BTC transfer are too damn slow!

[Gazza1]

OP, how is does your anus feel after the BlackCoin crash ?

Isn't it too damn painful ?

Do you regret not having Bitcoins instead ?

I'm a trader.  Price usually isn't an issue as I enter and exit constantly to accumulate.  On the note of Blackcoin though, it is up 50x + since launch and holding strong ground after an understandable sell off after reach such high ground quickly.

[Gazza1]

OP, how is does your anus feel after the BlackCoin crash ?

Isn't it too damn painful ?

Do you regret not having Bitcoins instead ?

Lol. Don't tempt fate or BTC might come crashing down for whatever reason.

Yes.  We love Bitcoin and want it to stay strong.

[zimmah]

Are you kidding? A transfer takes less than a second...

I'm gonna need about 10 minutes to confirm your post.

...And give me 0.0001 BTC, too.

He said transfers not confirmations. There's a huge difference....

If you can name a place that gives you goods and services before your payment is confirmed, please let me know so I can begin scamming them for being dumb.

actually bitcoin is designed to not necessarily need confirmations to be safe. However, because of some disagreements between mining pools it is pretty easy to consistently 'doublespend' 0-confirmation transaction. This could become a problem for physical stores. As 10 minutes is a long time to confirm something in a store.

[superresistant]

OP, how is does your anus feel after the BlackCoin crash ?
Isn't it too damn painful ?
Do you regret not having Bitcoins instead ?

I'm a trader.  Price usually isn't an issue as I enter and exit constantly to accumulate.  On the note of Blackcoin though, it is up 50x + since launch and holding strong ground after an understandable sell off after reach such high ground quickly.

My point is that you are trolling us with slow transactions.

[zimmah]

this problem becomes painfully clear when there's a breaking news coming out, when I need to transfer coins to an exchange and sell, after all my LTCs had been sold my BTCs were still waiting for confirmations. This happened several times.

The altcoin naysayers would tell you that 6 confirmations of LTC is less secure than 6 BTC confirmations, the fact of the matter is, on virtually all exchanges, depositing LTC is much faster than BTC. That's a fact.


 

well, then the exchanges could choose to wait for just 2 bitcoin confirmation, as 2 bitcoin confirmations are about as secure as 6 litecoin confirmations.

Sure satoshi could have chosen to build in 5 second confirmation times. But the problem would be that due to connectivity issues miners will quickly disagree about which block came first, and forks wll be common. So the hashing power will be split between many different blockchains and the network will become much less secure and doublespends would be all over the place because a single bitcoin exists in multiple versions of the blockchain. That's why satoshi chose for a safe 10 minutes, so that miners would have enough time to communicate, even in case of a temporarily connection issue, and agree on which transaction was first.

Also, bitcoin is designed to work even with 0-confirmations  (proof), however at the moment there is a bit of a problem with 0 confirmations, because some miners reject some transactions which other miners do pick up. So if you purposefully create a transaction that for some reason gets rejected by a large amount of pools, but gets accepted by other pools, while shortly afterwards making a transaction that gets accepted by all pools, you can get a 0-confirmation doublespend. Instead of complaining about the long confirmation time, we should find a way to make sure the 0-confirmation transactions become more secure.

of course stores could probably bypass it by having payment requests that do not accept being tampered with, to ensure that the payment gets accepted by all miners. This alone would ensure that doublespends are very unlikely even without any confirmations.

[farlack]

posting a cheque my mail - maybe next day to deliver - 3-5 business days to clear
wire transfer - 3-5 days in america
cash - instant, although ATM's have daily limits for larger amount

bitcoin - receive instantly - clears in 10 minutes if you pay a greedy mining pool

the fix for bitcoin if you are talking about greedy mining pools delaying confirmations is to stop them taxing bitcoins with 5c fee's that not many people want to pay. if it were 0.5c maximum, people would pay.

i hope not to see a reply that fe's prevent spam. as that idea is stupid. blocks are only 10% filled on average. and bitcoin can code different rules such as a 3 confirm requirement between spends. this would make it so spammers cant fill up every block.. just every third block.

after all we are suppose to be allowing microtransactions, not preventing them. so that news media subscriptions, vending machines and small priced products can be bought, advertising commissions can be transferred instantly in small amounts instead of accumulated to send in batches. all without a 5c fee being added.

I've never had a transaction confirm in 10 minutes. What's the quickest time one will take to fully confirm?

I've had a transaction confirm in less time than it takes to refresh my page.

[kamilosa]

What I can see, the confirmation times dropped around 2 minutes last few days https://blockchain.info/charts/avg-confirmation-time Is this the answer - https://eprint.iacr.org/2013/881.pdf  ?

[DannyHamilton]

Also, bitcoin is designed to work even with 0-confirmations  (proof), however at the moment there is a bit of a problem with 0 confirmations, because some miners reject some transactions which other miners do pick up. So if you purposefully create a transaction that for some reason gets rejected by a large amount of pools, but gets accepted by other pools, while shortly afterwards making a transaction that gets accepted by all pools, you can get a 0-confirmation doublespend.

A merchant can already look at the transaction and see if the sender has sent a transaction that will be rejected by a large percentage of the mining hashpower.  If not, then they have nothing to worry about.  If so, they can monitor the transaction received by the largest mining pools and see if any competing transactions have been sent.  If not, then they they can explain to the customer, "Due to your poor choice of wallet software, you have sent a high-risk transaction and must either provide identifying information or wait a few minutes before you can leave with your merchandise. To avoid this inconvenience in the future, please choose well designed wallet software."  If so, they can grab the payer by the arm and call the cops.  This can all happen with well written software within a fraction of a second (in other words, before they actually allow the customer to take possession of the products and leave the store).

[zimmah]

so with only a very small amount of effort 0-confirmation transactions are therefore safe enough then.

[bountygiver]

For groceries, maybe the stores can change to online order and pickup method

For food, you can pay when you ordered, and by the time your food is served there'll be already a confirmation, or they'll just ask you to pay again if the tx got 'bounced'

We can just change our ways, digital currency should not be entirely used like paper currency.

[sickpig]

What I can see, the confirmation times dropped around 2 minutes last few days https://blockchain.info/charts/avg-confirmation-time Is this the answer - https://eprint.iacr.org/2013/881.pdf  ?

I didn't read the paper linked but looking at the graph avg confirmation time started to decrease when bitcoin core 0.9 has been released. I hadn't time to check but it could be that block size has been increased in 0.9

[franky1]

These posts neglect the fact that if you're using Coinbase/VISA, your identity is already registered with these entities. If you try to fleece them you get got.

If I walked into a cafe where nobody knows me, got a coffee, and sent some BTC using a personal wallet - don't you think the owner would want to wait for confirmation before letting me leave? Wouldn't I have to wait at the door for 10 minutes awkwardly holding my coffee?

That's the point I'm trying to make.

wire transfers take 3-5 days in most countries. yet visa/mastercard which is a layer above FIAT aid in this process by ensring the transaction occurs and allows pople to leave starbucks as soon as they have made the transaction request.

what will happen is that starbucks will have a membership card that is a starbucks controlld walet. people deposit funds in at the start of th week/month. and then when walking into the shop they simply give the permission to allow starbucks to take out X amount of pre confirmed btc to cover the cost of the coffee.

there will be many services for microtransactions that have wallets for pocket money amounts to be preconfirmed to. and then merchants can simply take funds out in batches whenever they please

[jonald_fyookball]

These posts neglect the fact that if you're using Coinbase/VISA, your identity is already registered with these entities. If you try to fleece them you get got.

If I walked into a cafe where nobody knows me, got a coffee, and sent some BTC using a personal wallet - don't you think the owner would want to wait for confirmation before letting me leave? Wouldn't I have to wait at the door for 10 minutes awkwardly holding my coffee?

That's the point I'm trying to make.

wire transfers take 3-5 days in most countries. yet visa/mastercard which is a layer above FIAT aid in this process by ensring the transaction occurs and allows pople to leave starbucks as soon as they have made the transaction request.

what will happen is that starbucks will have a membership card that is a starbucks controlld walet. people deposit funds in at the start of th week/month. and then when walking into the shop they simply give the permission to allow starbucks to take out X amount of pre confirmed btc to cover the cost of the coffee.

there will be many services for microtransactions that have wallets for pocket money amounts to be preconfirmed to. and then merchants can simply take funds out in batches whenever they please

Wire is not same as ACH, wire can take minutes.

[franky1]

Wire is not same as ACH, wire can take minutes.

wire transfers take 3-5 days in most countries.

= not every country takes minutes

[jonald_fyookball]

Yeah I'm not arguing with what you said, just adding information. RELAX. 

[Dogtanian]

so with only a very small amount of effort 0-confirmation transactions are therefore safe enough then.

Yeah probably, unless they somehow make another payment somehow simultaneously.

[leopard2]

posting a cheque my mail - maybe next day to deliver - 3-5 business days to clear
wire transfer - 3-5 days in america
cash - instant, although ATM's have daily limits for larger amount

bitcoin - receive instantly - clears in 10 minutes if you pay a greedy mining pool

the fix for bitcoin if you are talking about greedy mining pools delaying confirmations is to stop them taxing bitcoins with 5c fee's that not many people want to pay. if it were 0.5c maximum, people would pay.

i hope not to see a reply that fe's prevent spam. as that idea is stupid. blocks are only 10% filled on average. and bitcoin can code different rules such as a 3 confirm requirement between spends. this would make it so spammers cant fill up every block.. just every third block.

after all we are suppose to be allowing microtransactions, not preventing them. so that news media subscriptions, vending machines and small priced products can be bought, advertising commissions can be transferred instantly in small amounts instead of accumulated to send in batches. all without a 5c fee being added.

Cash is not instant because you have to have it checked at a bank if you deal with a stranger

The fee is necessary to keep BTC going when mining reward drops

For microtransactions altcoins like DOGE are the better choice

Really for most online purchases BTC is just fine but if you just wanna order a hamburger at Mcdonalds, that's just spamming the blockchain

[laura@@]

lol, there is no way to fix. maybe a new block chain is easier

[leopard2]

no, no new blockchain, different blockchains for different purposes

would you say, gold coins are bad because it is not practical to buy a cup of coffee with them? no, you would use a silver or copper coin and use the gold coins to buy a TV or something like that.

you would ALSO certainly not bring a heavy bag full of silver coins to buy a TV

BTC will be just fine with such an arrangement simply because BTC is the "store of value" blockchain and the other coins are just used temporarily

[billysweird]

I wonder something...

How does mining difficulty affect transaction speed ?

Mining difficulty adjusts automatically every 2016 blocks to try to keep the confirmation speed close to 10 minutes per additional confirmation after the first confirmation.

The difficulty has no direct effect on transaction speed.  Transaction speed directly depends entirely on how well connected your wallet (and your recipient's wallet) is to the rest of the network, what the internet bandwidth is of the peers, and whether your transaction has extremely small outputs.

Noted, thanks for the information.

But my transaction is really slow,, maybe I need to check the internet