Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but now that block generation is taking a lot longer, doesn’t that mean that the lucky person who got the block is going to take a lot longer to be verified by the network that he/she was the winner before they could ever spend it?
No, this isn’t correct. Finding the hash requires a whole bunch of effort, but the process of verification that the “winner” has found a matching block is by comparison a trivial exercise and doesn’t take all that long. Once they have found the block, they can spend those coins right away.
What this does mean is that the coin allocation system has now become a lottery, where new winners are receiving a block of coins worth a whole lot more (due to exchange rates and scarcity) than earlier blocks which were in comparison relatively trivial in value. My question is, how valuable will this “lottery” become in the long run (in terms of Euros or Dollars per block generated)?
Essentially what is happening is that the computer is picking a random sequence of numbers (like a lottery) and if that computer happens to pick the correct sequence of bits, you “win”. The change in difficulty is something akin to playing a lottery that has you only picking six numbers vs. one with fourteen or a hundred numbers to win. The odds are actually worse for a bitcoin block than even the worst of any normal lottery that has ever been conceived at the moment.