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Title: Why 6 confirmations? Post by: dominicus on July 09, 2013, 01:16:04 PM Why do many bitcoin services implement 6 confirmations before BTC credit?
What's so special about 6 vs. 5 or 2? Title: Re: Why 6 confirmations? Post by: bitcoin44me on July 09, 2013, 01:24:06 PM Which one?
I think that most services are requiring 1 or 3 confirmations. It is to prevent double spending. The higher the number of confirmations is, the lower the risk is. But it will delay the transaction. Most of the time, 1 confirmation is enough. Title: Re: Why 6 confirmations? Post by: dominicus on July 09, 2013, 01:38:17 PM mtgox, and if I recall correctly, coinbase & bitpay post BTC transfers after 6.
I understand the part about lowering double-spend risk, but why not implement a risk-based wait period? If the transaction is for smaller amounts, wait for fewer confirmations and viceversa. Seems like a lost opportunity to speed up the network. May be a trade-off between pursuit of a consistent user experience vs. mitigating overall fraud risk. I was just wondering if there were any technical aspects behind this, 6 confirmations being ~1hr, might have been related to the ability of the network to spot a forks in the blockchain or such. |