Whenever the hash rate increases, and blocks start getting mined faster than a ten minute average, the difficulty increases at the next adjustment, bringing the ten-minute average back.
The dynamic difficulty adjustment is the genius that Satoshi discovered to keep the issuance stable over time.
It accounts for both hash rate increase/decrease as well as increased efficiency of new ASICS/miners.
Yep, but if it increases 75% of a given period, and only decreases 25% of the time, the issuance will actually occur very slightly faster than projected!
If you are talking about during a specific 2016 block period, then yes.
Then when the difficulty adjusts at the end of the period, as far as I know it takes into account that previous period, along with the next one, to get as close to a 10-min average as possible.
If the hash rate were to only go up over time (which it has overall) then I see what you are saying, the blocks would be issued slightly faster overall.
Like you say, very slightly faster.. which is why no one really knows precisely when the last sats will be issued.
Also I guess we have yet to see (well we won’t be around for all of it) what could still occur to reduce hash rate, at least temporarily (like we saw with China in ‘21)…
All in all, a continuously fascinating journey 😊
