Explain the ‘Difficulty Adjustment’ Mechanism in Bitcoin Mining

The difficulty adjustment is an automatic process that recalibrates the mining difficulty every 2,016 blocks, which is roughly every two weeks. Its purpose is to maintain an average block time of approximately ten minutes, regardless of changes in the total network hash rate.

If blocks are found too quickly, the difficulty increases; if they are found too slowly, the difficulty decreases. This ensures a predictable and stable supply schedule.