I think I read somewhere a while back that it is possible for the difficulty level to actually go down. If so, I wonder if the recent issues with the exchanges, the price drop, and what seems to be an unlucky streak that is allegedly not exclusive to just this pool could cause a slow down or reversal of the difficult change? Any thoughts?
OoC has explained the mechanism (for the 15
th time). :-)
I'll only add that IMHO it's not too likely in the near future for the difficulty to go down, as new ASICs are still produced and new people are entering into Bitcoin. The difficulty increase may slow down a little bit, but I don't believe it would reverse any time soon.