I concede to your point, that makes sense. The rise in difficulty is to regulate that fixed rate of producing new coins, I'm certainly wrong there. Scarcity of

I concede to your point, that makes sense. The rise in difficulty is to regulate that fixed rate of producing new coins, I'm certainly wrong there. Scarcity of coins to the market goes down w/ each new coin mined, you're right. BUT, because we know exactly how many coins there are available to mine, doesn't this make the total number of coins available to you via mining go DOWN? If all the world's gold was in a single, perfectly measurable and publically accessible vein, would someone moving it from that publically minable place to a private reserve make its scarcity go UP or DOWN? There is the risk of the blockchain failing drastically, but past that it can be assumed that you have THAT MANY FEWER COINS available to mine, in total, right? I may be thinking about this in the wrong way entirely, appreciate the comment.