Bitcoin Forum

Other => Beginners & Help => Topic started by: naturallin on January 13, 2014, 05:04:13 AM



Title: Bitcoin And Other Alt Currencies Confirmation Time!!!
Post by: naturallin on January 13, 2014, 05:04:13 AM
I Know that Bitcoin confirmation time is 10 minutes and litecoin is 2.5 minutes and other alt coins like world coin is 60 seconds.

How will that affect real world use? I mean if you at Starbucks and there is a long line of people waiting to buy coffee.  If you pay with bit coins, the confirmation takes 10 minutes each usually you'll need a few confirmation before the transaction is legitimate.  You would be waiting for a while and people behind would run out of patience.

Of course people could just transfer the bitcoins and not wait for any confirmation so they could go about their day and make others wait.

Will people realize that bitcoins might not be use in small everyday transactions, but make purchases like a house or a car?
Maybe people will use world coin to purchase coffee because you would wait about a minute for the transaction to clear.

Of course people should have the right to pay with any major crypto currencies as you would with visa or master card.

What are your thoughts on this?



Title: Re: Bitcoin And Other Alt Currencies Confirmation Time!!!
Post by: raithe on January 13, 2014, 05:13:55 AM
It is all about reducing risk.  To quote the Bitcoin(dot)org FAQ:  "Every user is free to determine at what point they consider a transaction confirmed, but 6 confirmations is often considered to be as safe as waiting 6 months on a credit card transaction."

For low cost sales like your Starbucks example, you will not need 6 confirmations.  If you are buying a new car or house, it would be smarter to wait a little longer.  A lot of litecoin users believe that LTC can be used for everyday transactions and bitcoin will be more for store of value or large transactions. The only correct answer so far is that nobody knows yet...


Title: Re: Bitcoin And Other Alt Currencies Confirmation Time!!!
Post by: torusJKL on January 13, 2014, 06:06:18 AM
To pay for a coffee and a cookie it is enough to receive the broadcast of the payment without even waiting for a single confirmation.
It's very unlikely that someone would invest time and money to scam you over this small payment. It would cost allot more then the coffee and the cookie are worth.