If confirmation takes 10 minutes, how will I buy coffee at Starbucks?

[botolo86]

Fellow Bitcoiners,

This is something I don't understand. In order to be sure that a bitcoin transfer is successful, you have to wait for a confirmation. Standard market practice is to wait for 3 confirmations. A confirmation takes 10 minutes on average.

If bitcoin becomes massive, how will I buy a coffee at Starbucks? Will I have to pay with bitcoins and then wait 10/30 minutes before picking up my coffee?

[msc]

For small purchases, you don't really have to wait for a confirmation.  You just need to make sure the transaction appears on the network.  If there are any losses, they can be written off as a cost of doing business or treated as theft.  The chances of double-spending for a cup of coffee are less than the chance of someone walking out on a restaurant bill.

[jdbtracker]

Don't forget that the transactions are instant... and I also hope that the Mining farms somehow start implementing a system that uses the fees to trigger the full strength of their cluster to be active. Once the transactions get saturated and fees start increasing rev up the farm; With this method, 2016 blocks wouldn't move the difficulty much if for only 2 hours a day the ASIC farms are roaring at full force, it could drop the transaction confirmation time from 10 minutes to under a minute when needed.
But of course this is difficult to implement when everyone is fighting for a piece of the pie.

[DeathAndTaxes]

If credit cards take 180 days to be confirmed how will you buy coffee at Starbucks?

[Exentric]

I guess that more and more of the computing power mining new bitcoins today will be used to confirming transactions in the future, thus speeding up the process.
And you Also have services as bitpay.com paying the business you buy from in FIAT.

[Kazimir]

This is something I don't understand. In order to be sure that a bitcoin transfer is successful, you have to wait for a confirmation.

No true, that's only with huge transactions.

Quoting myself from another thread:

Common misconception, but Bitcoin transactions are instant.

It's only the confirmations that take some time. Confirmations is what makes a transaction 100% irreversible. But nowadays, for regular payments of 'normal' amounts (up to a few thousand $) it's completely safe to accept a payment as soon as it appears in the network (and has enough tx fee).

With todays network strength it's pretty much impossible (not to mention way, WAY too expensive) to successfully forge a valid looking transaction (thus it gets propagated through the network) that doesn't get confirmed. Only in order to accept or trust payments for BIG amounts, e.g. when literally sending tons of money around, you better await a few confirmations.

So, in most situations it's perfectly valid to say that Bitcoin payments are already instant. NOT 10-60 minutes!

and

Oh, one more thing. As for the so called 'faster processing' of altcoins with shorter block times: this is a delusion.

In the end, the certainty of a transaction is related to the amount of processing power that would be required to successfully forge it. You may think that for example Litecoin is 'faster' because it finds blocks 4 times as fast, but it would also require 4 times as much blocks to get the same amount of certainty - that is, if the total network power were equal. And the latter is not the case by far, the Bitcoin network harnesses much, MUCH more hashing power than all other altcoins combined.

So, when comparing the speed of processing transactions, not in terms of 'number of confirmations' but in terms of actual certainty and trustworthiness, Bitcoin is a few miles ahead.

[FiatKiller]

You are also forgetting that they may use a 3rd party vendor who assumes that risk as part of their fee.

[hilariousandco]

I think a more important question here is why are you buying coffee at Starfucks?

[Rannasha]

I guess that more and more of the computing power mining new bitcoins today will be used to confirming transactions in the future, thus speeding up the process.

Mining new bitcoins and confirming transactions are both results of the same process. It's not one or the other, it's both at the same time (or rather: the former is a reward for the latter).

[VforVictory]

I guess that more and more of the computing power mining new bitcoins today will be used to confirming transactions in the future, thus speeding up the process.
And you Also have services as bitpay.com paying the business you buy from in FIAT.

This assumes that there is a limitless supply of electricity/power, and that it doesn't sky rocket in price.

[jdbtracker]

I was also thinking that there are BTC giftcards you could use, BTC credit cards as well, Bitpay of course, escrow services, etc lots of different methods to mitigate the risk of a double spend.

There is a method for spreading locked pre-sized BTC amounts described by Adam3us, the original creator of hashcash. Check out some of his posts, very interesting stuff.

[Peter R]

Fellow Bitcoiners,

This is something I don't understand. In order to be sure that a bitcoin transfer is successful, you have to wait for a confirmation. Standard market practice is to wait for 3 confirmations. A confirmation takes 10 minutes on average.

If bitcoin becomes massive, how will I buy a coffee at Starbucks? Will I have to pay with bitcoins and then wait 10/30 minutes before picking up my coffee?

Once you've used bitcoin for a while, it becomes pretty clear that zero-confirmation transactions are suitable for most purchases.  These are picked up by the network faster than the time it takes a debit or credit card transaction to be approved.  We have several brick-and-mortar business in Vancouver accepting bitcoin (via BitPay) and it is standard practice to consider the invoice "paid" as soon as the network picks up the valid transaction.  

If there was something "wrong" with the transaction, it won't propagate through the network and you'll never see it posted.  If someone "double spends" the transaction, then there will be a big glaring warning (e.g., on blockchain.info) that says "DOUBLE SPEND DETECTED".  Furthermore, he would need a special custom app on his phone to even attempt a double spend.  The double spend attempt would be obvious since the network would detect it, and he'd look like a thief in front of the whole store and never receive that latte he was hoping to scam.

[beetcoin]

If credit cards take 180 days to be confirmed how will you buy coffee at Starbucks?

well, there's a 3rd party ensuring that you won't be scammed (when using a credit card). with bitcoin, there's only you and the provider.

[msc]

If credit cards take 180 days to be confirmed how will you buy coffee at Starbucks?

well, there's a 3rd party ensuring that you won't be scammed (when using a credit card). with bitcoin, there's only you and the provider.

Credit cards don't protect the merchant from getting scammed.  If you make a purchase and then report the card stolen, they'll steal the money back from the merchant so they can repay the cardholder.

In short, credit cards are safer for consumers, but Bitcoin is safer for merchants.

[wickedgoodtrader]

However with people holding a lot of money in BTC, they very well may want to make many big purchases with their BTC. This could allow them to slide under the radar and not pay taxes on money they've "cashed out". This is where the slow transaction times is an issue.

[CoinDiver]

GOOD FOR THEM!

I think a more important question here is why are you buying coffee at Starfucks?

[BradZimdack]

If credit cards take 180 days to be confirmed how will you buy coffee at Starbucks?

Although most of our chargebacks do come through within 6 months, we have occasionally received them after a full year.

[justusranvier]

I think a more important question here is why are you buying coffee at Starfucks?

Good for them.

[hilariousandco]

You think Starbucks paying zero tax whilst the ordinary people pay on their minimum wages is good?

[Ecurb123]

For small purchases, you don't really have to wait for a confirmation.  You just need to make sure the transaction appears on the network.  If there are any losses, they can be written off as a cost of doing business or treated as theft.  The chances of double-spending for a cup of coffee are less than the chance of someone walking out on a restaurant bill.

This is correct, and who knows if this isn't workable, maybe bitcoins will not be for buying coffee.