Difficulty Adjustment
The difficulty adjustment retargets Bitcoin's mining puzzle every 2,016 blocks (~two weeks) so blocks keep arriving every ~10 minutes no matter how much ha
The difficulty adjustment retargets Bitcoin’s mining puzzle every 2,016 blocks (~two weeks) so blocks keep arriving every ~10 minutes no matter how much hash power joins or leaves. More miners → harder puzzles; exodus → easier ones, automatically.
Why it matters
This quiet mechanism is Bitcoin’s survival superpower: after China’s 2021 mining ban wiped out half the hash rate overnight, blocks slowed for weeks — then difficulty fell, mining became profitable elsewhere, and the network healed itself with no committee vote. Self-tuning security no boardroom could replicate.