Bitcoin inflation in 9/12 doesn't seem to have been corrected. Why not and will it be fixed? I'm looking at the Total Bitcoins in Circulation graph and don't understand why there is a spike of coins being generated in Sept '12.  What caused this to happen?


Also, since there is a fixed number of Bitcoins that will be created, then I would expect this deviation would be corrected and fall in-line with the previous rate of growth.  It doesn't appear that a correction has occurred.  Which of the following will happen:


The final end date of new bitcoin mining will be earlier than planned
At some arbitrary date in the future there will be fewer Bitcoin being mined


Sure, the longer we wait the impact of that occurrence of inflation on 9/12 will decrease over time, but what happens the next time a Bitcoin mining spike occurs?
A short term increase in the gradient on the graph can be caused by a large and fast relative increase in hashing speed of the total network. Within a short time, the difficulty adjusts and prevents it having a substantial long term impact. The steep gradient on this difficulty graph between 13GH/s and around 20GH/s is an increase of around 50% in hashpower in a very short time.
It won't be fixed, because it's not broken; it's working as originally intended. It does mean that the date the reward adjustment is halved comes slightly earlier than if the network hash rate remained constant. It also means that as the value of bitcoins grows higher, more hardware will be purchased and added to the network, and blocks will be produced slightly faster than the 10 minute average.
The final date of &quot;new bitcoin mining&quot; is of little consequence. Well before that date, miners will be earning more from transaction fees than from the block reward.
We can expect more of this when ASIC mining hardware comes online.