Satoshi_N_BTC

Anyone who's ever tried to buy a large amount of Decred knows the feeling: the glass is thin, the spread is wide, and an order of tens of thousands of dollars significantly moves the price. Compared to Bitcoin, which is traded everywhere and in billions of dollars, Decred feels like "a rare wine in the cellar that a staker still has the key to."
But "rare coin" is actually two different concepts. The first is protocol scarcity: how many coins could ever exist. The second is market scarcity: how many coins are actually available for purchase right now and how deep the markets are.
Decred feels “rare” primarily in the second sense—and here’s why.
Same ceiling - different supply reality
Let's start by clearing up the most common misconception: Decred isn't "several times rarer" than Bitcoin in terms of maximum supply. Both projects have a hard limit of approximately 21 million coins. Decred's documentation lists the exact figure as 20,999,999.98387408 DCR—the difference from Bitcoin's 21,000,000 BTC is literally a "margin of error," not a cause of market difficulties.
As of February 9, 2026, Bitcoin's circulating supply is approximately 19.98 million BTC (≈95.18% of its all-time high), while Decred's supply is 17,267,627 DCR (≈82.23%). Decred's absolute supply is currently lower because the network is younger: Decred launched in 2016, while Bitcoin launched in 2009. However, the main effect is driven by a completely different mechanism.
The key difference isn't how many coins are issued, but what fraction is actually available for purchase. In Bitcoin, the protocol doesn't "lock" coins: owners can sell them at any time. In Decred, the protocol temporarily locks most coins via PoS tickets.

The protocol "keeps 62% of coins under lock and key": How DCR staking works
The main reason for Decred's scarcity is its hybrid Proof-of-Work + Proof-of-Stake consensus system, which operates fundamentally differently than any pure PoS project.
To participate in PoS and receive rewards, a user purchases a so-called "ticket." Funds spent on a ticket are locked by the protocol—they cannot be transferred or sold until the ticket is voted on or expires. Decred's FAQ puts it bluntly: DCRs in PoS become "effectively non-transferable."
Important system parameters:
The ticket expiry is 40,960 blocks (approximately 142 days, or approximately 4.7 months). The target ticket pool size is 40,960. The ticket price is adjusted every 144 blocks (approximately 12 hours) to maintain the pool close to the target size. There is a hard limit: no more than 20 new tickets per block (MaxFreshStakePerBlock = 20). This means that it is impossible to "flood" the staking pool instantly—when demand for participation grows, the system pulls coins from the market into a lock-up and holds them there for weeks or months.
According to dcrdata.decred.org, as of February 9, 2026, 10,743,252 DCR are locked in tickets—62.22% of the total supply. The current ticket price is approximately 249 DCR (in the current window, approximately 246–265 DCR).
It's important to understand: "unstaking" doesn't mean "on exchanges." These are simply coins that aren't currently in ticket-lock status.
Bitcoin doesn't have such a built-in mechanism. The "frozenness" of BTC held by holders is a behavioral choice that can change at any time. In Decred, it's a protocol timelock.
The treasury as an additional layer of "slow supply"
Decred is one of the few projects with a built-in decentralized treasury funded directly by block subsidies: 10% of every block referral goes to the Treasury. Spending is controlled by staker voting through the Politeia platform.
As of February 9, 2026, the total "treasury" holdings were approximately 911,149 DCR (≈5.28% of the supply). Over its entire existence, the treasury has spent only a small fraction of its inflows—expenditures are controlled and occur slowly. These aren't "coins frozen forever," but they're also not the volume that flows daily into order books.
Combined, staking and the treasury lock approximately 11.65 million DCR—67.5% of the total supply. Bitcoin has neither staking nor a treasury. The only equivalent of "locked" BTC are lost coins (estimated at 3-4 million) and coins from long-term holders, but neither are locked by the protocol.
PoS dominates Decred's economy: the protocol itself creates demand for blocks.
Another subtlety that many people miss is that in Decred, the bulk of the new supply goes not to miners, but to voting stakers.
Historically, the block referral split has fluctuated. For many years, the split was 60% PoW / 30% PoS / 10% Treasury. Then, following the DCP-0010 consensus change in May 2022, it was revised to 10% / 80% / 10%. And after DCP-0012, the split took its current form: 1% PoW / 89% PoS / 10% Treasury.
This creates a powerful "economic magnet": if you want to receive the bulk of the supply, buy tickets and lock DCR; if you want to influence protocol changes, buy tickets and lock DCR. Stakers, having received their rewards, are highly likely to buy new tickets, creating a closed reinvestment cycle.
Result: the DCR coin's "natural state" is to be staked, not listed on an exchange. Only 1% of new supply goes to PoW miners—the only group of participants with significant economic pressure to sell (they need to cover electricity and hardware costs). In Bitcoin, by comparison, 100% of the block subsidy goes to miners.
Decred is the only major project in which stakers have voted to redistribute almost the entire supply in their favor, while simultaneously minimizing selling pressure from miners.
Emission: a smooth curve instead of sharp halvings
Bitcoin halves its supply every ~4 years (210,000 blocks), creating a stepped supply curve and powerful narrative events around each halving. Decred uses a fundamentally different model: the block subsidy decreases by a factor of 100/101 (approximately -1%) every 6,144 blocks (approximately every 21 days). This results in approximately 17 "mini-halvings" per year, for a total annual decrease of approximately 15.5%—a smooth exponential curve instead of steps.

Decred's block reference value was initially 31.20 DCR; over the past ten years, it has fallen to 5.69 DCR—an 81.8% decrease. At the current level, this translates to approximately 1,639 DCR per day (288 blocks per day). For comparison, after the April 2024 halving, Bitcoin will produce approximately 450 BTC per day.
Liquidity that's melting: exchanges, volumes, delistings
Even if staking did not exist, the market microstructure makes it difficult to buy large amounts of DCR.
For scale (as of this writing): DCR's 24-hour trading volume is approximately $9.38 million, while BTC's for the same period is approximately $51.03 billion. The difference is orders of magnitude. This means that a large DCR order quickly "eats" the best levels of the order book, causing slippage, and the price moves against the buyer. A $50,000 market order in DCR can significantly move the price; a similar order in BTC will not cause any visible movement.
The situation with exchange listings is steadily deteriorating. Decred supports optional private transactions through the CoinShuffle++ mechanism (through which a significant portion of the supply was issued), leading the project to be often classified as a privacy-enhanced asset. Centralized exchanges periodically delist such coins.
Specific examples: Huobi announced the delisting of DCR (as a privacy asset) in September 2022. OKX removed the DCR/USDT and DCR/ETH pairs on July 23, 2024. Binance removed the DCR/BTC pair on December 13, 2024 (though DCR/USDT trading may remain).
As of February 2026, the main platforms for trading DCR remain Binance (DCR/USDT)
The DCRDEX project also has its own decentralized exchange, which operates on atomic swaps. DCRDEX doesn't charge trading fees, but atomic swaps incur blockchain network fees, as trades are executed on-chain. DCRDEX's volumes are minimal and aren't tracked by major aggregators.
The paradox is that each delisting reduces the availability of DCR and thereby increases the “market scarcity” effect on the remaining platforms.
Real Free Float: What You Can Buy Right Now
Free float isn't "how many coins exist," but "how many coins can potentially be sold without a forced timelock." This is perhaps the most telling metric of scarcity.
For Decred:

For Bitcoin (estimated):

The difference is clear: DCR has only ~32% of its supply in free circulation, while BTC has around 60–70%. Moreover, the frozen nature of DCR is a protocol fact, not a behavioral choice. A staker physically cannot sell their DCR until the ticket is voted on. A Bitcoin holder can change their mind and sell at any moment.
Stock-to-Flow: Nominal Numbers and a Thought Experiment
The Stock-to-Flow (S2F) model estimates asset scarcity by rationing existing stock to annual production. While the model itself is controversial as a "price model," it is useful for comparison as a stock-to-output metric.
In nominal terms, DCR's S2F is lower than BTC's because DCR's annual output is currently higher:

However, the nominal figure ignores a key difference in the DCR: 89% of new inflows go to stakers, who are highly likely to reinvest them back into tickets, while another 10% goes to the treasury. Only a tiny fraction reaches the market, where selling pressure is underway.
Here's a thought experiment: if we consider only that portion of the issue that is most likely to create selling pressure as "sold flow," the metric changes:

Even under the most conservative assumptions, Decred's notional S2F (~144) exceeds Bitcoin's (~122). This isn't the ultimate truth, but rather a way to illustrate why DCR's sense of scarcity may be greater than that of an asset with a nominally higher S2F.
In a 2019 study titled "Monetary Premiums: Can Altcoins Compete with Bitcoin?", a Checkmate analyst conducted a regression analysis and found that Decred was the only altcoin that maintained a monetary premium above the S2F model's centroid longer (relative to the project's age) than any other coin in the study.
Why doesn't the market yet reflect this rarity in its price?
A shortage of available supply does not in itself guarantee a high price.
As of this writing, the DCR price is around $26, with a market cap of approximately $449 million. Bitcoin is an institutional standard: an ETF, infrastructure, brand, and global liquidity. Decred is a niche project: fewer exchanges, thinner order books, and greater regulatory risks surrounding the privacy asset class.
But strictly speaking, the small free float and low liquidity make the DCR price more sensitive to capital inflows and outflows. Given the current free float capitalization (~$145 million), even a small inflow of funds can cause a disproportionately strong price movement. This isn't a "promise of growth," but a market characteristic.
Practical note
In markets with this structure, major participants typically operate differently than in BTC: they split volume into series of limit orders, spread out execution over time, use OTC (outside the order book) trades, and distribute purchases across platforms to avoid depleting liquidity in one go. This isn't a life hack, but a standard response to low market depth.
Results
Decred and Bitcoin have a similar supply ceiling—around 21 million coins. But in practice, they're two completely different markets: one feels like a "water supply," the other like a "sealed cellar."
Why is DCR harder to obtain in large quantities?
The first reason is protocol locking via PoS tickets. About 62% of all DCR is staked and physically unavailable for sale until a voting event or ticket expiration. Bitcoin has no such mechanism.
The second is the treasury. Another 5% of the emission is accumulated in the Treasury, whose spending is controlled by voting and occurs slowly.
Third, PoS dominates the subsidy distribution. 89% of the block reward goes to stakers, creating a closed loop: receive a reward, buy a new ticket, and lock coins. Only 1% of the supply goes to participants with an incentive to sell.
Fourth, critically low exchange liquidity and declining listings. Daily trading volumes vary by orders of magnitude, and the number of exchanges listing DCR continues to decline under regulatory pressure.
The rarity of DCR in this context is not a marketing slogan, but a consequence of the architecture: the majority of the supply is systematically placed into a mode of temporary unavailability to the market.$DCR #altcoins