Does hashrate increase transaction rate? So as the hashrate increases we increase the pace at which we are approaching the halving? I'd appreciate the education!
not in the way that you think.
obviously when hashrate (that is the total speed at which hashes are being calculated per second) increases it becomes faster to search the space and mine a block (find the correct hash smaller than the target). that means more blocks are found BUT you should keep 2 things in mind.
* since hashrate is huge, these rises don't make that much difference. so for example with these rises we may see halving happen half a day sooner than what was previously predicted (eg. instead of in 90 days it happens in 89.5 days).
* you shouldn't forget about "difficulty adjustment" which in this case means when hashrate increases and blocks are found faster the difficulty rises to make it harder to find blocks and make it so that it takes 2 weeks to find 2016 blocks again and that minimizes the effects of the hashrate rise on long term number of blocks that are found.