Bitcoin Forum

Bitcoin has been the Top 1 cryptocurrency since its birth from 2009 it evolves now to the one of the top use cryptocurrency by means of payment.
But I see one problem with it, about its transaction. last time after our manager sent our rewards on signature campaign it took a day to confirm the transaction the longest transaction I've ever had. So I came to think of it if Bitcoin can have a fast transaction like Ripple (XRP).

I found this Video explaining about Lightning network, this is an old video.

https://i.ibb.co/rsbhpmL/Screenshot-6.jpg (https://youtu.be/a3HulqfzyYE)

By now are we able to make fast Bitcoin transactions without paying a big amount for it?

Source: The Blockchain and Us: Interview Elizabeth Stark, Lightning Network (https://youtu.be/a3HulqfzyYE)

It's not Bitcoin's fault that you had to wait a day for your campaign payout to confirm. It's your campaign manager who chose to go with a low fee. Add low fee and you get unreliable confirmations. Add appropriate fee and you can almost accurately get your transaction confirmed by the next block or the one after that.

As for your main question, Lightning payments settle in a matter of seconds depending on the number of hops, but generally, 1-2 seconds is a pretty reliable estimate. However, currently it's mainly used for smaller payments due to the lower channel capacities and the overall liquidity. With some time that will drastically improve.

My point is If we can have a fast transaction like Ripple's (XRP) and at the same time with a small transaction fee. I know about low fees in bitcoin transactions will get you to my experience where you wait for a day to get it confirmed. If we can have low transaction fees in Bitcoin and at the same time a fast one, we can have smooth transactions all the time right? this is what I experience on XRP fast and Smooth.

So until now Lightning network hasn't been develop into capable of transacting a large number of Bitcoins? No wonder they still using the term Satoshi because it can only handle smaller payments.

I am very glad for your optimism about the lightning network, but there is no reliable evidence that this is a solution to the issue of topicstarter, because:

In my opinion, the euphoria about lightning network has subsided and in its place comes the understanding that this is at least not a universal panacea for fast transaction problem.

ps Generally speaking, bitcoin transactions are very fast if you do not require them to have at least one confirmation. :)

I think it can be possible by doing some tweaks and updates on blockchain itself or updating some old stuff handling bitcoin transactions pretty sure thay may help in making bitcoin transaction a bit faster or even be instant just like Xrp.If xrp team achieved it why not bitcoin can right

Thankfully! even though XRP is a useless coin for others, we can use it as an option to lower the fees of our transactions on some exchanges and with our local exchange Having XRP one of the coins that they Buying, we can directly send XRP to it then convert it to our local money then withdraw it, isn't it convenience?

https://i.ibb.co/FsfCb4K/Screenshot-7.jpg

So it's a Win-Win situation for us. After all, XRP is not a shitcoin like you guys say. at least for us.

XRP actually has an altogether different protocol system and a separate way of transferring payments. Bitcoin is basically sort of public ledger or what we call a blockchain which supports a digital currency. While XRP is itself created for the purpose to be used by banks as a means of swift payments processing but it does not has any mining concept,for validating transactions it uses a network of servers which is decentralized.  But the company created it holds most of it's supply which makes it very manipulative.

Now comes question of lightning Network. Lightning Network is a protocol sort of something like Segwit. Now, not we first need our wallets to support LN. We are in process implementing it soon but it has it's own demerits. Bitcoin blockchain has to wait for a certian block to be mined for the transaction to be processed which is mined at a gap of roughly 10 minutes making the mechanism slower while XRP doesn't has any such procedure making it swift. So as per current scenario in traditional btc we can never have such quick transaction. Because Satoshi focused on efficiency and security rather than speed.

When BTC had high fees, I used Litecoin and Dogecoin for transactions between my accounts on different services. XRP is still a centralized shitcoin, if you need low fees there's a ton of much better options. We should just let XRP die, the world doesn't need a centralized payment system pretending to be a cryptocurrency, that's just a scam.

Was your manager using segwit rather than the legacy addresses? I guess that was a factor. Another factor would be the transaction fees. If your manager used the minimum fees, then you cannot expect your transaction to be processed faster than it could be if the transactions fees are higher. There is competition in the network, as you might be aware of. The higher the transaction fee paid, the faster the process since it will be prioritized over those who pay lower fees.

As regards lightning network, we will have to be more patient about it as the development about lightning network is still very limited until now. And the design of lightning network is for smaller day to day transactions. This is generally for stronger adoption in terms of daily purchasing transactions. For now, we have to be content with what Bitcoin has to offer. If you compare it with altcoins, that is a discussion on another page altogether different from here.

Not really, in my case, I don't have a problem if the exchanges because most of the exchange that I joined also have XRP to sell my bitcoin to.
My concern is, what if your bitcoins came from your electrum wallet? Of course, you don't have an option for letting you sell it to XRP unless you gonna send it to some exchange. in that case, it will become more complicated.

If the lightning network can be used, we will have a fast transaction with lower fees, right?
But unfortunately, we're not there yet, even though the video is 2yrs+ already. Good news is, they still working to make it happen, as long as they won't stop updating it, there will be a time we can see that fast transaction with lower fees can happen on bitcoin too.

Note: I'm not bragging on any of the exchanges that I mentioned, I'm only telling the truth which will give us ideas on how we can use XRP.

yes this is always a major problem in shipping bitcoin, the cost is quite expensive and also rather long
lightning network can quickly process transactions, but in my opinion not as fast as xrp, and also not recommended for sending large amounts of bitcoin

I usually change to altcoin first when I move my cryptocurrency assets

Bitcoin can certainly have fast transactions like xrp. It needs to lightning Network so that we can do off change transactions instantly without worrying will confirmations then all those transactions will be done at a later date in bulk. It takes time to develop the technology, so just we have to be patient.

This is the classic blockchain Trilemma. It's not possible (or not yet) to be fully decentralized, highly scalable, and have a strong security. BTC is clearly fully decentralized and is a high security network, but the scalability isn't that high. XRP is more centralized and in favor more scalable. In my opinion is BTC at the moment, mainly a store of value with the opportunity to make fast transactions on the lightning network.
BTC has the best properties to be a store of value and if you see BTC as a store of value the transaction time is very quick compared to classic store of values like gold, silver and so on. Fascinating is that BTC has many use cases and with the time we will see how BTC will be used.  

Thats a lot  of work to do and to have faster transaction will affect the system drastically. There is Lightning Network already and hopes they can improve more. Overhauling the whole system is tedious and delicate, but necessity makes people to experiment and innovate try new system. I think its better to recreate the whole system, but I wonder many will support it as most people will stick to the original.

There's already an example of this and it's called BCH the results compared to Bitcoin aren't even close. Changing the rules mainly for faster transactions is unlikely, it needs the majority to agree before it can happen and this isn't good to begin with because the bad side of such changes tends to be ignored or less prioritized.


If XRP was the only altcoin accepted on all exchanges then i'd agree but exchanges usually have several altcoins listed and there are better altcoins to choose from other than XRP.

The Lightning Network project has been developed since the last bull season. Years have passed, but nobody really knows what's going on. Everything is done behind closed doors. I think this is against the nature of Bitcoin. It is said to bring better conditions, but there is still nothing. Could it be just a stillborn idea?

It's important to understand that XRP isn't a blockchain but a database. It only needs a small number of nodes to agree that your transaction is valid in order to have it be accepted as such. It indeed translates into a fast and smooth user experience, but that applies to mostly all projects nowadays. XRP isn't anything special in that regard.

Realistically speaking, it will take some more time in order to have Lightning be liquid and stable enough to provide consistent transactions from small to medium, or even large. Also, the term satoshis is being used out of convenience. If you want you can switch the unit format to BTC or mBTC or USD, EUR, etc depending on what client you use.

This lightning node technology already exists, in fact, some exchanges have set up their own Lightning Network Node. Some say Bitcoin on-chain transactions are more secure than Lightning off-chain transactions I don't think so.

Sample:
Bitstamp's Lightning Network node
https://www.bitstamp.net/lightning-network-node/?utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=post&utm_campaign=lightningnetwork

Lightning Network Discussion Thread
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4638321.0

Lightning Network Article:
https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/understanding-the-lightning-network-part-building-a-bidirectional-payment-channel-1464710791

Why are you complaining for 1 day? DO you know how long international wire transfers take? WEEKS.

Signature campaigns pay minuscule amounts, do you wan't him to spend half of the payment in transaction fees? OF COURSE i would use the lowest fee (1 Sat/B), this usually takes about ONE HOUR, and rarely several hours.

Yes, in theory campaign managers could use Lightning Network, given that the payments are frequent and often, it makes a perfect use of it. Unfortunately, Lightning Network wallets are still rare. Perhaps when the likes of Electrum finally add it, but even LN has had changes lately so i still don't know when this would ever get critical mass use (if ever).

You mention ripple but that is the case of everybody else, due to lack of use among other things. Except perhaps ethereum, because their blockchain is used for a gazillion things not eth (all those tokens and smart contracts, etc). Go ahead and send 1 dogecoin while paying the lowest fee and see how long it takes, its probably faster than ripple...

Bitcoin transactions are perfect for most uses. I always use the lowest fee, i even bought something once online that way, and got it faster than ever compared to using the traditional wire transfer fiat method, that usually takes at least 1 day for the seller to confirm, while with bitcoin 1 hour later he got it confirmed AND, no stupid bank working times (which in this country suck).

Better in what way? And what altcoins are better according to you? I honestly consider XRP one of the better altcoins to pick if you're out to enjoy super fast transactions to for example benefit from arbitrage opportunities.

It's probably the most accepted altcoin alongside Ethereum. The downside is that we don't know how centralized XRP exactly is. I'm wondering if Ripple can reverse transactions at will.

People keep complaining about Bitcoin's slow transactions, but there isn't anything that will change here as long as LN isn't fully deployed. You either use Bitcoin or an altcoin that's faster. People are free to choose.

Bitcoin transaction is not that slow, the problem is it takes a higher fee! Maybe your manager put a low transaction fee, so it took one day to finish. The same thing happened to me in a masternode website, I received my payment after 5 days and Bitcoin was pending in my wallet through those 5 days!
However, I don't think Bitcoin can be fast like Ripple with a lower fee, if you want to get your bitcoin fastly, you have to spend at least 6-7 USD!

I understand OP's stance.  We are talking about confirmation between cryptocurrency, not of fiat and cryptocurrency.  I also think that OP feels that it is annoying to wait for several hours when he is used to waiting 20 to 30 minutes before he can use his BTC.  The point of the post is to inform us that there is a solution to this problem being laid and it is the lightning network.  Its just the title is somehow a bit tricky to the point of misleading its reader.


It is slow compared to other cryptocurrency block confirmation.  Bitcoin have 10 minutes  and others have way less than that time to confirm blocks.  But I believe if lightning network is fully implemented it can rival any fast confirming cryptocurrency in the industry.

Your experience was a little bit lower than most of us who experienced the slowest confirmation of all time (probably) by the end of 2017. IIRC, my longest transaction was nearly a week before it got confirmed.
Others doesn't get the idea of OP has, he's asking about if its possible that bitcoin could be upgraded with the same speed as XRP. But honestly speaking, the confirmation time right now isn't taking any longer. Around 3-7 minutes, most of my transactions were confirmed.

Waiting for a week is a little bit worrying mate for sure, it sometime we could think of being hack as what it happens to me before when I withdraw it coming from HITBTC. It sometimes we might think of its high fees compared to the other coins and even ETH it also have low fees. I don't know what makes especial with BTC, instead, they should have to lower the transactions fees since a lot of people are using this.

But what XRP did is almost instant which some traders are converting their BTC into XRP cause of transaction fees and also its fast confirmation. How I supposed to see it happen also with BTC and possible to all cryptocurrency, maybe it is just fair.

The transaction speed of xrp is much higher than bitcoin for various reasons. We have bitcoin to be working on the mining process while xrp is pre-mined. Out of 100 billion only 38 billion are in the market. Bitcoin is spread all around, 60% of xrp is being owned by Ripple.

On the whole Bitcoin is made and more as a money while ripple is made as a payment service for banks, payments network, commodities and much used for assets transfer through the network with a much reduced cost.

Well we have the lightning network implemented last 2018 but there's not enough advertising in it to convince people to use lightning network although the nodes connected to lightning network are already in 10000 still low amount of people using the network though and more people still using legacy addresses until now but i think in future, more start ups will move lightning network and people with full node will move too.

of course we can. it is easy, we sacrifice the decentralization and security of bitcoin and become centralized like XRP and then it is easy to have fast insecure transactions that the centralized power who would control the chain by then could take away from you at any time if they wished to.

The Lightning Network is only suitable for small recurring payments. And this is definitely not the silver bullet that will make Bitcoin a “peer-to-peer payment system”, as it is written in its white paper.

I believe you should change what Bitcoin is in reality. Satoshi designed the network to be decentralized first, and therefore secure, not fast.

I understand now, so that's how they got their speed by becoming centralized. I can sacrifice the speed rather than becoming centralized as pooya87 said: "insecure transactions will get us in trouble".  satoshi's main plan was to make bitcoins transaction to be decentralized. so to be more secure, they are not adopting the XRP technology as it gives Bitcoin holders unsecured transactions right? and the idea of secure transactions will no longer exist.

Yupp the xrp distribution system is fucked just like fiat which is hurting cryptocurrency principle about how it supposed to be run decentralized. I will avoid comparing to xrp but xlm instead.

They launched the live net and lightning network beta last year which it's very much in development... we can't expect much but yeah i wish i could always send money through cryptocurrency without waiting any confirmation.

Let's see what xlm can do about this .

The robust network of bitcoin does not make it malleable to increase its transaction speed like other blockchain networks have. However, using the lighting network to make payments can help hasten the process. Also, i believe the bounty manager settled to pay very low transaction fee and that caused the delay.

They have. I use doge to transfer btc from one exchange to another. Though amongst the top coins in the market, ripple  is my top choice for cheap and fast transactions. It's definitely cheaper than bch. Even if btc transactions are a lot faster now, converting to alts is still cheaper and for me, way quicker than bitcoin.

"Insecure" in the context that the users have to trust a centralized third party that your transaction will go through, and hope that a government entity would not take the network down.

It really depends on the lightning network I guess, if it keeps working as intended, making smaller transactions dirt cheap, and confirming transactions super fast, we could definelty see BTC as a fast payment option, and viable for those everyday coffees.

I agree with Malse, even though I don't support ripple's views and I definetly don't like the centralised aspect, using ETH, and XRP to pay for small things is just so much easier compared to BTC.

I just don't like the idea of being centralized, because at any moment they can make any reason for their escape scam. like the other exchanger with their hacking stories. then there will be no other way to get your coins back that is one of the bad consequences for holding a centralized coin.

That's why Even though they can have fast transactions with lower fees, they still behind Bitcoin.

I didn't think of it as hack honestly. Because we can see the record of transaction through the network and I'm sure that there's no others address that's associated why it was delayed.
The fees really varies and we can't control them so the higher you pay, the more priority you'll get. That's the solution that we can do for ourselves. I don't use XRP for my transactions or even convert my BTC to XRP.

Or change our attitude on what Bitcoin "should be". It's not going to be "the next Paypal". Design decisions should always move more towards decentralization, security, and censorship-resistance, than speed.

Even now, I know many people who use ripple for quick transfers between exchanges and among themselves. They do not want to use Bitcoin due to the fact that expensive transactions and are rather slow.

I think it's possible just to switch to using XRP in such a case.
I know this might be not an answer to your question, but just think about it - if you need transactions like those from Ripple, so what do you want from Bitcoin? There are lots of coins that solve the issues with slow transactions, just some of them and don't make things more complicated than they are.

What do you mean by fast transactions? Did you mean about having a fast transaction by speed? If that's the case then I would probably says that it is depends on the exchangers because there are exchangers that also have a fast transactions almost the same to all of the coins that they have and there is also some exchangers that is so slow to have transactions compared to other coins. If you mean is about the transaction fees, then it would be more efficient if we will use ripple or xrp to have transaction fees because they are more efficient and affordable as it is very low fees compared to other transaction fees of coins like bitcoin and etc.

Using xrp very faster payment transaction where you sent your xrp from one exchange to other exchange only take few minute and your transaction successful receive in your wallet destination, compare with bitcoin take few hour using XRP very good way if you want to withdraw your bitcoin to other wallet by convert become XRP coin first and you get faster payment.

It is not the case that we need to change from bitcoin to XRP, I see the point is if the technology behind XRP can be use in bitcoin as well in order to promote fast and much more efficient transactions. In this case, we don't need to find another altcoin such as XRP just to pay small amounts and long period of time since we are as fast as them and as efficient as well.

They are different in many ways as Bitcoin was developed as digital currency that which aims as payment of services and good, while on the other hand, XRP was created for banks for payment settlement, money transfer and currency exchange. XRP is really developed to create asset transfers in real time.

We all have this problem, A lot of people are crying for the past years about Bitcoin's transaction speed and we still don't have an absolute answer. We just have to deal with this and settle if we want anonymity and privacy. You could just wait for LN to improve so that you could do large transactions. If you really can't deal with Bitcoin's transaction fees, then use altcoin then change to Bitcoin again. That's what I do.

Agreed, this is the real difference between bitcoin and xrp. Bitcoin is developed as a payment that itself serves as a currency. When it comes to xrp, it is developed to pivot transactions and support banking services. With that it is developed as a network for banking. This is why it is also termed centralized platform service.

I've been waiting for almost one year to see what will happen if lighting network is being launched because at that time there were many people who explain that this service is a solution for bitcoin transaction proccess and fees as well.

And now it has came, we can use it although we still feel restless (just me maybe) since we make a transaction then the transaction is not directly being created on blockhain and there are some people who reveal that this thing is really vurlnarable to hack.

But, maybe this service need more an education since just a few people who use it even it is not much who didn't know it. However, there are some altcoin who like XRP which have fast transaction such as matric network who can be able to proccess transaction for almost 6000 proccess per second, maybe you can use it.

XRP has a fast transaction system and it has one of the biggest market capacities in the market. But it doesn't give good signals about its price. Bitcoin is highly dominating the market and it started to make transaction duration shorter than before thanks to Lightning Network. I believe Bitcoin will be successful on this too.

You don't know how transaction take place. The bitcoin block interval is 10 minutes. The difference between creating one block to another is 10 minutes, the reason behind 10 minutes block interval- https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/1863/why-was-the-target-block-time-chosen-to-be-10-minutes
Initially the plan was 1 minute but later Satoshi change his mind for a lot of reasons detailed in the linn above.

Nothing in his post suggests he doesn't know how transactions take place. It seems that you have skimmed his thread in order to make a post as fast as possible that seems like it contributes something.

His question is whether the Lightning Network, which is a protocol on top of the blockchain, enables Bitcoin to have fast payments like XRP does right now. The fact that there's 10 minutes between blocks is irrelevant to this question.

To the OP: The answer right now is not really. LN support is not amazing, and there isn't really complete consensus on whether it goes far enough or not.

Another person who definitely didn't read the OP.

I would like to suggest use XRP or XLM for microtransactions. Making such microtransactions with Bitcoin(BTC) may cost more. And XRP and XLM are also altcoins( Alternative coins used instead of Bitcoin).

Considering Bitcoin's transaction time and fees taken for transaction costs muc more comparing to XRP and XLM transaction speed and fees. And it's because of the different protocols and consenses.

XRP and XLM are great altcoins offering instantaneous transactions within the network with blazing speed, it takes hardly milliseconds to broadcast and verify the transaction on network.

At this time there is no answer related to the problem of bitcoin transactions which are slower and more expensive than altcoins.
Therefore, altcoins like XRP were created to perfect the BTC function itself, so for now this is indeed a best solution to use XRP for
cheap and faster transactions.Hopefully some cryptocurrency experts can find ways to make bitcoin transactions cheaper and faster.
Of course related to this settlement can take a long time, and can not be solved in the near future. Because needed a lot of research
so that this problem can be solved.

The speed of transactions generally depends on the fee that the payment sender pays. Higher fees tend to be prioritized, while lower fees tend to wait. It's that simple. With Lightning Network, there is a way to have smaller, regular transactions done instantly, which might be good for subscriptions, and maybe even salaries. However, I don't think that this is the way in which BTC is heading. Stellar, or even Litecoin would be better for faster transactions. BTC is moving towards becoming a store of value, imo. So no, I don't expect that BTC will ever be XRP-fast, but that is fine, there are other altcoins that could be used for making fast payments.

I agree with this. I can get my XRP in just 5mins , it is faster than usual! At first I have a doubt on it but then I believe that XRP is much better than in eth. Maybe because it is not yet congested.

This is the problem ever before if there’s a solution to faster transaction of bitcoin like Xrp. But these days the higher fee you have the faster transaction you can experience. With that exactly it takes time to have a resolution and I tried using xrp and it really has a fast transaction and lower fees.

We can't deny that the lightning network is indeed great, using XRP when having withdrawal or transactions will only take for a minute or two. In terms of having a fast transaction it is indeed better than using eth.
Both eth and xrp are a good investment, they have different use and there is no need to compare both of them, they serve their own function and the most important is, they give us satisfaction.