Bitcoin reward system

[Lista]

Hi.

I am currently working on a Bitcoin Protocol presentation and I have to start from the basics. Someone told me, while going through my presentation, that the reward system has changed from 210,000 blocks / 2 weeks with the last of the bitcoins being released into the system in 2140. He informed me that the process of mining is now faster and that the last bitcion may be released sooner than 2140. I would like my presentation to be as up-to-date as possible but I keep getting my initial find when I search the internet. Articles are however 2 or more months old and a lot could have changed from that time. If anyone knows of these changes, could you please enlighten me? A reference would be awesome in this case. Thank you in advance.

Cheers,
Lista.

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[gweedo]

It maybe be release like a year or two before, but 2140 is the current target for the last bitcoins to be mined. Remember this isn't an exactly science blocks get release really fast sometimes and sometimes really late, it should all even out thou.

[Lauda]

This is not something that you should be worried about. You won't live to see the day.

[sgk]

The varying difficulty in mining protocol ensures that a fixed number of Bitcoins are released regardless of the mining power/number of miners.
The network adapts itself to decreasing or increasing mining power of the network, so there shouldn't be much variation from 2140.

[Holliday]

The network adjusts difficulty every 2016 blocks in an attempt to make the time between blocks 10 minutes on average.

The global hash rate can increase quite a bit during this 2016 block period, leading to blocks being found faster than every 10 minutes on average until the next difficulty adjustment.

If the global hash rate continues to increase at a rapid pace over a long period of time (as we've seen during the switch to ASIC devices), the targets will constantly occur sooner than expected.

The reward system has not been changed.

[kjj]

The difficulty adjustment system has lag.  This means that while the network is growing, the time between adjustments is compressed, and some fraction of that time is "lost".  This moves the date of the final subsidized block forward.  This cannot be calculated in advance, because it depends on when new hash power comes online

This is not a change to the system, just a recognition that the initial timeline was calculated from an idealized curve.