In the last year Hive has constantly been pushing a high inflation. 2025 ended close to 10%, while the projected one has been close to 5%. The last months of 2025 were especially concerning.
But now we have entered a new phase that has never been seen before in Hive existence. The increase of the debt level from 10% to 30% is allowing more HBD in circulation, putting more weight in times like this. More HBD means more HIVE at low prices. We can now inflate faster. There is still a break though with the haircut rule. Lets take a look.
The projected inflation for Hive for 2026 is around 5.2% on a yearly basis, or around 0.43% on a monthly basis.
Hive has a double currency system, HIVE and HBD, with conversions between them that add or remove HIVE from circulation on top of the regular inflation. Furthermore, the decentralized hive fund DHF, that serves as a DAO converts the HIVE that is in the DHF into HBD.
The 
Because of this additional mechanics the HIVE inflation and supply can be drastically different in real time than the regular/projected one.
At low prices as now, conversions add a lot of new HIVE in circulation! The mechanism to stop the death spiral is to devalue HBD as the debt keeps increasing. Let’s take a look at the breakdown of this.
HIVE Created
Here is the chart.
The chart above includes:
- Author rewards
- Curation rewards
- Witness rewards
- Staking rewards
These are the regular ways new Hive enters circulation, and all of them are through vested HIVE, aka powered up. We can notice the spike in the last period. That is due to the shift in issuing liquid HIVE instead of HBD. When the chain is above 20% debt, HBD is no more rewarded as authors rewards and only hive is rewarded.
Previously there was a drop in the HIVE inflation per day because since the last HardFork, on November 19, 2025, the base for the inflation levels has changed and the HBD in the DHF doesn’t count anymore towards the inflation.
The regular inflation is around 83k HIVE per day now.
If we zoom in November 2025 - 2026 to see this change we can see this:
We can notice that in the first part of the chart the regular inflation was close to 90k, while after the HF took effect it dropped around 72k in December 2025. Now this is not static because it is again connected to the HIVE price, but the drop is evident.
And now we have an increase again since February 5, 2026 due to the shift in the rewards.
The thing is the conversions are playing a major role in the ecosystem. Here is the chart again, including conversions.
We can notice that the HBD to HIVE conversions are the dominant in the chart. This works in both ways and a big part of them is converted back to HIVE, especially through the work of the stabilizer.
We can see a spike at the end of the chart in the recent period.
HIVE Removed from Circulation
Here is the chart.
The above takes into consideration six different ways of HIVE removed:
- Ninja Mined HIVE To HBD Conversions In DHF
- HIVE transfers to DHF and converted to HBD
- Transfers to null
- Null as post beneficiary
- New accounts creation fee
- HIVE to HBD conversions
The HIVE transfers to the DHF are dominant. These are transfers made by the stabilizer. We can see a few spikes in the HIVE to HBD conversions (blue), with one occurring just recently. These were due to the increase in the HBD price. We can also notice the drop since the summer of 2023, same as the opposite conversions due to the lower funds and low volumes that the stabilizer is doing.
Historical HIVE Supply
When all the above is added and removed, we get this chart for the all-time HIVE supply.
Up until August 2021, the supply was almost steadily increasing with a small fluctuation. Then there was a drop in the supply in September 2021. Since then, from time to time we can see some drops in the supply in February and April 2023.
February 2026 ended with 524M HIVE in circulation.
HBD Supply
Here is the chart for the HBD supply.
The light color is HBD in DHF. The HBD in the DHF is not freely circulating HBD and only enters circulation when payouts to the DHF workers are made.
HBD is being created and removed in various ways, but the conversions play the major role here in both directions. Other ways HBD are created are DHF proposal payouts, author rewards and interest.
We can see that after a downtrend in 2022, in the last period the HBD supply is very stable around the 11M HBD.
In the last few months the HBD supply has dropped and now it is around 10.2M HBD.
Virtual HIVE Supply
When we add the HIVE equivalent supply from the HBD to the HIVE supply we get the chart below.
I have further separated this chart with the aditional two types of`virtual supply. The first line include the virtual supply from the regular HBD that is around 10M HBD and the second one the DHF as well that is adtional 23M HBD. The base that is used for the inflation is now the middle line.
We can see the sharp increase in the virtual supply in the last month. This is worsening the overall HIVE economy.
We can see that the virtual supply fluctuates a lot, mostly because it is tied to the price of HIVE. As the price of HIVE drops, the virtual supply increases and the opposite.
Projected VS Realized HIVE Inflation in 2025 - 2026
This chart tells the story of the new HIVE entering circulation in 2025 - 2026.
We can see that in the first months of 2025 the projected vs realized inflation were close to each other/ Since March these two diverged and the realized inflation started to surpass the projected one. Up until February 2026 the projected inflation in absolute numbers is 31M HIVE, while the realized is at 61M. So almost double the projected one in the period.
Monthly Inflation
If we plot the monthly inflation in 2024-2026, we get this.
This is currently the most telling chart. Almost 2% inflation in one month with a total of 10M HIVE created in the month, while the projected one is close to 2.3M. So more than 4 times above that.
Yearly Inflation [%]
The yearly, projected and realized inflation looks like this.
It seems that we are now in a third year of high inflation. 2026 is estimated here from the first two months, 5M for January and 10M for February while the projected one is at 2.3M monthly. With around 7M per month average HIVE, we will end the year at 17% inflation. That will be a record breaking year.
Net HIVE Created by Category in February 2026
Here is the new HIVE put in circulation by category for the month.
This chart tells a lot. 7.8M put in circulation from conversions. Close to 80% of all the HIVE put in circulation in February was from conversions.
I usually do these reports with a neutral take, just presenting the numbers, but now, this is an alarm, and I will name names. 1M HBD now creates 16M HIVE at these prices.
- Most of the HBD these days comes from the DHF
- Users with HBD in the savings have been actually great holders
- Yes, the users who receive HBD from the DHF are almost instantly converting and selling,
- This has been enabled by the top stakeholders like
, maybe it’s time for him to vote the return and unvoted the supported projects,
- To much spending is not the only reason for decay, lack of growth is even more important, none of the suported projects cotnributed to growth
- AI productivity boost is non existent for Hive devs
- The top stakeholders are the ones with the most to lose as well.
p.s. Hive blog has broken images, so make sure you look at the charts with Peakd.
