> the difficultly of mining blocks in the blockchain is designed to increase over time. This is because as the network grows, the relative rate of new coins min

> the difficultly of mining blocks in the blockchain is designed to increase over time. This is because as the network grows, the relative rate of new coins mined stays stable (for Bitcoin, about 1 coin is mined every 10 minutes). This is not correct. About 1 block is mined every 10 minutes, while block rewards decrease over time. The one block per 10 minutes is also what is kept stable, and the reason mining difficulty increases over time. There is nothing in BTC mandating the difficulty to increase, and indeed it does decrease sometimes.