Confirmations and the 21MBTC block limit

[cwm9]

I understand there is a limit of 21M bitcoins and that a confirmation is when a transaction is included in a new block.

What happens to confirmations when all 21M bitcoins have been generated?  Will it be impossible to confirm a transaction?

As the difficulty rate goes up, doesn't that mean that the confirmation time also goes up?

[Nesetalis]

this has been answered many times before.. but simply.. difficulty is based on hash rate... to make it so that there is a block found roughly every 10 minutes. if the hash rate lowers, then the difficulty drops.

also, after the bitcoins are no longer added to the total, there will still be transaction fees to acquire. And the last added bitcoins does not mean that the blocks no longer produce, just that they dont have free coins attached.

[cwm9]

Thanks.  Sorry for the repetitive question.  It's hard to find the answer because the search term (confirmations) gets so many unrelated hits.