Bitcoin's confirmation time problem in retail stores?

[BitCoinTim]

I'm pretty new to all this crypto currency stuff, but I'm wondering one thing. It takes a while before a bitcoin transaction is confirmed. Won't this be *the* problem for becoming used in retail stores for example?

I can't imagin waiting several minutes before my payment for my groceries are confirmed. Any thoughts on this?

[panck4beer]

You can trust uncorfirmed transaction with fees. Rarely this uncorfirmed transaction is double spend.

[Akka]

Unconfirmed transactions are still pretty save. It's way harder to double spend an unconfirmed transaction, than to charge back a credit card transaction. A difference are services where you can immediately withdraw your BTC back (like an exchange or gambling) even if it only works 1/100th of the time you could make money this way. That's why you have to wait for confirmations there. But I have yet to see a store where I have to wait for confirmations.

Waiting for confirmations only is necessary for high value good. You can easily say, everywhere were you also couldn't pay with a credit card.


Also reducing the time between blocks would not make sense here either. As confirmations are a measurement of security. If you have 1 confirmation with  a bitcoin transaction it means that the networks hashing power of 10 minutes agrees that this transaction is confirmed.

If a service waits for 6 confirmations (like many exchanges) with Bitcoin, they actually should wait for 24 confirmations with a coin that has a block time of 2.5 Minutes (like Litecoin) for the same amount of security.

[hilariousandco]

I'm pretty new to all this crypto currency stuff, but I'm wondering one thing. It takes a while before a bitcoin transaction is confirmed. Won't this be *the* problem for becoming used in retail stores for example?

I can't imagin waiting several minutes before my payment for my groceries are confirmed. Any thoughts on this?

Have you actually spent or transferred any Bitcoin? I usually find this question or argument coming from people who haven't. Once they've been sent they're as good as received. Retail shops will use a payment processor that will insure against any problems like this anyway so it's not a problem either way.

[BitCoinTim]

I'm pretty new to all this crypto currency stuff, but I'm wondering one thing. It takes a while before a bitcoin transaction is confirmed. Won't this be *the* problem for becoming used in retail stores for example?

I can't imagin waiting several minutes before my payment for my groceries are confirmed. Any thoughts on this?

Have you actually spent or transferred any Bitcoin? I usually find this question or argument coming from people who haven't. Once they've been sent they're as good as received. Retail shops will use a payment processor that will insure against any problems like this anyway so it's not a problem either way.

Yes I transferred some coins. They appear pretty quickly in my wallet, but it takes a while before they get confirmed and I can use them.

But from what I understand from the other answers is that you can be pretty sure an unconfirmed transaction will get confirmed.

Has anyone ever ran into a transaction which did not get confirmed?

[hilariousandco]

I'm pretty new to all this crypto currency stuff, but I'm wondering one thing. It takes a while before a bitcoin transaction is confirmed. Won't this be *the* problem for becoming used in retail stores for example?

I can't imagin waiting several minutes before my payment for my groceries are confirmed. Any thoughts on this?

Have you actually spent or transferred any Bitcoin? I usually find this question or argument coming from people who haven't. Once they've been sent they're as good as received. Retail shops will use a payment processor that will insure against any problems like this anyway so it's not a problem either way.

Yes I transferred some coins. They appear pretty quickly in my wallet, but it takes a while before they get confirmed and I can use them.

But from what I understand from the other answers is that you can be pretty sure an unconfirmed transaction will get confirmed.

Has anyone ever ran into a transaction which did not get confirmed?

Nope, but it's very rare that will happen. I don't think it will be a problem for retail businesses at all. It's safer than accepting a cheque or credit card, and there's a lot of fake money floating around that Bitcoin solves. I think even with tiny flaws BTC is better than fiat and credit cards etc.