Bucket O' Salt

This implies that rupees are a commodity (a physical material that has value) rather than a fiat currency (a currency not backed by a commodity but by faith in a specific government that ensure it's value).

Most modern governments use Fiat currencies because:

"Fiat money isn't a scarce or fixed resource like gold so central banks have much greater control over its supply. This gives them the power to manage economic variables such as credit supply, liquidity, interest rates, and money velocity." [1]

We can see evidence of Hyrulean government's failure to manage their economy during the runaway inflation of Wind's era

This graph depicts the price to buy an arrow in each specific era of the Legend of Zelda games. The price of arrows between Wind Waker and Phantom Hourglass jumped by two rupees and arrow, indicating inflation.

The Origin of Rupees

So if Hyrule's Royal Family isn't minting rupees, where do they come from?

The Hyrule Compendium entry for blupees mentions that "these peculiar little things have a penchant for collecting rupees" but the identity of the compendium's author is unverified and so is their research.

The unregulated nature of Hyrule's commodities-based currency becomes a problem in Tears of the Kingdom, when Koltin asks Link to slaughter all 167 bubbelfrogs.

The life cycle of blupees, bubbelfrogs, and the King of the Mountain requires further study but it is evident that when a blubbelfrog is killed, a blupee is generated. So Link's quest to collect bubbelgems introduces 167 more blupees into Hyrule's ecosystem. These 167 extra blupees eat, drink, and more importantly to us, shit.

So how much did this quest impact Hyrule's economy? To answer that question, some math is required.

The first number we need is the average amount of rupees that blupees shit. To determine this, I shot 30 blupees and fitted the resulting data to a standard distribution.

Blupees Moneybags Georg who shat 51 rupees was an outlier who should not be counted and thus was removed from the dataset.

Multiplying that average amount of rupees that blupees shit by the blupee population [2], gives us the amount of rupees being shat in hyrule.

As you can see, a lot more rupees are being generated during the events of Tears of the Kingdom than in Breath of the Wild. How big of a problem is this? Well, to answer that, we need to know the size of Hyrule's economy.

The Size of Hyrule's Economy

I deciding to determine the size of economy by collecting the prices of every item sold in Hyrule by every merchant (except Ramella, I forgot Ramella).

With the collected price data, we are able to estimate the amount of currency changing hands among the people of Hyrule every year.

So after all this, we can see that the amount of rupees being shat per year should cause significant inflation. And yet, you may recall from our first graph, the price of arrows hasn't significantly changed and neither has the cost of most goods and services across Hyrule with some limited exceptions.

So why aren't prices skyrocketing?

Because the Great Fairies act as the Federal Reserve. They regulate the economy by removing varying amounts of money from circulation via their enchanting services.

In Breath of the Wild, the Great Fairies collectively charge Link 11,600 rupees to wake all 4 great fairies.

In Tears of the Kingdom, they charge Link per individual item of clothing enchanted. This, in total, costs 78,280 rupees.

Accounting for a target 2% rate of inflation, the Great Fairies remove 3.28% of all rupees shat during Breath of the Wild. In Tears of the Kingdom, their rupee removal rate is 5.17% of all rupees being shat.

The Great Fairies are definitely removing less rupees than are being shat but most blupees inhabit far-flung locations that most Hyruleans are not venturing to in these chaotic times. I have confidence that the Great Fairies can adjust their rate of currency removal should the need arise.

But who is attempting to cause this inflation and why?

One thing has always bugged me about Tears of the Kingdom, it wasn't the emptiness of the depths, or the fact that it was easy to miss out on the paraglider, or even the fact that that one cutscene kept being repeated after every temple. It was that Koltin asks you, Link, to go on a rampage of ecological destruction, to hunt the species of Bubbelfrogs to Extinction.

Koltin is clearly passionate about his quest to become a Satori, but he also has a secondary motive, to help out his brother: Kilton.

Kilton started his own currency that competes directly with the rupee and admits as much.

Kolton recruits Link under false pretenses in order to destroy the Bubbelfrog population, increase the amount of blupees, and cause skyrocketing inflation. This would devalue the rupee and incentivize the adoption of mon as a currency.