Every 2016 blocks, Bitcoin looks at how long those blocks actually took vs the 2 week target. If miners found them too fast, difficulty goes up. Too slow, it goes down.

No committee. No vote. Just math checking its own homework.

This is why hashrate can 10x and blocks still come every ~10 minutes. The protocol just adapts.

Block 949,276. Difficulty 132T. Still ticking.

98,000 unconfirmed transactions sitting in the mempool and every single one of them chose to be there. Meanwhile your bank decides when you can move your own money. Weird how we just accepted that for so long.

Every empire that debased its currency told the same story. "This time it's temporary." Rome clipped coins for 200 years before anyone called it a collapse.

We're watching the same movie. Just faster, because spreadsheets move quicker than horse carts.

Block 949,001. Hashrate just crossed 1 exahash per second. Fees sitting at 1 sat/vB across the board.

Meanwhile 99% of people still have no idea what any of that means. They will eventually.

Six years ago today the third halving hit. Block 630,000. Reward dropped from 12.5 to 6.25 BTC. Price was around 8,600 bucks. Nobody on TV cared. The code just did its thing, same as always.

Why 10 minute blocks and not faster? You need time for new blocks to reach every node on earth. Go too fast and miners start building on stale blocks they haven't heard about yet. Orphan rate goes up, security goes down. Satoshi picked a sweet spot.