how often does bitcoin difficulty adjustment mechanism typically occur

Bitcoin's difficulty adjustment mechanism typically occurs every 2016 blocks, which corresponds to roughly every two weeks. This automatic adjustment is designed to keep the average time between blocks close to 10 minutes, regardless of changes in the total mining power (hash rate) on the network. The adjustment process works by measuring how long it took to mine the previous 2016 blocks. If they were mined faster than the expected 2 weeks (meaning blocks were found in less than 10 minutes on average), the difficulty increases. Conversely, if it took longer than 2 weeks, the difficulty decreases. This keeps the network stable by controlling the rate of block creation and ensures Bitcoin's predictable issuance schedule. In summary, the difficulty adjustment happens approximately every two weeks or every 2016 blocks to maintain an average block time of about 10 minutes, adapting to changes in mining power dynamically.