Bitcoin Forum

I Love BTC, but any honest look has to reveal that the transactions take WAY to long.
Did Satoshi ever comment on why he used ~10 minutes per block and/or did he consider a much lower number?
If he did, I haven't seen it before.



Edit:
<off topic>
Almost everything related to BTC transaction times, but discuss it if you wish.
</off topic>

<On Topic>
I wanted to learn what Satoshi said about it, and someone did answer, thanks
Also interested in more related Satosho quotes if you have any.

If Bit_Happy was a 490 activity user then why hasn't he seen the endless topics and pages written on this? Especially a LTC user... why the sudden curiosity i wonder...

why the sudden curiosity
I paid a transaction fee and the transaction is still unconfirmed after a "almost unbelievable" amount of time.

Endless topics and pages written on this?
I've seen the long transaction times discussed, but never Satoshi commenting on it.


@Holliday Are you saying BTC transaction do not take too long?
Sheesh...

It should be an average of 10 minutes, I've seen 10 blocks found in a minute.

10 min is nothing compare to current banking system. Heck even a check deposit can takes days to confirm.

However both transactions are instant (bitcoins and check deposits). My transactions are always broadcasted and instantly in queue (that means its very hard, nearly impossible, for me to double spend it unless i'm an operator of GHash lol)

I believe Satoshi thinks 10min is an appropriate time required for a global payment network. I dont think faster confirmation times would give any benefit but potential nonstop-able forking in case of attack.

I think you're confusing transactions with confirmations. The former is almost instant.

You can compare it to a creditcard payment, the transaction takes places almost instantly.

With a creditcard sweeping your card only confirms you have the funds to pay, but the actual payment is done days later and can be charged back up to 90 days.

If you're trading for a lot of money waiting for a couple confirmations is in fact really short comparing it to other payment methods.

^^^^ What he/she said.
Bitcoin is the fastest electronic payment protocol in existence.

If Michael Jordan was a "great basketball player", then why did he only score 30 points per game?

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=423.msg3819#msg3819

this exact question was asked a couple weeks ago.. so again

imagine 5 years ago satoshi seen that banking does things in 3-5 days and originally came up with a concept of bitcoins confirming in 30 minutes.. a bit of debate ensued and every agreed on 10 minutes.

now imagine if today bitcoin was invented (instead of 2009). and the confirm time was agreed as 2 minutes... in 5 years time your future successor would be on a forum complaining that 2 minutes is a long time and you want a 40 second confirm time.

now imagine if in 5 years time bitcoin was invented (instead of 2009) with a 40 second confirm time.. your successor would complain and want a 8 second confirm time,

blah etc blah... endless loop of arguements

Transactions don't take long, confirmations do.

Correct!
That would also probably mean that Bitcoins will be mined sooner than expected.

I edited the OP, to be more clear:

Edit:
<off topic>
Almost everything related to BTC transaction times, but discuss it if you wish.
</off topic>


<On Topic>
I wanted to learn what Satoshi said about it, and someone did answer, thanks
Also interested in more related Satosho quotes if you have any.

It's a tradeoff between the granularity of confirmations and the probability of creating orphans. Satoshi actually picked a pretty good sweet spot.

This is one of my favourites, but it still doesn't quite answer your questions.

You can just look him up for yourself, like a normal forum member.

Some of those early conversations are much clearer and easy to get 'it' into my thick head.

Another trick is to invert the date order in bitcoin discussion. See you in 3 months!

Transactions average 1.4 seconds from anywhere to anywhere.  Transaction clearing is what blocks are doing.  Transaction clearance for credit cards take between 30 and 45 days.


Yes he did.  He chose the 10 minute interval because it was a long enough period to prevent orphaned blocks, most of the time, due to more than one node discovering a block solution within the time period it takes to propagate a block from one edge of the network to the other.  He was assuming that, in a future that Bitcoin was wildly successful, blocks would be very large data sets and the p2p network would be very large; both contributing to network delays that might extend the time for a block to propogate from edge to edge for up to a whole minute.  Therefore, in order to limit the risk of orphaned blocks (and the blockchain splits that often accompany them) the target interval had to be several times longer than the worst case scenario for block propogation delays.  He also wanted the interval to fit neatly into human time cycles for our mental convience.  He could have done a 6 min block interval, for 10 per hour, but he was concerned that wouldn't be enough.  His fears seem correct, because even with the 10 minute interval we average about 1.5% of blocks released onto the network are orphaned.  A 6 minute interval would make that much worse, and 2 minute interval would make that rate simply awful.

Also, even a 1 minute delay would be too long to wait in many situations. Especially as that would be the average and some confirmations would take longer. When I'm paying by credit card at a supermarket, if it takes as much as 10 seconds it annoys me. When I've finished and paid I don't want to hang around, waiting. So faster confirmation times don't really help unless they are a lot faster, like 50 times faster.

(I don't know whether Satoshi made this point, and don't much care.)

That's not exactly comparing like with like.  The credit/debit card system is designed to operate this way.  

A better comparison is a bank transfer which, here in the uk, usually only takes a minute or so.

Worst. Analogy. Evar.

I still don't understand why some people don't get it.

Just like you pay dollars with your credit card at the supermarket you will be paying with BTC with the same transaction time.
The "intermediary"  will confirm you have enough coins in your account and make the transaction.
The merchant will ONLY have to wait 10 minutes to get his coins.

Simple.

 

And with Bitcoin, the intermediary can be the vendor himself, so they don't have to pay Visa to do that for them.  If Wal-Mart accepted bitcoins at the counter, they could manage transaction validity checks just fine without hiring some outside contractor.

you must have read this by now....or was your account hacked

its to do with latency , and speed of transmission across globe.

a supermarket isn't going to make you wait around so they can be certain the 500 dollar drop in the bucket you're spending with them clears.

they currently wait 30-90 days for your credit card to clear.

as soon as it shows up on the blockchain with 0 confirmations, your good.

or perhaps there could be a system where a human stands at the end and watches you make the transaction from your phone.

.

http://replygif.net/i/90.gif

Sorry maybe I didn't make myself clear.
What I meant is that BTC credit cards are already out there (neo-bee).
Which means that they are the intermediary to do this check and release payment.

The OP's point that it is not as fast as credit cards.
But that is wrong.

It all depends on what kind of information you want to give from now on I suppose ;)

lol, this has to be a level right?

Best answer so far. Bravo.

Transactions are almost instant. You got something wrong.

The more I learn about Bitcoin, the more amazed I am by Satoshi's forward thinking.

I've said many time before, that Satoshi (if only one person) was a polymath.  If you look deep into how bitcoin works, there are so many moving parts that just mesh so well and interlock, it seems so improbable that anyone could have gotten this all right the first try, but that's what happened.  The system is so elegant, and subtle in so many ways.  Many of these alt-coins don't recognize these subtle metrics, and assume that too many things are simply arbitrary.  I've found that there are few things that were arbitrary about bitcoin.

If manatees are so smart,then why do they live in igloos?

Yes excellent lesson thank you MoonShadow

For chump change transactions there are altcoins or cash. BTC is still much much MUCH faster than any other payment method.

I had a SEPA reversed after 5 weeks and clawed it back from the bank 2 weeks later, so 7 weeks transaction  ;) ... U.S. ACH can be reversed for a year or so. Those who complain about 10 mins are crybabies IMHO

Yes. It is like each block having the DNA with the whole history of Life on Earth Bitcoin network.
In the blockchain that DNA is the "Block ID" of a block, which is the cryptographic hash of the previous hash: A-CHAIN-OF-BLOCKS.

A cryptographic hash of 256 bits, like SHA256("Your secret message, name, label, text, etc...")=................................256bits? is a bit like a tweet that makes your text of any lenght into a string of 256 bits. It is a number. It is usually expressed alphanumerically because it is usually represented in hexadecimal. It is a very sensitive tweet and will be completely different and unrelated to anything else with just a small change in your message bundle. You cannot unbundle anything from your message of any length once you find the SHA256() that bundles your message bundle into some 256 bits gibberish.

With every new block the weight you would have to lift to recreate your own version of the blockchain and be able to add new blocks with validated transactions - of recent history - on top, multiplies!

You can tweet me at @dandosage
My tweets are like this: "I have never seen the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Theatre and then watch cool crowds watch those two dolphins dance and love those Www22wwW(-)cubeBALLooNs of mine."

Satoshi was a genius, actually he was a genius's genius.

It was not his intention to leave the World with his famous last words of "there are still more ways to attack than I can count." (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2228.msg29479#msg29479) He still had a lot of work to do, and if the transaction times had needed adjustment, he would have done so. But remember, times have changed a great deal since 2010. What was best then, is not necessarily what is best now.

Unfortunately, he and Gavin had a major disagreement. Satoshi wanted to remain secretive and independent of government, and Gavin felt it was necessary to cooperate and openly communicate with the federal government. The day Gavin told him he was going to talk to the feds was the day Satoshi vanished into thin air.

Miraculously, another equally talented young developer (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=105750) appeared on the scene recently, who has begun the process of picking up where Satoshi left off. With his own coin, he reduced the transaction times as you suggested, completed the 51% defense, and continues to this day to work at perfecting the beautiful but unfinished code of Satoshi.

Should you really be pimping your alt coin here

Transactions are instant. Confirmations take 10 mins which is incredibly short compared  to 2 days for a wire.
Not to mention the wire is like 1000 times more expensive.

Compared to what? Banking days?

The 10 minute confirmation time is integral to the mining algorithm. I think Satoshi knew what they were doing.

Exactly this.

I no longer want to have to keep records of my spending to figure out what my real bank balance is

hey dude a few minutes is too long?

Bitcoin was designed as an Internet currency; it takes 24/h or more to ship a product so a 10 minute confirmation delay is irrelevant. Bitcoin wasn't intended to replace fiat as the new global currency IMO.
 

What was expected? An "instant currency"?! How about creating a "IWillGuessWhatYouWillDoCoin" alt-coin? A coin that even before you know, spends itself by buying random stuff out of the web and go ahead with the payment? ;D

The reason transactions take so 'long' is because it's checking whether or not the transaction is real, transactions in a banking system are done quickly because it's done by a human being but of course human beings can easily make mistakes and they have fucked up peoples transactions in the past or caused problems, they can also interfere with your banking if they find anything or just block you based on country. Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are indiscriminate, automated and decentralised so everything is a little slow but in return for this there's no interference in any transactions and nobody can stop anything.

BTC Transactions are near instant, and if nothing bad has happened 10 seconds after you've sent your transaction, (or received it) then you know with a certain level of confidence that it is good.

When you are shipping physical products, you can wait for the time it takes a block to confirm before doing anything, or you can immediately start packing it as soon as you get the transaction.

By the time you are finished applying the shipping label, you would know if you had been paid or not.

Digital downloads, well, it depends on what the product or service is (gambling games, ebooks, etc.) and how expensive the item is, to decide on whether to give instant access to a buyer or to let them wait a few minutes.

If, for example, I pay for software, I can wait 10 minutes to receive the unlock code while I have already or still am downloading the archive.

When the day comes that I can pay for my electricity, my newspaper subscription, my cable TV, my internet service, my water utility and my credit cards with bitcoin, I certainly will not mind that I had to send the transaction 1 hour ago.

In fact, I will just send the payment, then go to the gym or take a walk outside. By the time I get back, I have an email that says "Thank you for paying your electricity. The lineman outside your house will now leave without incident." Then the dude in the orange uniform just around the corner gets a message on his phone or tablet and leaves.

I would love to pay for movie tickets with bitcoin, get a ticket or stub, and watch it an hour or two later. Usually, the shortest wait in most modern cinemas are at least 10 minutes (where they don't allow viewers to enter in the middle of the movie.)

If you do a local trade with me for a suitcase of cash, I'll give it to you once I see the transaction on the network that you just broadcasted from your phone, and walk away after a handshake. I wouldn't even count the seconds.

I'm sure I can run after you if I see a double-spend attempt and my .45 ACP JHP travels only a bit slower than the speed of sound.

International transactions taking 10 minutes, I'm not sure if it is long time to get proper confirmation. Also it is hard to tell if there were any alternative to solutions he had to use.

Transactions take 1-2 sec.

I recently posted this explicitly for people who still don't understand:
Please, newbiews, stop saying Bitcoin transactions take 10 mins. It's 1 sec! (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=384440)

Already possible (http://newsbtc.com/2014/03/20/dutch-energy-company-bas-nederland-accepting-bitcoin-payments/) here in the Netherlands :)

The internet is too slow, still not ready for this ingenious invention :)

Sold credentials to highest bidder?

uhmmmmm

YES THATS WAY TOO FUCKING LONG


Jesus

Jesus

10 minutes

maybe in 1994 that was cool

Can we get this in a freaking sticky?

Bitcoin is a prototype, an experiment in beta. Let's not expect too much of Satoshi. Some altcoins who improve in confirmation time are already out there doing their own experiment. If extremely successful, it's possible Bitcoin will adopt those features. I'm sure the 10 min confirmation time can be updated in the future. We will have to wait for new and convincing ideas to come up and test it thoroughly.

Thread has been won.

This is another thing that makes Bitcoin so strong. Even when its most important member (Satoshi) abandons the coin mid-stream, the coin keeps growing like wildfire. Now that's true decentralization. Yes, the blockchain can talk too. :)

This.
Totally agree, one time payment in bank took like 2 days because guy in bank did something wrong.

Insert cool dr evil air quotes meme here.   ;D

because our computers are currently too slow to make it faster????

because that is how an eventually consistent distributed consensus system works

i agree. why we stay with a bitcoin if other coins are quicker and even safer. Nextcoin is faster than Litecoin. pos coins , they seem more eficient to me.

For god shake, bitcoin is fast enough for any kind of transaction.

Good luck with that.

You aren't agreeing with me. I was arguing against faster confirmations, because even if they are 10 times quicker they still won't be quick enough. They'd have to be 50 times quicker; but then the cost of orphaned blocks (as described in the post before mine) would be prohibitive.

The way to get fast enough for the supermarket scenario is to accept transactions with zero confirmations. Then you only have to wait a few seconds. With that in place, the block time becomes almost irrelevant.

Conclusion:  the whole "we need a fast altcoin" argument is bunk.

Cuz forums get cluttered with fucks like you who feel a need to show everyone how much smarter you are than everyone.

Or maybe "cuz" the only usage "advantage" of LTC is that it has faster block times and LTC just went through a massive pump and dump with the introduction in chinese exchanges leaving lots of LTC bagholders all around the forum asking why is "Bitcoin so slow".

And maybe that contributes to forums getting cluttered with the same thing over and over... OP has a LTC and Bitcoin signature and near 500 activity. Even if he doesn't know the main differences between the altcoin he favors and Bitcoin, and even if he was being naive, he would certainly know about cluttering and searching topics.

But maybe "fucks like you" don't get it and "feel a need to show everyone how much" dumber you are than everyone.
 
The thread ended up being relatively OK with some good information repeated. In a week it will be feathercoin being dumped and yet another seemingly naive OP will show up asking why are LTC and Bitcoin so slow, leading to a shittier thread and clogging up the searches of a genuine newbie.
 

if you take the risk of acccepting 1 confirmation or noen at all it is fast...

It is lot faster than some bank transactions. Three days for a cheque to clear? The world was waiting for something like Bitcoin.

Because Satoshi is almost as intelligent as you are unintelligent, OP.

Retailers get risks in all payment forms.

Bitcoin is slow if risk is 0, and so are other payment forms. Actually bitcoin is better to handle risk and processing time.
The retailer can do something like this in his Point of Sale system :

if value < $30 , conf = 0
if value  > $30  conf = 1
if value > $100 , conf = 3
if value > $400 , conf = 6

Or it could be worked around.

Planning to spend alot on groceries? Send a thousands worth of bitcoin before shopping, do your shopping, then by the time you're done your coin is confirmed. Get your change back in btc, or as a shopping voucher

If you're willing to accept purchase with 0 confirmations, then we should hook up... I have a lot of micro-purchases I'd like to conduct with you.

i'm curious to how easy it is to double spends. is it something average joes can learn to do or does it take some college kid genius with glasses and shit to do it?

would it be safe to accept with 0 confirms with, lets say a $10k purschase as a company?

There are reasons most merchants stopped taking personal checks, and this is one of them. The merchant would rather eat a 2.9-3.9% CC fee and process a transaction with little risk, than have to fight dead beat check writers in court. Despite the law being on the merchant's side, it usually turned out to be a losing proposition due to having to track them down, file court documents, and appear in court.

I, personally, view Bitcoin as a better ACH, but it's just ripe for someone to build a credit card network on top of it.

Good question, because everyone knows that a college kid genius without glasses is in fact no genius at all!

It will be a pleasure if you already signed up to our preferential customer program which is free of costs.

It's not easy.  In fact, it's never been provabley be done in the wild.  It's entirely theoretical.

A better question is:  If you had a really good coder build you a wallet client that was specifically designed to do double spending,
what percentage of the time would it work to create a zero confirmation transaction, without any "outside assistance" (other nodes coordinating in the attack etc)

Listen to lord MoonShadow.  :)
If you read the news you would think bitcoin is "hacked" all the time. In fact it is trusting others that leads to theft by hacking. The protocol is very safe, unlike your credit card.

P.S. I would wait for some confirmations if it was $10K.

It depends on attacker hashing speed how likely a double spend can be done. Also it matter only if the company cannot simply cancel the order/purchase after doublespend happens (this is know within one hour)

This is unknowable, but considering that the issue about acceptance of zero confirm transactions is a meatspace issue primarily, it'd still be quite a trick for a hacked android client to produce two competing transactions at the exact same moment without Wal-Mart's bitcoin service noticing and denying the transaction.  Theoretically, the best chance you can have with a double spend attack is 50%, but that assmues that both the attacker and the vendor have equal access to the p2p network (which is unlikely in any event) and that the vendor hasn't taken steps to reduce his exposure (which is possible today, but would become as rare as hen's teeth a week after the public finds out that a true double spend attack was accoplished against a vendor).

The hashing speed of an attacker, if any, is irrelevent for the double spend attack.  You're thinking of something different.

Ideally the transactions would be broadcast from very different locations, so you'd want a crook in Europe pairing up with one in America (say). They'd need to be broadcast almost simultaneously, so they would take a bit of coordination. Even then, the vendors could probably detect it by listening for a few seconds.

That said, the college kid could probably write software that average joes could download and use. Script kiddies don't need to be very smart.

What would you be spending $10k on that couldn't wait for a confirmation or two?

The time it takes to receive the payment doesn't mean that Satochi is not a genius. Bill Gates isn't dumb because Windows takes time to open.