Why is bitcoin so slow?

[tomfluff]

I'm often waiting 15mins+ for a transaction to get a single confirmation?

I believe this is a major factor holding bitcoin back from being more mainstream

If I was to accept bitcoin in a local store and the customer had to wait around whilst his transaction is confirmed I would loose customers pretty fast...

Also why is the bitcoin client forcing me to pay a 0.01 transaction fee? Surely a decentralised p2p currency shouldn't need to pay transaction fees? Where do these 0.01's go?

Cheers

[1714939368]

1714939368

[1714939368]

1714939368

[1714939368]

1714939368

[1714939368]

1714939368

[1714939368]

1714939368

[justend]

open 8333 port

[EpicNoob]

n/a

[Stephen Gornick]

I'm often waiting 15mins+ for a transaction to get a single confirmation?

The target is 10 minutes, but it will vary, sometimes wildly from that target.
  - http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Block

If I was to accept bitcoin in a local store and the customer had to wait around whilst his transaction is confirmed I would loose customers pretty fast...

Bitcoin wasn't developed to be a transaction network for point-of-sale like the payment card networks.  There had to be a tradeoff in order for bitcoin to be decentralized (no central authority).

 - http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/In-store_Transactions

There had been discussions as to ways bitcoin might be augmented to support this, though no definitive plans by anyone have been announced.
  - http://www.quora.com/Can-Bitcoin-be-used-for-mobile-payments

Also why is the bitcoin client forcing me to pay a 0.01 transaction fee? Surely a decentralised p2p currency shouldn't need to pay transaction fees? Where do these 0.01's go?

Because of transaction spam abuse, the client was modified to force transaction fees.  When making that decision was made just a few months ago, they likely couldn't fathom $30 BTC/USD, and thus the 0.01 BTC minimum fee was not expected to ever be excessive.  Beginining with v0.3.23 the minimum fee will be 0.0005 BTC, ... under two cents worth, at Bitcoin's recent high trading price.

The fees go to the miner who includes the transactions in the block that was solved.

[MrDeliMeatSlicer]

open 8333 port

How does one go about opening port 8333? I'm running Windows.

[Kuusou]

open 8333 port

How does one go about opening port 8333? I'm running Windows.

You need to forward the port in your router. You can find plenty of information online. If you really need to, feel free to PM me.

[deepceleron]

Enabling port forwarding is not an answer to the original question here, ignore the first answer in this thread. The original poster just has misconceptions about the time required for confirmations (the time required for new bitcoin blocks), which has nothing to do with your connection quality.

[cabin]

Many merchants just accept 0 confirmation transactions which will only take a few seconds to show up. It is still somewhat difficult to double spend these and generally not worth the trouble for small amounts. This is especially true if it is a service that can just be withdrawn later.

[Gabi]

1)the "open port" thing looks like trolling since it's totally unrelated

2)confirmation is not required lol, a transaction is received in few seconds, and pretty much everyone accept it with 0 confirmations

3)fee goes to who work for the security of the network, aka miners