Annualized rate of increase of Bitcoin Cash (BCH) money supply
The 21,000,000 Bitcoin Cash (BCH) that will ever exist are created on a fixed and predictable schedule.
Most currency today is inflationary on a politically random and capricious schedule. The United States Federal Reserve, for example, increases the money supply of the U.S. Dollar at its own discretion with an ostensible goal of devaluing the dollar by about 2% every year.
The supply of Bitcoin Cash (BCH) is determined by the Block Reward, which halves every 210,000 blocks (about every 4 years). For the first 210,000 mined blocks of bitcoin, 50 bitcoin were created per block. For the next 210,000 mined blocks, 25 bitcoin were created per block. On July 9, 2016, the 420,000th block was mined and the Block Reward halved again to 12.5 bitcoin per block.
This pattern will continue until the Block Reward becomes zero. Bitcoin Cash (BCH) maintained the same pattern after its Aug 1, 2017 blocksize increase fork, as did Bitcoin Core (BTC) after its Aug 24, 2017 SegWit fork. More than 80% of all the Bitcoin Core (BTC) that will ever exist already exist today.
Bitcoin Cash (BCH) inflation is a function of its supply and the current Block Reward.
Annualized Inflation Rate = Annual increase in the supply of Bitcoin Cash (BCH) / Current supply of Bitcoin Cash (BCH)
Inflation rate = (Block Reward * Blocks / Year) / Current supply of Bitcoin Cash (BCH)
The academic debate about the health of inflation in a currency system is being empirically tested by Bitcoin Cash (BCH)'s transparent and limited supply schedule.
NOTE: Immediately following the Bitcoin Cash fork, block time was unpredictable and occasionally blocks were found at a much higher rate than once every 10 minutes. This was corrected with a Difficulty Adjustment Algorithm released in November of 2017. Because of these fast block times, the supply of Bitcoin Cash increased more than Bitcoin Core during 2017. Because this chart calculates inflation based on Annual increase in the supply of Bitcoin Cash (BCH) / Current supply of Bitcoin Cash (BCH), the annualized inflation rate for the 12 months including this window is higher than Bitcoin Core. However, since both Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and Bitcoin Core (BTC) have a supply cap of 21,000,000, and more Bitcoin Cash (BCH) has been released than Bitcoin Core (BTC) as of June 2018, the spot inflation rate of Bitcoin Cash (BCH) is lower than that of Bitcoin Core (BTC).