Short answer: about 18.83 million XMR exist as of early November 2026. On November 8, 2026, at block 3,802,048, the xmrchain.net block explorer reported 18,828,404 XMR mined in total. Monero has no hard cap. Its main emission ended in June 2022 at about 18.13 million XMR, and since then every block adds a fixed 0.6 XMR. That is about 157,680 new XMR per year, forever, which works out to roughly 0.84% inflation today, falling a little every year.
Below you'll see exactly where that number comes from, how to check it yourself, how the emission formula works, and how Monero's supply compares to Bitcoin's. Every chart in this article was computed from Monero's actual consensus code, not copied from a website.
How many Monero exist right now?
As of November 2026 the answer is about 18.83 million XMR. Here are two ways to get there, and they agree to within a few dozen coins.
Method 1: ask a block explorer
Monero hides balances and transaction amounts, but the coinbase (the miner reward in each block) is public. Explorers add up every coinbase reward since the first block. On November 8, 2026, xmrchain.net's emission endpoint showed block 3,802,048 and a coinbase total of 18,828,404.11 XMR, not counting transaction fees. Fees are not new coins. They move existing XMR from the sender to the miner, so they don't add to the supply.
Method 2: compute it from the block height
You can check the explorer with simple math. The first tail-emission block was 2,641,623, mined on June 9, 2022. From that block through block 3,802,048 there are 1,160,426 blocks. At 0.6 XMR each, that is 696,256 XMR. Add that to the roughly 18,132,150 XMR that existed when tail emission began, and you get about 18,828,400 XMR. That matches the explorer.
You can project forward the same way: take the current supply and add 0.6 XMR for every two minutes that pass. That is 432 XMR per day.
Why sources show slightly different numbers
Price sites and explorers often disagree by a few hundred or a few thousand XMR. That isn't a mystery. It usually comes down to:
- Timing. The supply grows by 432 XMR a day, so a figure that is a week old is about 3,000 XMR behind.
- Fees counted or not. Some tools add fees to the coinbase total, which overstates the supply.
- Formula vs. chain. If you run the emission formula from block 0, you get about 1,300 XMR more than the real chain. A small number of blocks paid less than the full reward, mostly because of Monero's block-size penalty, which cuts the reward when a miner makes an oversized block. Those coins were simply never created.
- Rounding. Many sites just show "18.8M" or "18.4M" and update it rarely. If a site still says 18.4 million, it is years out of date.
The rounded figure that is safe to quote in November 2026: about 18.83 million XMR.
How Monero's emission works
Monero doesn't use Bitcoin-style halvings. Instead, each block reward is calculated from how many coins already exist. The rule is in the Monero source code, in get_block_reward with constants in cryptonote_config.h. In plain terms:
base_reward = (M − A) >> 19, but never less than 0.6 XMR
- M is
MONEY_SUPPLY, set to 264 − 1 atomic units. Monero counts in atomic units (1 XMR = 1012 piconero), so M is about 18,446,744 XMR. It is the largest number a 64-bit counter can hold, not a supply cap. - A is the number of coins already generated.
- >> 19 is a bit shift. It divides by 219 (524,288) and drops the remainder.
- 0.6 XMR is the floor:
FINAL_SUBSIDY_PER_MINUTE(0.3 XMR) times 2, because blocks come every two minutes.
Because the reward is a fixed fraction of the coins "left" under M, it shrinks smoothly with every block. There are no sudden cliffs. The miner also collects the transaction fees in the block, but those aren't new money. If you want the full math, Zero to Monero (the Monero Research Lab's technical book, free on getmonero.org) walks through it.
The 2016 change to 2-minute blocks
Monero launched on April 18, 2014 with 1-minute blocks, and the shift was 20 instead of 19. The very first reward was about 17.59 XMR per block.
In March 2016, the v2 network upgrade (block 1,009,827) moved to 2-minute blocks. To keep the emission speed the same, the code subtracts one from the shift for each extra minute: 20 − (2 − 1) = 19. Shifting by one less bit doubles each block's reward, and there are half as many blocks, so the coins created per minute didn't change. That is why the block reward chart jumps from about 6.7 XMR to about 13.4 XMR in 2016.
When did the main emission end?
The formula reaches the 0.6 XMR floor when fewer than about 314,573 XMR are "left" under M. That happens once roughly 18,132,171 XMR have been mined. On the real chain, that was block 2,641,623 on June 9, 2022. Some sources, including the Moneropedia page, say "end of May 2022," but the first 0.6 XMR block on the chain was mined on June 9, 2022.
Of the roughly 20.9 million XMR expected to exist by 2040, about 87% came from the main emission, and most of those in the first few years. By the start of 2018, about 15.6 million XMR already existed.
Tail emission: 0.6 XMR per block, forever
Since June 2022, every block pays a flat 0.6 XMR (plus fees). With a 2-minute target there are 720 blocks a day and 262,800 blocks a year, so:
0.6 × 262,800 = 157,680 XMR per year.
Real block times wobble a little. Between June 2022 and November 2026 the chain averaged about 719 blocks a day, so the real yearly figure lands within a few hundred XMR of 157,680.
Monero's inflation rate keeps falling
The amount of new XMR each year is fixed, but the supply keeps growing, so the percentage shrinks. Divide 157,680 by the supply at any moment and you get the yearly inflation rate:
- June 2022: 157,680 ÷ 18.13M ≈ 0.87%
- November 2026: 157,680 ÷ 18.83M ≈ 0.84%
- 2030: ≈ 0.82%
- 2040: ≈ 0.75%
- 2050: ≈ 0.70%
- 2100: ≈ 0.52%
It approaches zero but never reaches it. Economists call that disinflationary.
Projected Monero supply by year
Because tail emission is a straight line, future supply is easy to project. These figures start from the real November 2026 chain total and add 0.6 XMR per 2-minute block (real block timing can shift dates by a few days):
| Date | Approx. total XMR | Yearly inflation |
|---|---|---|
| June 2022 (tail start) | 18,132,000 | 0.87% |
| Jan 1, 2027 | 18,851,000 | 0.84% |
| Jan 1, 2030 | 19,325,000 | 0.82% |
| Jan 1, 2035 | 20,114,000 | 0.78% |
| Jan 1, 2040 | 20,903,000 | 0.75% |
| Jan 1, 2050 | 22,481,000 | 0.70% |
| Jan 1, 2100 | 30,370,000 | 0.52% |
Milestones to watch: the supply should pass 19 million around December 2027, 20 million around April 2034, and 21 million around August 2040.
Why Monero has tail emission
Tail emission was a deliberate choice, not an accident. The Moneropedia gives the core reason: miners need an incentive to mine.
- Permanent security budget. Miners protect the chain against double-spends and 51% attacks. With a hard cap, miners eventually live on fees alone. If fees are low, fewer people mine and the network gets cheaper to attack. A guaranteed 0.6 XMR per block keeps a baseline reward in place forever.
- Low fees stay possible. Monero's block size is dynamic, so fees can stay low. Tail emission means miners don't need to push fees up just to survive.
- It replaces lost coins. People lose keys, forget seeds and die without passing on wallets. In a capped coin, the usable supply slowly shrinks. Monero's small, steady issuance roughly offsets those losses over time.
- It's predictable. Anyone can compute the supply for any future date with one line of math, as the table above shows.
Critics argue that any permanent inflation dilutes holders, and that a fixed cap is a cleaner promise. That is a fair debate, but the numbers are small: under 1% a year now and falling.
How many Monero are lost or burned?
Honestly, no one knows, and no one can.
For Bitcoin, analysts estimate lost coins by looking at old addresses that haven't moved in a decade. That doesn't work on Monero. Amounts are hidden by RingCT, and ring signatures mean an outside observer can't tell whether a given output has been spent. There is no list of "dormant" coins to point at. Any number you see for lost XMR is a guess.
What we do know: some XMR has certainly been lost through forgotten seeds, dead hard drives and failed services, just like every other coin. The supply figures in this article count every coin ever mined, lost or not. Tail emission is part of why this matters less for Monero than for capped coins.
Can you trust a supply you can't see?
This is a fair question for a private coin. Here is how Monero handles it:
- New coins are public. Coinbase rewards are visible on the chain, which is how explorers total them up.
- Hidden amounts still have to balance. Every transaction uses Pedersen commitments and Bulletproofs range proofs. Every node checks that inputs equal outputs plus fee, without seeing the amounts.
- Bugs get audited. In 2017 a Monero researcher found a flaw in the CryptoNote code that could have let someone create coins. The Monero team patched it, then scanned the entire blockchain and confirmed it had never been exploited before disclosing it.
You can also skip the explorers completely and run your own Monero node. Your node verifies every block reward itself.
Monero vs Bitcoin supply
Both coins started with fast issuance that slowed over time. The difference is the ending.
- Bitcoin pays a block reward that halves every 210,000 blocks (about every four years). The last halving was in April 2024 (3.125 BTC per block). About 20.11 million BTC exist as of November 2026, and the total will approach, but never quite reach, 21 million around the year 2140.
- Monero declined smoothly instead of in steps, then switched to a flat 0.6 XMR per block in 2022. It has no final number.
Here is a surprising detail: right now the two coins have almost the same inflation rate. Bitcoin issues about 164,000 BTC a year (3.125 × ~52,560 blocks), roughly 0.82% of its supply. Monero is at about 0.84%. After Bitcoin's next halving (expected around 2028), Bitcoin drops to roughly 0.4% while Monero stays near 0.8%. Monero's supply should pass 21 million coins around 2040.
Neither design is free. Bitcoin bets that fees will eventually pay for security. Monero accepts a tiny permanent inflation to guarantee it. For a deeper side-by-side, see Bitcoin vs Monero, or watch our video Bitcoin vs Monero: Only One Is Actually Private (also on Monerica Video).
Common misconceptions about Monero's supply
"Monero has a maximum supply of 18.4 million"
No. The 18.4 million figure is M, the 264 − 1 counter limit in the code (about 18,446,744 XMR). The main curve could never reach it, and tail emission now adds coins with no end. Monero has no hard cap. Today's supply (18.83 million) is already above 18.4 million.
"Monero was premined because it came from Bytecoin"
No. Monero started from Bytecoin's open-source code (the CryptoNote reference code), not its blockchain. It launched with a brand-new genesis block on April 18, 2014, under the name Bitmonero, so none of Bytecoin's coins carried over. Bytecoin itself was widely criticized because most of its coins had been mined before the public knew it existed. Monero's official history says its launch was "fair" and "pre-announced," with "no premine or instamine," and no part of the block reward goes to developers. Development is funded by donations instead (see how Monero development is funded).
One honest footnote: the mining software at launch was slow, and later versions were much faster. Some early critics argued that people with better miners had an edge in the first weeks. That is a debate about early distribution, not a premine. Every coin was mined in public under the same rules.
"Tail emission means high inflation"
Not by most standards. At 0.84% a year and falling, it is well below the typical 2% target for the US dollar. The yearly amount is fixed in XMR, so it can never speed up.
"The supply can be changed whenever developers want"
Changing the emission would need a hard fork that node operators, miners, exchanges and users all agree to run. Tail emission itself was written into the code years before it began, and it activated automatically.
What is all that Monero worth?
Multiply the supply by the price. At about $610 per XMR in early November 2026, 18.83 million XMR is worth roughly $11.5 billion. Prices move every minute, so check the live board at MoneroPriceNow.com, or pull it into your own app with the free MoneroPriceNow JSON API. This is not financial advice.
If you want to own some of those 18.83 million coins, Monerica lists exchanges such as GhostSwap, SageSwap and CCE Cash, plus xmr2cex for selling XMR. Check each profile for details, or browse the full exchanges category. You can also mine new XMR yourself and collect part of that 0.6 XMR per block.
FAQ
How many Monero exist?
About 18.83 million XMR as of early November 2026 (18,828,404 XMR at block 3,802,048 on November 8, 2026). The number grows by 0.6 XMR every two minutes.
What is Monero's max supply?
There isn't one. The main emission ended at about 18.13 million XMR in June 2022, and tail emission adds 0.6 XMR per block forever.
How much new Monero is created each year?
About 157,680 XMR (0.6 XMR × 262,800 blocks). That is about 0.84% of the supply in 2026, and the percentage falls every year.
When did Monero tail emission start?
At block 2,641,623 on June 9, 2022, once about 18.13 million XMR had been mined.
Was Monero premined?
No. Monero reused Bytecoin's open-source code but started a new blockchain in April 2014 with no premine and no developer reward.
How many Monero are lost?
Nobody knows. Monero hides amounts and which outputs are spent, so the "dormant coin" estimates used for Bitcoin aren't possible.
Related Articles
- What Is Monero?
- Bitcoin vs Monero: Only One Is Actually Private
- How Monero Development Is Funded: CCS, the General Fund & Paying for Work
- Can You Still Mine Monero? A 2026 Guide
- How to Run a Monero Node (2026): Full & Pruned Setup Guide
- How Many Confirmations Does Monero Need? Wallets vs. Exchanges
