BTC as "every day" spending currency vs. 10 min Block Confirmation/Mining time

[Monkey Man]

Consider the following:

1) BTC was initially conceived as an "every-day spendable currency" (and not just a "store-of-value")

2) the BTC Blockchain is intentionally designed (for security reasons) so that a typical block will take about 10 mins to mine

If these 2 principles are accurate, how do we envision BTC being used as (1) while retaining the time limit of (2)?  That is, "How can I spend BTC right this second without having to wait 10 mins for the Block to be confirmed (aka mined)?"  It seems to me as though some other step/intermediary would be needed to make this happen - such as, a different kind of wallet/account (one where BTCs are "pre-confirmed as spendable") or an "immediate spend" alternative crypto with an intentionally faster Block confirmation time (making it less secure).  Are there any other alternatives?  Am I missing something here?  What model do you envision for a world where BTC is the main/only "currency of the Earth"?

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[mk4]

If you're going to ask Bitcoiners in general, mostly the answer you're going to receive is the Lightning Network[1] which is slowly but surely being developed right now; which allows instant and near-zero transaction fees. Though usable, the UX is currently not the best.

Probably a controversial opinion, but if you're personally fine with submitting AML/KYC to centralized entities, the so called "Bitcoin debit cards" are the way to go; whereas you hold bitcoin on the Bitcoin debit card's wallet app, and the app automatically sells bitcoin for fiat everytime you make a purchase.

[1] https://lightning.network/

[bitbollo]

@OP
have you ever heard about charge-back? when you know how it works I am pretty sure you will get comfortable only with btc payment.
because: even if a payment get an immediate confirmation in your bank account it can be retrieved by the bank that has issued that payment.
and you have nothing much to do since a scammer know very well how to handle these stuffs... e.g. high risk to get scammed when you trade btc for fiat money.
 
with bitcoin you can do it with a function called RBF and trying to do a double spend. but isn't easy. you have to do quickly and hope the second transaction get confirmed. however a seller will immediately notice it....
after some blocks (or minutes it depends the way you are measuring your time) double spend it is literally impossible.
now there are off chain transaction like LN (Lightning Network) that provides a new way for spending your btc daily.... as many of us will confirm.

replying to your question:
- yes
- send enough fees to allow confirmation in one block.
- LN or for small payment you can use alternative blockchain (altcoins) with quick confirmation/but isn't the best way I should admit....
- I don't know this is your first post
- A better world. this is why me and others users are here.  

[jackg]

Actually, only physical cash is what you can spend immediately. If you pay by card, the card issuer promises to pay the company within 3 days of the transaction but the funds are just somewhere between your two accounts and are pending in both so that's not very instant (when compared with an average for bitcoin of 10-30 minutes).

As was mentioned above, there's the lightning network where transactions normally take less than 10 seconds to go through (they just use contracts in the wallets thst can be broadcast to the blockchain at any point to redeem the btc owned by that node).

[avikz]

If you're going to ask Bitcoiners in general, mostly the answer you're going to receive is the Lightning Network[1] which is slowly but surely being developed right now; which allows instant and near-zero transaction fees. Though usable, the UX is currently not the best.

Probably a controversial opinion, but if you're personally fine with submitting AML/KYC to centralized entities, the so called "Bitcoin debit cards" are the way to go; whereas you hold bitcoin on the Bitcoin debit card's wallet app, and the app automatically sells bitcoin for fiat everytime you make a purchase.

[1] https://lightning.network/

My 2 satoshis on this reply! Same opinion here as well! LN is the best option going forward which can make bitcoin transfers cheaper and faster. It uses a sidechain and broadcast multiple transactions in batches to save the cost and time. So this is the future for payment using bitcoin.

Second option is also great! But the requirement of KYC is the only downside. But if you are comfortable in providing KYC details to the centralized entities, you can just swipe in your crypto debit card at any pos. But this convenience comes at a cost of privacy.

[o_e_l_e_o]

Bitcoin is faster and more final than every method of transferring fiat other than cold, hard cash.

A bitcoin transaction shows up instantly, can be spent by the merchant instantly, and is finalized and irreversible within 10-60 minutes.
Bank transfers or debit/credit card payments show up instantly, cannot be spent by the merchant for 3-5 business days, and are not finalized and irreversible for up to 180 days, depending on your country/jurisdiction.

And yet most merchants accept credit card transactions. Why? The safety of accepting a credit card transaction which can easily be reversed by a simple phone call for up to 6 months (much more easily than a bitcoin transaction can be double spent in the <60 minutes you have to do so), comes from the fact that most people are honest, most merchants can tolerate small amounts of fraud, and merchants have law enforcement and the legal system to back them against fraudulent customers. None of this is any different to accepting zero confirmation bitcoin transactions for small value transactions (such as a coffee).

And if you don't like that, then use Lightning.

[hd49728]

Bitcoin transactions can be faster or lower in confirmation than bank transfers. However, with Bitcoin network and your non custodial wallet, you will have not rely on any centralized bank to approve and process your transfers

With Bitcoin, your transaction will be confirmed by miners on its network, globally. Miners, nodes will do their works and your transaction will be picked from mempool for confirmations.

Additionally, Bitcoin transactions are irreversible, not like bank transfer.

[titular]

If you're going to ask Bitcoiners in general, mostly the answer you're going to receive is the Lightning Network[1] which is slowly but surely being developed right now; which allows instant and near-zero transaction fees. Though usable, the UX is currently not the best.

Probably a controversial opinion, but if you're personally fine with submitting AML/KYC to centralized entities, the so called "Bitcoin debit cards" are the way to go; whereas you hold bitcoin on the Bitcoin debit card's wallet app, and the app automatically sells bitcoin for fiat everytime you make a purchase.

[1] https://lightning.network/

My 2 satoshis on this reply! Same opinion here as well! LN is the best option going forward which can make bitcoin transfers cheaper and faster. It uses a sidechain and broadcast multiple transactions in batches to save the cost and time. So this is the future for payment using bitcoin.

LN is not a sidechain. It is a layer-2 solution. Sidechains include things like the Liquid Network and Stacks Protocol.

Layer-2 solutions do not rely on their own native blockchain. There is no lightning block explorer. It is all settled on bitcoin's blockchain.

Sidechains have their own native blockchain.

I always like to say, layer-2s are built on top of bitcoin's blockchain while sidechains run alongside it.

[franky1]

LN is not a layer 2 solution. its a altnet that many coins can peg to. its not even unique feature just for bitcoin.
its not a solution. its an off ramp to get people to stop using the bitcoin network.

LN cant even guarantee 'payment success'. even one of the most famous advocates of LN recently revealed a over 70% payment fail rate of his routes in the last 3 months. so its not a solution at all. its an alternative network

[DooMAD]

LN is not a layer 2 solution. its a altnet that many coins can peg to. its not even unique feature just for bitcoin.

It is layer 2.  It's layer 2 on BTC, it's layer 2 on LTC and it's layer 2 on any of the other chains that support it.  Being layer 2 on other chains doesn't cause it to stop being layer 2 on BTC. 

It operates on top of Bitcoin, ergo it's a layer.  To date, you are the only person I've witnessed on this forum who is utterly incapable of comprehending such a simple concept.

Whether it's unique to one blockchain is irrelevant.  If I'm using LN to send and receive BTC and BTC alone, it literally does not matter what's happening on other blockchains.  And even if I were using LN on other chains, that still wouldn't detract from the utility of LN on BTC's chain.

Stop acting as though you're making some sort of point.  You're just making noise.

[titular]

LN is not a layer 2 solution. its a altnet that many coins can peg to. its not even unique feature just for bitcoin.
its not a solution. its an off ramp to get people to stop using the bitcoin network.

LN cant even guarantee 'payment success'. even one of the most famous advocates of LN recently revealed a over 70% payment fail rate of his routes in the last 3 months. so its not a solution at all. its an alternative network

I'm sorry but, by definition, LN is certainly a layer 2 solution. It settles all on the base chain.

Also, if you're having 70% of your payments fail, it is the operator that is doing something wrong. I have made 100's of LN transactions and not one of them have ever failed.

[pooya87]

Let me clarify some stuff you said individually while others gave you good explanations in general:

1) BTC was initially conceived as an "every-day spendable currency" (and not just a "store-of-value")

Bitcoin is as it has always been a decentralized, censorship resistant global currency. Being a currency means it is also a store of value. In fact SOV is one of the characteristics of any currency.

2) the BTC Blockchain is intentionally designed (for security reasons) so that a typical block will take about 10 mins to mine

It is not for security reasons. It is one of many decisions made by the inventor of Bitcoin to make it so that the blocks be found every 10 minutes on average. This decision provides certain characteristics such as limiting the number of stale blocks to a negligible number.

how do we envision BTC being used as (1) while retaining the time limit of (2)?

The same way any other payment system that has extremely long settlement time (up to 6 months in some cases) have been used long before bitcoin was invented and are still used to this day.

That is, "How can I spend BTC right this second without having to wait 10 mins for the Block to be confirmed (aka mined)?"

Nobody is asking you to wait that long. If you are purchasing some goods online, by the time they want to ship it to your address the transaction has lots of confirmation (not just one). If you are purchasing something small offline (face to face) like a sandwich the merchant doesn't care about confirmation because that is the risk they are already taking when accepting other forms of payment including cash (fake bills, reversing digital payments, credit card fraud,...). If you are purchasing something more expensive (like a car or a house) then the process of transferring money through any other method is already hundred times slower than a single confirmation on bitcoin network!

In short your arguments on their own may make some small sense but in comparison to any existing payment method they have no legs.

or an "immediate spend" alternative crypto with an intentionally faster Block confirmation time (making it less secure).

Security in bitcoin (and its alternative copies) transaction confirmation is defined by the cost of reversing that block. In bitcoin the cost of that for one confirmation is usually equal to at least dozens of confirmation on the alternative chain. In other words it would take hours on altchains to get what bitcoin would offer in 10 minutes.

What model do you envision for a world where BTC is the main/only "currency of the Earth"?

We don't envision such a thing. Bitcoin was not supposed to and is not going to become "only currency of the earth".
You can't even get two people to agree on one thing, how can you make almost 200 countries/governments to accept a single currency!

[maxpaxmaster]

Bitcoin Cash (BCH) was, I think, supposed to solve this problem. I sent my last BCH into an exchange to swap them, it only took 45 minutes to be confirmed, what a f***ing joke. Z-cash at least confirms in a few minutes. But a few minutes still is too long to stand and wait in a store for a quick purchase. It'll be interesting to see what LN can do for bitcoin...

[o_e_l_e_o]

Bitcoin Cash (BCH) was, I think, supposed to solve this problem.

Bcash solves nothing. The average block time is still 10 minutes. Your transaction is more likely to get in to the next block with Bcash because each block is barely 10-20% full because no one uses it. However, since their hash rate is so low and so centralized, 1 Bcash confirmation is not even close to as secure as 1 BTC confirmation, and so you have to wait hours longer to achieve the same level of security. https://howmanyconfs.com puts the current figure at over 4 days to achieve what Bitcoin achieves in an hour. Kraken want 4 confirmations for Bitcoin deposits, but 15 for Bcash. Coinbase want 3 for Bitcoin and 12 for Bcash. Gemini want 3 for Bitcoin and 15 for Bcash. As you can see, Bcash takes significantly longer than Bitcoin by all metrics.

[franky1]

Whether it's unique to one blockchain is irrelevant.  If I'm using LN to send and receive BTC and BTC alone, it literally does not matter what's happening on other blockchains.  And even if I were using LN on other chains, that still wouldn't detract from the utility of LN on BTC's chain.

Stop acting as though you're making some sort of point.  You're just making noise.

firstly. what you are sending through routes is not BTC. its an invoice measured in millisats. a unit of measure the bitcoin network does not understand and in a packet of data the bitcoin network would not accept.
these invoices and htlc secret reveals are not bitcoin network compatible.they are their own format.

the latter in channel contract update (after htlc secret reveal) are not between the sender and receiver of a route. but a contract update between the partners inside their channel and only done on the success of the hops of channels success.

its nothing like bitcoin.
heck the whole last 5 years has been alot of dev drama of trying to change bitcoin to become LN compatible.
the silly thing is LN does not have a consensus mechanism nor a blockchain all nodes need to follow, so it should be LN that should change if it wants to replicate bitcoins format. not the other way round.

maybe if you were more honest to say whats different about LN then you could actually turn it into good PR as to why people should use it as oppose to bitcoin. but trying to promote it as bitcoin and part of bitcoin as if its the same thing, is both misleading on its features and niche. but also its putting people at an extreme risk of not understanding the different security risk, problems with payments and why bitcoin is better.

i know you dont like bitcoin anymore and you dont want bitcoin to expand and grow and anyone that does you simply want to tell them to go away to another network if unhappy with bitcoin.. thats been your personal game plan for years, offramping users to other networks.

but here is the thing, i am not the only person that likes bitcoin. i am not the only one that wants bitcoin to grow and have more utility. without the need for constant promoting of other networks being the solution people should move over to.

i doubt that you can even admit that LN is a separate network that measures value in a different denomination than the bitcoin network. but that should be your first realisation to why LN is different and not bitcoin

I'm sorry but, by definition, LN is certainly a layer 2 solution. It settles all on the base chain.

Also, if you're having 70% of your payments fail, it is the operator that is doing something wrong. I have made 100's of LN transactions and not one of them have ever failed.

you only have 100% if using small value's. payment success is not a user error. its a value limit. its a liquidity problem,
but if you want to blame the operator. then go on the dev board and find the LN topic and go argue how Rath is a operator that cant use LN properly, that would be a laugh to see.

anyways,
do you know the difference between bank balance in euros and settled withdrawal of physically exchanged dollars?
the LN payments are millisats(bitcoin network does not understand). and is LATER hours/days/months settled by negotiating contract terms of fee's and rounding up/down of millisats into a bitcoin value is a separate 'deal'/contract/payment.

the LN "payment" (the thing described as 'instant/fast/cheap') is a separate transaction/contract from the one that gets settled to the bitcoin network.

you may not notice it at GUI level. but at code/raw data level you will see the negotiation of exchange of units of measure.

whats next.. if a exchange/western union took in FIAT, but behind the scenes used crypto to do the reserves transfer between different WU 'shops' you will claim that crypto is fiat, under the naive beleif that all the customer can see is the fiat being settled.

no, when you understand the inter-change happening in between you then realise the separate mediums of exchange happening and the contract and reserve values change and the negotiation of conversion from one unit of measure to another happen. then you start to see that the customer facing view looks like its a fiat transfer system, but then realise that its a fiat-crypto-fiat system and they are separate systems, not to be confused with each other and definitely not to be used to pretend that crypto is fiat

if LN was bitcoin. then LN can only be bitcoin. it could not be anything else. ..
but LN is its own separate thing, which is why it allows different cryptos to peg to it.

but the first step to understanding it is to realise that bitcoin does not leave the blockchain. the value is locked to the blockchain. all the negotiated off-chain stuff  measured in units not understood by bitcoin are not bitcoin things.

LN relies on middle men (channel partners, route hops)
bitcoin does not rely on middle men

LN does not have a blockchain.
bitcoin does

LN is a co-sign co-custody authorisation required system
bitcoin is a sole custody signing system

[moderator's note: consecutive posts merged]

[DooMAD]

Whether it's unique to one blockchain is irrelevant.  If I'm using LN to send and receive BTC and BTC alone, it literally does not matter what's happening on other blockchains.  And even if I were using LN on other chains, that still wouldn't detract from the utility of LN on BTC's chain.

Stop acting as though you're making some sort of point.  You're just making noise.

firstly. what you are sending through routes is not BTC. its an invoice measured in millisats. a unit of measure the bitcoin network does not understand and in a packet of data the bitcoin network would not accept.
these invoices and htlc secret reveals are not bitcoin network compatible.they are their own format.

H2O can take the form of water, ice or steam.  Steam can't flow in a river but it's still H2O.
BTC can take the form of satoshis or millisats.  They're still BTC, you goddamn sociopath.

Die in a fire plz.

if LN was bitcoin. then LN can only be bitcoin. it could not be anything else. ..

If ketchup is a condiment for burgers, it can't be a condiment for anything else, like hotdogs.
Except it can, you goddamn sociopath.

Again, die in a fire plz.  Absolute waste of oxygen.

[kryptqnick]

I agree with jackg's point that only cash is spent immediately. So it's possible to create workarounds to make sure that Bitcoin works as a form of money, but it won't be merely Bitcoin or will involve third parties facilitating the operations. They're doing it in El Salvador, and it's a living proof that it's possible if there's enough interest in it. Also, I think that for big online purchases Bitcoin could be used directly (sending some BTC from customer's address to the address of the owner of the shop) because the fees wouldn't matter if the sum's high enough, and also because when you're buying something online, it's often not crucial for the transaction to be finalized fast.

[NeuroticFish]

firstly. what you are sending through routes is not BTC. its an invoice measured in millisats. a unit of measure the bitcoin network does not understand and in a packet of data the bitcoin network would not accept.
these invoices and htlc secret reveals are not bitcoin network compatible.they are their own format.

H2O can take the form of water, ice or steam.  Steam can't flow in a river but it's still H2O.
BTC can take the form of satoshis or millisats.  They're still BTC

While by no mean I want to start a flame war, I think that I've understood what he means.
His point is that LN acts like a hose. It doesn't care if it will transport water (bitcoin), oil (name your altcoin) or even air (if it's tight). It will work the same, depending on where it's plugged.

While LN can be seen as an extra layer for Bitcoin, it can be an extra layer for whatever. This is what I've understood.


BUT at the end of the day it doesn't matter what else the hose can transport as long as we can use it for our needs.
At the moment the hose is plugged to 2 holes of a water pipe, it's a water hose. So... why argue for tiny details?!

[DooMAD]

So... why argue for tiny details?!

It boils down to principles.  I'll fight fascists and totalitarians wherever I might find them, because freedom is paramount.  If franky1 had their way, no one would have the option to use LN.  He begrudges its very existence and will say or do anything, no matter how devious or underhand to deter people from having that choice.

[titular]

LN relies on middle men (channel partners, route hops)
bitcoin does not rely on middle men

Bitcoin relies on nodes to broadcast messages across the network. That seems to be the same level of "middle-men" as you call it.

LN does not have a blockchain.
bitcoin does

LN doesn't need a blockchain it's an L2.

LN is a co-sign co-custody authorisation required system

Whether it's a co-sign/co-custody system is irrelevant. LN is a scaling solution that brings people more flexibility. You can't say LN does damage to the ecosystem.