TAO · a Bitcoin-shaped mint, only half dug out.

Block emission is the only mint, and it is the only sell row on this page carrying a number. The chain paid 0.5 TAO a block through the window — half the rate it paid before the Dec 2025 halving, and half what the network's own stored emission setting still reports, which is why the schedule has to be measured rather than assumed. Counted from the chain's own block numbers at both ends rather than from the 12-second target, the last 90 days ran 646,458 blocks at 12.03 seconds each, giving 323.4K TAO of new coin, roughly 3,591 a day. The rate does not step down again until issued supply reaches 15.75M, which is years away.

Bittensor was fair-launched in Jan 2021 with no premine, no presale, no ICO and no allocation to founders, investors or a foundation — every TAO in existence was mined by the block. The chain carries no vesting entries at all, so there is no contract that could ever release a cliff. Trackers publishing a TAO unlock calendar running into the 2040s are relabelling ordinary mining as vesting.

There is no foundation allocation and no reserve pool, because none was ever created — the 9.74M TAO still unmined beneath the cap is released only by block emission and nobody can hand it out early. Two smaller overhangs are tracked instead: subnet registration locks holding 29.9K TAO across 128 subnets, refundable to the subnet owner if a subnet is deregistered and up 5.2K over the window; and the non-profit that develops the software, which funds itself from validator operations and has never published a treasury address, so its balance is opaque and monitored through official disclosure. No public evidence of release in window — monitored.

No bankruptcy estate, no trustee distribution and no escrow contract exists anywhere in this asset's history — there is nothing in this slot to unwind.

A single block on May 28 2026 added 4.2K TAO to the issuance counter in one step, against a steady 0.5 a block either side of it. It is an accounting correction, not coin reaching the market: the runtime was upgraded at that exact block and the balance counter, which until then had been tracking only unstaked TAO, was rewritten to match the network's own issuance total. It is booked because the chain's supply figure genuinely moved, and it is excluded from the next 90 days because it cannot repeat.

The protocol takes no revenue cut and holds no treasury, so there is nothing to fund a buyback and no contract that could execute one. No buyback has ever been announced, proposed or run.

Registration fees are the only thing that destroys TAO, and the destruction leaves no footprint at any dead address — reading one returns nothing. The coin is subtracted from the issuance total itself and returned to the unissued pool, where later emission can pay it out again, which is why every halving arrives slightly later than the calendar suggests. Summed across all 129 subnet counters at both ends of the window it came to 3.7K TAO, about 0.03% of supply, and the pace eased a little after the Aug 4 2026 upgrade.

No entity holds a mandate or a budget to buy TAO on the open market. The non-profit that develops the software is lean and grant-funded and has never announced or executed an accumulation programme. No public evidence of purchase in window — monitored.

Staking is not a lock here. Unstaking is instant — no bonding period, no exit queue — and the supply figure this page divides by already counts free and staked TAO as one float, so the 7.40M currently staked, up 86.6K over the window, cannot be booked as removed without removing supply that was never added. Subnet registration locks rose 5.2K over the window, but the issuance counter never fell when they were paid, so that TAO moved into a subnet pool rather than out of supply; it is carried as an overhang on the sell side instead.