1 Hour Confirmation Time

[notbatman]

I made a transaction this morning, it took an hour for 1 confirmation. I watched the blocks come in on block chain.info and there were none for an hour. Then suddenly I got a confirmation and a backlog of 4 blocks showed up on blockchain.info (my wallet is not on block chain.info just using them to see the blocks).

Having 1 confirmation I then made a second transaction and it instantly got 2 confirmation on two of the past blocks that were backlogged.

Impossible, WTF is going on this is fishy as hell.

[beatljuice]

Not fishy, perfectly normal. The average being  ~10 minutes doesn't mean the longest is 20 and the shortest is 1. It's random so there will be outliers in the amounts of time it takes. I don't know what the longest time is, but it wouldn't surprise me if it were 3 hours or more.

Okay I was a little long with the 3 hours.
http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1vkp1x/what_is_the_longest_time_between_blocks_in_the/

[notbatman]

Read the post before offering a "knee-jerk" response.

I'm saying I witnessed something that's impossible. A transaction instantly showing 2 confirmations from 2 past blocks. One block mined 7 mins before the transaction and one 14 mins before. Not possible, so how did it happen?

[chronicaust]

Yes bitcoin does some weird stuff and makes me think it will never be ready for "prime time'.  The long confirmation times are a huge problem, esp if you make a relatively expensive purchase at a retail location.

[Rulishix]

Bit coin is open source, is it not? It will be changed and improved upon as time goes on and this includes transaction processing times I hope because I agree they are a pain.

[DannyHamilton]

Bit coin is open source, is it not? It will be changed and improved upon as time goes on and this includes transaction processing times I hope because I agree they are a pain.

This will not change, perhaps you are waiting longer than you need to?

[beatljuice]

You don't need a confirmation for a small purchase, just like you don't have to give your signature for a small purchase on a credit card. And when you make a deposit into an empty bank account they will let you withdraw a couple hundred bucks even though the check's not cleared or "confirmed."

Someone trying to do a 51% attack wouldn't be wasting the little time they have to pull the off the attack buying coffee and a doughnut.

Did you read the the post I linked above. Sometimes the times between blocks show up as negative. It's not a REAL problem. A real problem is people not buying and selling with bitcoin.

[crunchynut]

dear nobatman, surely this issue is caused by your lack of understanding of bitcoin's greatness. did you know that your seemingly instant credit card payments are in fact taking several days? you simply don't recognise it because those evil credit card companies don't think of bothering you with technical behind-the-curtain details.

only bitcoin transactions are truly real-time. you simply don't recognise it because almost nobody will accept a transaction before it is confirmed several times. however, that is only a practical problem which does not affect the theory of bitcoin in any way because it was never the intention of the ingenious satoshi fukushima to solve a problem that really exists. you might not understand this because you are not as smart as we, the early adopters and unemployed, are.

all the best
batman

[FrozenBit]

 I have noticed a little slow down in the network confirmation time.

[DannyHamilton]

dear nobatman, surely this issue is caused by your lack of understanding of bitcoin's greatness. did you know that your seemingly instant credit card payments are in fact taking several days? you simply don't recognise it because those evil credit card companies don't think of bothering you with technical behind-the-curtain details.

only bitcoin transactions are truly real-time. you simply don't recognise it because almost nobody will accept a transaction before it is confirmed several times. however, that is only a practical problem which does not affect the theory of bitcoin in any way because it was never the intention of the ingenious satoshi fukushima to solve a problem that really exists. you might not understand this because you are not as smart as we, the early adopters and unemployed, are.

all the best
batman

Humorous, but largely misleading sarcasm.

[notbatman]

I should note that the transactions went through OK in spite of the quirky network behaviour.

[Soros Shorts]

I should note that the transactions went through OK in spite of the quirky network behaviour.

Keep in mind that blockchain.info is not the network and it doesn't see everything that is going on in the entire network at that very instant. It is just a well connected node. It could suffer from network glitches when under high load.

[Nagle]

only bitcoin transactions are truly real-time.

Try overdrawing your debit card.

[howzar]

This is a main reason why bitcoin wont be used any time soon in large business unless it gets changed..

[LMGTFY]

only bitcoin transactions are truly real-time.

Try overdrawing your debit card.

In the UK at least debit cards can (and do) allow connected accounts to go overdrawn. There are two main ways people make "cardholder present" payments with debit cards in the UK: for payments over £10-£20 it's "chip and PIN" (push debit card into reader, enter PIN), and for payments under £20 there's NFC (hold card near reader). The second method doesn't connect to the bank at all; the first method only asks your bank whether the bank believes there are sufficient funds (but transfers don't confirm immediately, so there's a chance that you don't actually have sufficient funds if you've made purchases on your debit card in the past few days).

I've also used "EFTPOS" in Australasia - as far as I know that was immediate, however.

[loewen.brad]

Don't worry about it, op. I had a tx a few weeks ago that took three hours before it ever even hit blockchain.info. that tx took literally all day to get to three confirms.

[devphp]

You don't need a confirmation for a small purchase, just like you don't have to give your signature for a small purchase on a credit card.

yeah? go tell that to bitcoin processing services for merchants, they require 6 confirmations even for small purchases. That will hurt adoption a lot.

[waldox]

maybe your transaction fee was too small for the data size of your transaction

[cozytrade]

maybe your transaction fee was too small for the data size of your transaction

OP's case seems to be just a long interval of the mining. In fact I felt the same thing yesterday. Sometimes not stable interval.

[whtchocla7e]

Not fishy, perfectly normal. The average being  ~10 minutes doesn't mean the longest is 20 and the shortest is 1. It's random so there will be outliers in the amounts of time it takes. I don't know what the longest time is, but it wouldn't surprise me if it were 3 hours or more

"Random" is not good enough for the real world.