10 minute vs. 2.5 minute confirmation time

[Daily Anarchist]

I'm sure this has been posted elsewhere, but I couldn't find it. Please feel free to link to it for me.

Considering that one of the greatest arguments for Litecoin over Bitcoin is the 2.5 minute transaction time, I'd like to better understand why 10 minutes was chosen for Bitcoin.

I've briefly read by others that 2.5 minute confirmation time is vulnerable to certain types of attack. Could somebody elaborate on this? It would be nice if there were a definitive article that I, or others, could link to every time a litecoin proponent pushes the 2.5 minute confirmation time as an advantage.

And conversely, if there is a litecoin rebuttal to that link, I'd like it too.

[Mylon]

The biggest argument for Litecoin is Scrypt hashing instead of SHA256 hashing.

I know Charlee Lee choose to go for the 2.5 minutes as he found 10 minutes to slow. I recall having read somewhere something on the topic of confirmation times, but don't recall where

[lnternet]

Some of the crazier alt's are doing multiple blocks a minute.

On thing I can think of is that the network needs to accept each block, which takes a bit of time, as the block needs to penetrate the network. If a block generation overlaps you get a fork. Right now this forking just results in an occasional orphaned block. But if the average block separation time is too short, this forking could mess things up pretty badly, like orphaned chains instead of single blocks.

Just my take, could be off.

[foggyb]

Yes, shorter confirm times = coin less secure, but I don't have the story on how this works.

[Anon136]

litecoin is a marginally better crypto. with that being said the difference is not enough to justify adoption IMO. everyone should just stick with bitcoin until someone invents an innovative crypto rather than one that has only done a little tweaking.

[Daily Anarchist]

This might not be much of an argument, but one of the things I like about Bitcoin is that it was created by Satoshi. Satoshi seems to have had some scary insight, such as using an encryption algorithm that was obscure and NOT compromised by the NSA. There was a reason Satoshi chose SHA and 10 minute confirmations. It may seem arbitrary now, but if anything bad happens to Scrypt and 2.5 minute confirmation with Litecoin, once again Satoshi will be heralded as a luminary.

[Anon136]

This might not be much of an argument, but one of the things I like about Bitcoin is that it was created by Satoshi. Satoshi seems to have had some scary insight, such as using an encryption algorithm that was obscure and NOT compromised by the NSA. There was a reason Satoshi chose SHA and 10 minute confirmations. It may seem arbitrary now, but if anything bad happens to Scrypt and 2.5 minute confirmation with Litecoin, once again Satoshi will be heralded as a luminary.

sha was created by the NSA

[Daily Anarchist]

This might not be much of an argument, but one of the things I like about Bitcoin is that it was created by Satoshi. Satoshi seems to have had some scary insight, such as using an encryption algorithm that was obscure and NOT compromised by the NSA. There was a reason Satoshi chose SHA and 10 minute confirmations. It may seem arbitrary now, but if anything bad happens to Scrypt and 2.5 minute confirmation with Litecoin, once again Satoshi will be heralded as a luminary.

sha was created by the NSA

But it hasn't been proven vulnerable, either.

Edit: At least not the SHA in Bitcoin.

[romerun]

2 benefits , getting the first confirm first and more fine grain to decide how many confirms are enough for a particular service.