unscheduled unlocks are 0. Pepe has no foundation. The one team holder we track is a team Safe holding about 2.12T PEPE, the last of that 6.9% team wallet, and it did not move in these 90 days. Even if it sold, every PEPE already counts as circulating, so the sale would move coins between wallets rather than add new ones.

Long-term locked or bankruptcy supply is 0. No estate, court trustee or lock contract is paying PEPE out, and the big holders, from exchanges to whales, bought their coins on the open market.

Buy pressure: where new PEPE goes

There is no programmatic buyback (0): the coin earns no fees, so no contract or team has income to buy PEPE back. There is no protocol fee burn either (0): transfers carry no tax, and because the contract can never be changed, an automatic burn can never be switched on. Foundation buying is 0, and new long-term locks are 0, since PEPE has no staking and no lock contract.

The one real flow is holder burns: 3.73B PEPE destroyed in the window. Of that, 3.61B was sent to the PEPE token contract itself, which has no way to ever send coins back out, 118M was sent to the standard dead address, and 1,371 PEPE was burned through the contract's own burn button. Two one-off transfers into the contract, on Jul 26 2026 and Aug 24 2026, made up 2.62B of the total. Over the last year these burns ran between about 0.39B and 3.73B a quarter with no pattern, so we project 0 for the next 90 days rather than guess. Even the full 3.73B is less than one hundred-thousandth of the supply.

Foundation and overhang

PEPE has one identified team-controlled overhang: the team Safe with 2.12T PEPE, about 0.51% of supply. Its history is public. In August 2023, three former team members moved about 16 trillion PEPE out of the original team wallet to exchanges; the remaining member then burned 6.9 trillion PEPE to the dead address in October 2023 and moved about 3.21 trillion into this Safe in December 2023. Since then it has paid out only small amounts, the last being 42B PEPE on Dec 22 2025. We read its balance directly on-chain at every rebuild. If the Safe's balance falls between refreshes, the outflow enters the Foundation row at the next refresh, although with every PEPE already counted as circulating, a sale would add selling, not new supply.

How PEPE compares to other meme coins

Among meme coins, PEPE sits at the hard-cap end. Dogecoin is the opposite design: it is mined, pays miners a fixed 10,000 DOGE in every block, and has no cap, so DOGE supply grows every single day no matter what holders do. PEPE has no miners, no validators and no rewards, so its supply can only stay flat or shrink.

Shiba Inu is the closer cousin: a fixed supply, a huge pile already sitting in a dead address, and a community that burns coins on purpose. PEPE has the fixed supply and the dead-address pile (about 6.92T PEPE, mostly the 2023 team burn), but no burn campaign of its own, so its burns are small and random. Meme coins that charge a tax on trades can fund steady burns or buybacks; PEPE chose no tax at launch, and its frozen contract means that choice is permanent.

The trade-off is clear. A meme coin with a fixed supply and no team allocation left to unlock has almost no supply risk, but also no built-in buyer. Every move in PEPE's price comes from demand alone, which is why the demand half of our score matters more for PEPE than the supply half.

What to watch in the next 90 days

First, the US spot PEPE fund. Canary Capital filed an updated application on Oct 2 2026 and named the Cboe BZX exchange for the listing; the fee and ticker are still blank. If it launches, the fund would hold real PEPE bought in the market, which is demand, not a supply change, because those coins stay in the float.

Second, the team Safe with 2.12T PEPE. It has been still since Dec 22 2025; any large transfer out would be the first team selling signal in months. Third, holder burns: another large send into the token contract or the dead address would show up as a burn at the next rebuild, but it would take trillions, not billions, to move the supply number. Fourth, the token contract itself cannot change, so there is no governance vote or upgrade to watch.

Summary

PEPE supply is roughly steady: −0.00% over the 90 days to Oct 3 2026 and 0.00% projected for the next 90 days, with the monitor at +0.12%. The Pepe token can never mint, nothing vests, and the only flow is about 3.73B PEPE of holder burns against a fixed 420.69 trillion PEPE supply. The main risk is not new supply but selling of coins that already exist, including the 2.12T PEPE team Safe. With no buyback and no fee burn, PEPE's price rests entirely on demand.

MrNasdog Pressure Framework analysis of PEPE, Metric 1 — Inflation. Data + explanation only. Not financial advice. Checked Oct 3 2026.