90 minutes for 1 block...

[Come-from-Beyond]

I'm waiting for 203700th block. 90 minutes since the previous one. Can't get even a single confirmation of my transaction. This is so fucking nice...

[Come-from-Beyond]

This is why LTC

Aye. LTC is ready for BTC collapse 

[SkRRJyTC]

This is why LTC

Why wouldnt/couldn't be waiting for 4 LTC confirms?  As I understand it LTC confirms blocks 4 times faster and therefor to get the confidence of 1 BTC confirm you would have to wait for 4 LTC confirms.

[Come-from-Beyond]

Oh, God! Waited 97 minutes for the block just to see my Tx wasn't included!

[kneim]

Oh, God! Waited 97 minutes for the block just to see my Tx wasn't included!

How much did you spend as fee?

[Come-from-Beyond]

Oh, God! Waited 97 minutes for the block just to see my Tx wasn't included!

How much did you spend as fee?

Standard 0.0005 BTC. Fortunately the tx was included into the next block.

[K1773R]

Oh, God! Waited 97 minutes for the block just to see my Tx wasn't included!

How much did you spend as fee?

Standard 0.0005 BTC. Fortunately the tx was included into the next block.

this fee is a so called "lower priority tx's", if you need fast tx confirmation, raise the fee.

[Come-from-Beyond]

this fee are so called "lower priority tx's", if you need fast tx confirmation, raise the fee.

I didn't know. Will 0.00050001 BTC (standard + 1 satoshi) give me an advantage in priority?

[gmaxwell]

This is why LTC

Except LTC can also take 90 minutes for a block too, it will just happen less often.

I didn't know. Will 0.00050001 BTC (standard + 1 satoshi) give me an advantage in priority?

Maybe. The current reference software sorts transactions by fee per KB data size. Due to rounding that tiny increase may make no difference depending on your transaction size.  Paying less that the base fee won't help at all, very tiny fees are just treated the same as free transactions.  Historically even the base fee would have given you a substantial advantage. But the dice site is flooding the network with 0.0005 BTC fee transactions so free and 0.0005 transactions frequently get to wait.

[K1773R]

this fee are so called "lower priority tx's", if you need fast tx confirmation, raise the fee.

I didn't know. Will 0.00050001 BTC (standard + 1 satoshi) give me an advantage in priority?

depends on the miners (pools software), altough if you need fast transactions, atleast 0.001 should be fine. 0.01 to be almost 100% sure that it gets included (if you can afford this), this depends on the other transactions in the network.

[gmaxwell]

Yeah, like once every 4 years...   But anyway a faster coin will come around soon enough...

Not one based on the bitcoin algorithm.  Litecoin is already too fast most likely.

The Bitcoin algorithm is not convergent when the highest latency (including all block validation time) bisection of the hash rate becomes higher than the mean time between blocks. E.g. if a chain has a 3 minute average block time an it takes 3 minutes for some half of the miners to hear from and validate another half, then most of the time a new block will be found in each half before it's heard about the other half's blocks and the two will form longer and longer forks, which take longer and longer to reorg between. The result is a partition with the halves not able to agree on the history of transactions.

At current transactions levels (which are only a portion of the maximum allowed) Bitcoin is already seeing multi-minute propagation in some cases.

Litecoin's blocks could well be far enough apart to escape being doomed from this— escaping with just needing to wait for some more confirmations to cope with larger reorgs due to slower convergence (as the number of confirms you must wait for a given confidence goes up as you approach the latency bound); but it seems unlikely that the bitcoin algorithm could go much faster successfully.

It's a shame people don't even bother to learn from all the failed altcoins who have twiddled Bitcoin's parameters without understanding them or their reason for existence. They weren't set the way they were just to piss you off.

[gmaxwell]

LTC works and is solid. Can a faster coin work? You seem to think no, however I bet we will try and see.

I'm not saying it will work 9a BTC clone) but it will be tested. Waiting 2 hours for 1 confirm is not going to work...  If it fails we will have to start from scratch. I'm not here to support BTC, I'm here to revolutionize the way value is transferred around the world...  Deal with it.

Don't worry, I'm sure the facts won't get in the way of whatever ponzi scheme you're planning on participating in next or people adopting the NextGreatThing designed by people who haven't a clue about what they're doing or the patience to learn.

The facts didn't stop people from trading Liquidcoin for BTC for a little while... until the facts caught up with them and made it vanish. 

I console myself with the fact that all the suckers and scammers are so slow to learn from their own mistakes that they just keep repeating them and its easier for the sane bystanders to avoid.

[BladeMcCool]

Is there a tool that lets you ask all the mining pools if they've received a transaction and if they think it is a legit transaction that will be included in a block? Because I think such a tool would be great and give peace of mind in accepting zero confirmation transactions because you'd know that all of the big pools have seen the transaction and will reject any double spend attempt after that, and so you could be pretty sure the tx will be included in a block without issues.

[K1773R]

no there isnt.

[SgtSpike]

Is there a tool that lets you ask all the mining pools if they've received a transaction and if they think it is a legit transaction that will be included in a block? Because I think such a tool would be great and give peace of mind in accepting zero confirmation transactions because you'd know that all of the big pools have seen the transaction and will reject any double spend attempt after that, and so you could be pretty sure the tx will be included in a block without issues.

The closest tool to what you are speaking of is blockchain.info's Unconfirmed Transactions list.
https://blockchain.info/unconfirmed-transactions

While it doesn't guarantee that mining pools will include your transaction, my guess would be that most pools are purposefully connected to blockchain.info, and would see your transactions as soon as blockchain.info does.

But, pools can choose which transactions to include, so just because it appears on blockchain.info's list doesn't mean it will make it into a block any time soon.  There are 2385 waiting transactions as I write this... and that's quite a lot.

[sharky112065]

This is why I have always thought that Bitcoin would not ever replace other currency in its entirety. Society simply does not have the patience to wait around for their money to go through. We are a want it gotta have it now society.
 

[SgtSpike]

This is why I have always thought that Bitcoin would not ever replace other currency in its entirety. Society simply does not have the patience to wait around for their money to go through. We are a want it gotta have it now society.
 

Services like credit/debit cards will evolve to satisfy those people, and point-of-sale demands.

[gyverlb]

This is why I have always thought that Bitcoin would not ever replace other currency in its entirety. Society simply does not have the patience to wait around for their money to go through. We are a want it gotta have it now society.

I can understand the need for faster confirmed transactions in some cases but for the vast majority of my needs (and I believe the vast majority of everyone's) Bitcoin would be perfectly adequate.

For low amounts (I'd say <$100), transactions without confirmation are fine as long as they reach the seller. Preparing a double spend for low amounts is too costly to bother.
For intermediate amounts (<$10000), there are services that verify that the transaction has been seen by enough nodes on the network to make the simple double-spend attack impossible (sending a fake transaction to the seller's node while broadcasting another to most of the network).
For very large amounts, you may want to protect yourself against the 51%-based double-spend attack which would insert a transaction in a block making yours invalid.

So <$100 transactions can be verified in a matter of seconds for free and <$10000 ones can be verified in seconds too by paying a service (don't know the rates, but given that it's not very difficult to do, even if it's not cheap today, it will be when needed).

>$10000 transactions today are very slow for individuals and small businesses (hours at best, days usually) so waiting for a couple of confirmations to make sure the coins are yours and 6 confirmations to use them is quite good. Big businesses can setup "green" addresses à la MtGox.

The only missing thing I could see here is adequate software for point of sales and users: software which doesn't put the same restrictions on every transaction and rate the trust you can have in them according to the risks involved.

[Technomage]

Bitcoin very rarely gets 90 minute blocks, I don't see it as a major problem. Also, due to the p2p nature of the network it's actually not a smart idea to make blocks much faster than they currently are, just like gmaxwell explained.

The popularity or usage of Bitcoin has in my experience absolutely nothing to do with the speed of the blocks. Nothing. There are far more important issues. Use green addresses or something if you really want speed.

[allthingsluxury]

How well is litecoin doing these days?