Bitcoin transaction Times SUCK

[d4n13]

Man I bet some people would willingly board a train to Auschwitz because it's faster than walking away.

We were doing good there till we hit Goodwin's Law.

[QuestionAuthority]

For today, most people are using it for ideological reasons.

Wouldn't say that too quickly.  I'm quite confident there's tons of people in Greece who currently wish their savings were in Bitcoin right now, versus in the banks.  This is a systemic problem, and will only grow over time.  Just wait until Portugal and/or Spain goes.

Hindsight is 20/20. The Greeks needed to get into Bitcoin a couple of years ago. It's too late for them. Bitcoin isn't even close to being ready to replace the currency in even the smallest national economy anyway. I've seen estimates of current Bitcoin users numbering 500k to one million. Imagine 11 million people jumping on the system real quick. Not a pretty picture. 

[Hopalong]

For today, most people are using it for ideological reasons.

Wouldn't say that too quickly.  I'm quite confident there's tons of people in Greece who currently wish their savings were in Bitcoin right now, versus in the banks.  This is a systemic problem, and will only grow over time.  Just wait until Portugal and/or Spain goes.

Hindsight is 20/20. The Greeks needed to get into Bitcoin a couple of years ago. It's too late for them. Bitcoin isn't even close to being ready to replace the currency in even the smallest national economy anyway. I've seen estimates of current Bitcoin users numbering 500k to one million. Imagine 11 million people jumping on the system real quick. Not a pretty picture. 

500K to one million users and around 20-30% of the bitcoin in circulation. Not much to share with new users are there?

[d4n13]

really is a problem...
I got 2 transaction waiting for confirnation more than three hours today

Generally I side with the devs / miners / economic theory on this stuff.. but to play devils advocate...

There are a few problems the the use of wallets today.

• People generally use different wallets that are dumb about fee calculations.
• A receiver has no control over how dumb the sender or the sender's wallet might be.

Luckily, the fix is already getting a LOT of discussion in the dev channels.

CPFP - Child Pays For Parent
This is a fix that about 4% of the miners already employ.  I've requested that wallet makers include a user control to put it into wallet applications (like Bitcoin-Qt).  Once the user controls are in place, the user will be able to execute a CPFP transaction against something they want to confirm quicker.  It's a way to link a low fee transaction to a high fee transaction, kind of like a lifeguard.  Your transaction is drowning, so you make a lifegaurd transaction to grab it and pull it into the blockchain.

RBF - Replace by Fee
This fix, to use the analogy above is like a evil lifeguard.  This creates a transaction that will kill your previous one and replace it with itself.  The replacement transaction will have higher fees, so this is a type of mulligan.  This proposal would likely cause peers to need to update their double-spend detection but it is being hotly discussed.

So, what I've done, and you should to if your frustrated, is contact the devs for my wallet app and said "Please put CPFP and RBF features into your wallet app that I use".  Think of it as a "FTFY" button in your transaction display.

See good can come out of this.

[QuestionAuthority]

For today, most people are using it for ideological reasons.

Wouldn't say that too quickly.  I'm quite confident there's tons of people in Greece who currently wish their savings were in Bitcoin right now, versus in the banks.  This is a systemic problem, and will only grow over time.  Just wait until Portugal and/or Spain goes.

Hindsight is 20/20. The Greeks needed to get into Bitcoin a couple of years ago. It's too late for them. Bitcoin isn't even close to being ready to replace the currency in even the smallest national economy anyway. I've seen estimates of current Bitcoin users numbering 500k to one million. Imagine 11 million people jumping on the system real quick. Not a pretty picture. 

500K to one million users and around 20-30% of the bitcoin in circulation. Not much to share with new users are there?

Bitcoin is very divisible and the price would adjust quickly but the system isn't ready to handle the additional users. This thread is an example of why it's not ready. Besides, imagine the infrastructure setup cost and time. Ramping up every business owner and employee in a country to accept Bitcoin safely. Hell, that alone is a decade of work.

[sturle]

Brother I send payments all day long anywhere from .5 BTC up to 3 BTC at a time, always use 10,000 satoshi for transaction fees. I have not had a 10 to 15 minute transaction in over a year, 20 minutes is the fastest I have seen in a year. average of 35 minutes longest 2 hours and 25 minutes.

How do you manage that?  I usually send multiple outputs per transaction, i.e. larger transactions, using only 2000 satoshi per KB as fee.  About ten transactions a day by average.  Mine almost always confirm on the first block.  Perhaps you are using very young inputs?  I practically never include inputs with less than 6 confirmations, and usually at least 100.

[Envrin]

Hindsight is 20/20. The Greeks needed to get into Bitcoin a couple of years ago. It's too late for them.

Aye.  Totally agreed there.

Bitcoin isn't even close to being ready to replace the currency in even the smallest national economy anyway. I've seen estimates of current Bitcoin users numbering 500k to one million. Imagine 11 million people jumping on the system real quick. Not a pretty picture.

Bitcoin was never designed to replace any currency.  It's not designed to allow me to buy a bottle of water at 7/11 for $0.50.  However, it is an excellent way to store and send / receive wealth.  That's what it was designed for, and it does that perfectly IMO.  It's the same as pulling my monthly salary out.  Most people have their salaries deposited into their bank accounts, whereas I just pull mine out from my Bitcoin wallet.  That's what it was intended for, and it does its job remarkably well.

[scarsbergholden]

I just dont get why people are not aware of what happening with the bitcoin network, is so easy to just pay for fees manually then have to wait for confirmation just because you didnt wanted to pay a little more, if you dont have the time to wait just pay a little more.

[dothebeats]

Hmm, odd. I only pay the same fees that you paid but my transactions get confirmed within 20> minutes. And maybe you are not talking about transaction times but rather confirmation times. Confirmation times take a little while whereas transaction times are instantaneous.

[bornil267645]

Maybe you people are forgetting how much time it takes to transfer money using the traditional fiat system. Bitcoin is still the fastest way than any other currency out there BTCGUARANTEEDBTC

[scottian]

My last two deposits to Bittrex took less than 20 minutes and they were in the past week

[coinut]

I sent some btc to bittrex about 26 hours ago, has appeared pending in my bittrex account with 0 confirmations, bitcoin core is also 0 confirmations.

not sure what I can do here 

[EndTheFed321]

Don`t worry your coins should be confirmed in a few days, all of my transactions have been completed one took 4 days while the other one took 2 days. 

[ujka]

...
EDIT: oh and yes before the bitcoin lovers even go there, I pay a 10,000 Satoshi transaction fee for High Priority on all of my personal transactions I send. So lets not try the pay a bigger fee for faster transaction times.

10,000 satoshis is standard fee on my wallet (mycelium), not priority. If you want priority... yes, pay a bigger fee!

[Amph]

OP if you have an issue with confirmation time you can use off-chain  service, if your amount is small enough, and your problem will be solved

I sent some btc to bittrex about 26 hours ago, has appeared pending in my bittrex account with 0 confirmations, bitcoin core is also 0 confirmations.

not sure what I can do here  

your fee was? probably not 10k satoshi, but 0

Maybe you people are forgetting how much time it takes to transfer money using the traditional fiat system. Bitcoin is still the fastest way than any other currency out there BTCGUARANTEEDBTC

and also the cheapest, even if you pay above 100k satoshi, this is still a joke in comparison with the enormous fee of the fiat system, not to mention the 1.75% on the conversion rate, i nightmare...

[coinut]

fee was standard, I didn't touch it

0.00002059 included fee

I will increase it in future transactions but is this just a matter of waiting for my transaction to get processed?   

[Amph]

fee was standard, I didn't touch it

0.00002059 included fee

I will increase it in future transactions but is this just a matter of waiting for my transaction to get processed?   

2k is very low, don't listen to the recommended fee of the client, with the current spam storm, it's better to set it at 10k at least

yeah besides that, you need to wait only, it will be confirmed eventually

[coinut]

cheers man, yeah was unaware of the spamming taking place will increase the standard fee for the future .. lesson learned 

[Q7]

While there's nothing more we can do to it at our level as a user and community member to change the code, what we can do is either to look for alternatives like altcoins or just simply adjust the way on how we use the coin in order to adapt to the system. Increasing transaction fee is of course one of them. Instead of retail spending perhaps you can make use of it as cross border payment method. That is much faster than any of the money transfer service.

[Borisz]

Maybe you people are forgetting how much time it takes to transfer money using the traditional fiat system. Bitcoin is still the fastest way than any other currency out there BTCGUARANTEEDBTC

In the "traditional" system there is a developed trust between parties. So even if it takes 30 days for a card payment to clear, I can eat my burger that I bought 30seconds ago right away, without having to wait a month.

On that note, I don't really mind waiting for my coins to arrive when I am receiving them. I know they will be there. However when I send and it takes exceptionally long it gets frustrating. Maybe there could be a time forecast feature telling how long it will take approximately with x amount of fee instead of "include more fees for faster transaction". I don't want to over-pay, just make it go through in a reasonable amount of time.