Bitcoin Forum

As someone who lives almost exclusively on Bitcoin I have not once had a problem due to confirmations taking 10 minutes.

Most real world uses of Bitcoin I have been able to send my Bitcoin transaction in seconds.

Transaction time is in seconds, confirmation time is in 10 minute blocks (for those who still have yet to figure this out).

Just like your credit card takes a few seconds for the transaction. But the credit card confirmation time is 180 days.

Some websites require that you wait 3 confirmations, but if you order something online what is the big deal with waiting 30 minutes? Is your order going to be shipped the next day 30 minutes slower? You order it, send the bitcoins and walk away (I usually check blockchain.info to verify that the transaction is on its way).

With localbitcoins I usually send via localbitcoins which is instantaneous. The few times I have had someone want me to send it to his wallet, it took seconds for him to see that the transaction went through. The reputation system discourages me from attempting to reverse the transaction.

The one time I had a guy that wanted to wait for a confirmation it was reasonable. It was a fairly large transaction and we were chilling in McDonalds so it was no big deal, he even bought me some McNuggets for the wait.

So...have you ever had a real world situation where you actually sent your bitcoins with the transaction fee and were inconvenienced by the 10 minute confirmation?

Inconvenienced sure.. I had to wait 10 mintues to use what I bought.. a problem lol no.

Although TBH it might of taken me 10+ mintues to fill all the crap out I would of needed to fill out if it was a Visa purchase. 

well, not exactly problem with it..but I was in some newspaper store before couple of weeks, paid by bitcoins and lady ask me to wait until first confirmation, so I spend ~15 minutes here just because..:)

it is not problem like PROBLEM, it is just something different. If you are paying by card or cash, once pin is confirmed or money put to other hand you are done, you can leave and everybody is somehow sure, that payment will proceed and all is clear. done.

with bitcoin, it is like "waiting for miracle", at least for non-technical guys etc. so yes, it is inconvenient..at least.

10 min block time is much slower than cash or domestic bank transfer, but it's much faster than bank international transfer, generally, bank international or wire transfer takes a serious time, like 2-5 work days, it means if you transfer money on Friday, you may get the money in next Friday, it's total 7 days, 5 working days, insane slow, but btc is faster than it, so it's not slow for international bank transfer, and much cheaper than it or western union.

I haven't run into any problems yet but that's because I've only used my coins for purchase online but they seem to have gone through seconds after I sent them. I guess maybe there could be problems using them in the real world especially if you can't get a internet connection and is using bitcoin over a public wifi a good idea or safe? Could people not steal your coins this way?

Sure, there are many sites like exchanges, gambling sites, marketplace sites (purse.io) and tipping sites (Changetip) that require 2-3 confirmations before funds are available. Additionally, people selling a used car/boat/expensive item in person are delayed 30 minutes to 1 hour before completing the transaction. Any product or service which doesn't involve shipping a physical item is greatly effected. Using a payment processor who studies the mempool and looks for other patterns helps this situation but ultimately doesn't provide a decentralized approach to confirming transactions.

This being said I think reducing confirmation times down to 1 minute as Gavin recently gave a nod to is unnecessary and doesn't go far enough. Lets leave it at 10 minutes to reduce orphan rate and introduce solutions that provide 1 second confirmations -

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=970822.0

Strange, like you're going to attempt a double spend on a few dollars at a newspaper store. Most merchants use some sort of third party service like BitPay that mitigates the risk. Cool that she's old school but she should know she doesn't need to wait all that time.

She doesn't keep people there 180 days while their credit card transaction becomes non-reversible.

How would you even manage to double spend? Don't you need to send the payments at the same time from another device? And wont the creditcard companies also mitigate the risk of a charegback? Wont they take the hit if something goes wrong or am I wrong?

Satoshi said that after a few seconds it becomes very difficult.

You would probably have to initiate a simultaneous spend on the other side of the planet and hope that the miners there find a block before the miners near the transaction find it.

No, its pretty easy, at least if the other party does not actively counter it, which is also very easy. E.g. a TX without(!) fee and a low priority (feasible with small inputs) might take up to 1 week to confirm (see tech support for reference). A week is enough time for many nodes to drop the TX from their mempool so you can replace it by one that does pay a fee.

Most business probably just take the risk as there is also a risk to take a fake bill. A possible counter is to use a service which ensures that the transaction in question gets constantly rebroadcasted. As long as you do this roughly every 30 minutes its almost impossible for someone that has no mining pool with significant power to double spend a TX. No node will relay the double spend and it will barely propagate to the network. If you try to broadcast both TX at the same time you risk that the proper first TX does not reach the merchant.

I recently paid for breakfast and I did not have to wait. The TX actually took >30 minutes to confirm even though I paid the fee suggest by Mycelium.

Never once has this been an issue for me.

10 minutes is to long. Example from my experience: Price rise, so definitely selling of some. Trade side wants 3 confirmations. Those took 70 minutes which was observable from the local bitcoin daemon remote interface. When the coins finally arrived, market movements levelled the trade opportunity.

If you just wanna buy some beer and your trading site / store accepts zero confirmations, these block times are irrelevant. But on that possible application they will use a payment partner service that operates the credit cards, because that's their accustomed interface inside every shop. Then again, why bitcoin at all?

10 minutes is to long, but the real mistake is trying to apply bitcoin as a fast payment solution in the first place, something Satoshi never did designed it for. Otherwise he would have choosen 1 minute blocks.

correct. you can just accept a BTC payment for stuff that cost some hundert USD with no problem. you dont have to wait.

what is more likely? :

someone walks into your store and wants to buy a jeans for 249,- USD.


1.) he runs away without paying.

2.) he tries to do a double spent.


 :D ...

You did or did not have to wait?

Even if the confirmation takes that long it should show up as a transaction. For breakfast they should not be worried about confirmations.

I did not have to wait. Their software made some "coins falling down" sound, we smiled, I left. I checked the status 30 minutes later and did not see a confirmation. IIRC it had 3 confirmations after ~60 minutes.

Had to wait over 10 minutes for an in person transaction using LocalBitcoins.  Dang thing just wouldn't confirm!  Must have been shit pool luck at the moment I guess... :P

Also had to wait over 20 minutes for a Coinbase purchase, before I can do another Bitcoin based transaction.  Guess I just have the worst timing when it comes to confirm times... :-\

Ya, that's why I don't see the confirmation times as that big of a deal. As long as the transaction went through, it will be confirmed eventually. If it's down to a minute and people start requiring that you stick around for that first confirmation because "it's only a minute" and then it actually takes 5 minutes people will be on here bitching about confirmations taking too long.

Plus, every minute I have to hang around Im keeping someone from doing their job. If there are 10 people after me and want to pay, someone needs to watch me and those other poor bastards paying with bitcoin. I could just run off otherwise. Maybe some sort of "pays with bitcoin" holding zone with security guards and cameras. I think this is utterly ridiculous.

I also think that most customers are regulars in a sense. If I would double spend my morning coffee I would have to get it elsewhere and while that is possible the number of shops (considering everyone would accept bitcoin) is certainly limited.

I think high(er) value transactions should be considered though. I dont buy a car on a regular basis, or shoes to make it a little cheaper. I would be willing to wait 10 or even 30 minutes for the car, but not for the shoes. As I wrote above, its possible to counter the attempt though and the merchant has an incentive to do so. This could be as easy as using a wallet that is rebroadcasting received transactions or as complex and centralized as using a service provider with their own mining pool.

Yeah, there's this misconception about Bitcoin where some people think they have to wait 10 minutes after buying a cup of coffee with Bitcoin so it shows up on the blockchain as confirmed, because unless it shows up they aren't fully calm about it. What they don't seem to get is credit cards dont confirm instantly, yet everyone uses it.
I would only wait for the full confirmation if I was buying something big like a car, otherwise it's pointless to wait, you just treat it like a mundane credit card transaction.

Application of the wrong tool for a task can escalate, that's true.

First you took the hammer since it looked like some job for a hammer. Then trying to force it further. Mediocre results at best.

I think your right. And the credit card example is apt. In fact when you use your card at McDonald's there is no way possible to determine if the transaction is fraudulent. They take the card anyway because it is not cost effective to steal credit cards to pay for a hamburger. Nor is it worth the extreme measure of launching a double spend for that burger.

I think they may need to use 3rd parties to insure transactions. A Visa for Bitcoin?

from my perspective, it is also fine, but for some (ok, majority) non-technically gifted people quite hard to understand, that even it is "unconfirmed transaction" it is done and it is ok..

or a Bitpay  ;)

People use credit cards and electronic payments and they have literally no idea what's going on beyond clicking or swaping the card. It actually takes months for a credit card transaction to get confirmed. There have been cases where months later scammers have managed to reverse transactions done months ago. Bitcoin is better than everything.

I had problems waiting for over an hour for one confirmation when I sent Bitcoins to an exchange once. It's highly unusual for a confirmation to take that long, but it did affect me that one time and was extremely frustrating.

People make such a fuss of the confirmation times but it's a minor issue if that. Once your coins are sent they're as good as confirmed any way but businesses will use payment procesors so they'll be covered in the unlikely event a double spend occours but how often does that even happen? Seems like something very hard to do.

i actually don't mind too much the long waiting, unless it becomes more than the average waiting(60 min for 6 confirmations)like above 1 or two hours, i don't like that the time is random, only this irritate me

this especially when i'm sending coin to an exchange because i need to trade at that exact time

The better approach. Otherwise people would recognise that they can use a Visa in the first place for stuff, saving some headaches.