Having a hard time nailing it down. It's important in calculating whether / how much to invest.
The total coins is estimated closer to 21.3 but are told 22m~ lower is better so this is a good thing.
I believe Darkcoin is the only coin that uses inverted block rewards based on the current difficulty (the exact formula is in the Darkcoin announcement thread). The higher the network hash and resulting diff, the lower the number of coins awarded. As such, the number of coins released per year can only be estimated.
True, Darkcoin is the only coin which has build in A.I to adjust the reward. This helps people gauge the market value
Approximately 1 million coins per year, with that amount going down by 7% every year.
What is worst case scenario if hash rate drops significantly in the future? Is it capped at 1 million per year or could it be significantly more than that?
Darkcoin will have no problem maintaining hash-rate as X11 is cooler and faster. The reward system is unlike any other with profitability keeping the miner count up.
Masternodes offer an even greater incentive bringing constant buying pressure to exchanges