Bittensor completes first halving, cutting daily TAO emissions in half

Bittensor’s inaugural halving took effect on 12 December 2025, reducing daily TAO emissions from 7,200 to 3,600 tokens, according to crypto.news. The mechanism mirrors Bitcoin’s hard-cap design, with total TAO supply fixed at 21 million.

The halving lowers Bittensor’s annualised inflation rate from roughly 10 percent to around 5 percent, marking the network’s first scheduled step down in issuance since launch. As with Bitcoin, further halvings are expected to continue at intervals, progressively slowing the rate at which new TAO enters circulation until the supply cap is reached.

Supply and staking context

According to the figures cited, roughly 11 million TAO are currently in circulation, meaning the network has issued just over half of its eventual total supply. Around 70 percent of that circulating supply is staked, a proportion that underscores the extent to which token holders have locked TAO into the network’s validator and subnet infrastructure rather than holding it liquid.

High staking ratios of this kind typically reduce the amount of TAO readily available for trading, and combined with the newly reduced emission rate, the effective growth in liquid supply is set to slow further. Bittensor’s tokenomics have drawn repeated comparisons to Bitcoin’s issuance schedule, and the completion of this first halving cements that parallel, with the network now following a similarly disinflationary path.

The halving does not alter Bittensor’s underlying subnet architecture or its dTAO staking mechanics, which govern how emissions are distributed across the network’s various subnets. It changes only the aggregate daily issuance figure, halving the pool of new TAO that is distributed to miners, validators and subnet owners under the existing allocation rules.

Crypto.news did not report on any accompanying changes to subnet emission weighting or validator incentives as part of the halving event, nor did it detail how the market has responded to the reduced issuance so far. The report frames the halving primarily as a structural milestone in Bittensor’s long-term supply trajectory rather than a change to the network’s operational design.

With emissions now at 3,600 TAO per day and roughly 11 million tokens already circulating, the pace at which Bittensor approaches its 21 million cap will depend on the timing and structure of subsequent halvings, none of which were detailed in the report.