Question about transaction times

[pabpete]

Will confirmations ever be quicker? In other words, does more mining hardware in the market = faster confirmations? Because I want instant confirmations for btc to be more useful will it ever happen?


Edit I found this to be useful, https://blockchain.info/charts/avg-confirmation-time

I understand the usefulness for large amounts of btc but I think transactions under a certain amount solved quicker would be useful. IE buying something at a convenience store with btc. Will preloaded wallets be able to be solved quicker? Or maybe I'm misunderstanding a key point. Can a merchant see that you've sent the btc before a confirmation?

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[durrrr]

i dont think bitcoin transactions will ever be completly instant. it will always take a few minutes to get confirms and i think this is a good thing although it could be faster

[Vod]

Will confirmations ever be quicker? In other words, does more mining hardware in the market = faster confirmations? Because I want instant confirmations for btc to be more useful will it ever happen?


Edit I found this to be useful, https://blockchain.info/charts/avg-confirmation-time

I understand the usefulness for large amounts of btc but I think transactions under a certain amount solved quicker would be useful. IE buying something at a convenience store with btc. Will preloaded wallets be able to be solved quicker? Or maybe I'm misunderstanding a key point. Can a merchant see that you've sent the btc before a confirmation?

Yes, confirmations can be a lot faster - temporarily.  

You can throw an infinite amount of hashing power into the network and discover new blocks every second.  But the network will eventually adjust the difficulty back to a ten minute block (confirmation) time.

So you can have your near instant confirmations - just be prepared to pay a lot for it.  

[pabpete]

Will confirmations ever be quicker? In other words, does more mining hardware in the market = faster confirmations? Because I want instant confirmations for btc to be more useful will it ever happen?


Edit I found this to be useful, https://blockchain.info/charts/avg-confirmation-time

I understand the usefulness for large amounts of btc but I think transactions under a certain amount solved quicker would be useful. IE buying something at a convenience store with btc. Will preloaded wallets be able to be solved quicker? Or maybe I'm misunderstanding a key point. Can a merchant see that you've sent the btc before a confirmation?

Yes, confirmations can be a lot faster - temporarily.  

You can throw an infinite amount of hashing power into the network and discover new blocks every second.  But the network will eventually adjust the difficulty back to a ten minute block (confirmation) time.

So you can have your near instant confirmations - just be prepared to pay a lot for it.  

So I'm assuming if bitcoin catches on in the future full force, there will need to be lines of credit with wallets established so instant transactions will not be a problem I suppose. Essentially credit limit style wallets, can/has that been done?

[acoindr]

Will confirmations ever be quicker? In other words, does more mining hardware in the market = faster confirmations? Because I want instant confirmations for btc to be more useful will it ever happen?

The core Bitcoin network is set up to keep confirmation time at around 10 minutes per block, no matter how much hash power there is. I doubt this will change. However, I believe we'll see instant BTC transactions in the future via off-chain methods.

You may also be interested in Litecoin, the most successful cryptocurrency after Bitcoin, which confirms 4 times faster (2.5 minutes):

https://litecoin.org/

Litecoin can be bought/traded at BTC-E.

[pabpete]

Will confirmations ever be quicker? In other words, does more mining hardware in the market = faster confirmations? Because I want instant confirmations for btc to be more useful will it ever happen?

The core Bitcoin network is set up to keep confirmation time at around 10 minutes per block, no matter how much hash power there is. I doubt this will change. However, I believe we'll see instant BTC transactions in the future via off-chain methods.

You may also be interested in Litecoin, the most successful cryptocurrency after Bitcoin, which confirms 4 times faster (2.5 minutes):

https://litecoin.org/

Litecoin can be bought/traded at BTC-E.

Thanks! I've learned some about scrypt and am interested in mining some in the near future. I just see this confirmation time as more of a flaw in a sense to some extent, even though it was created that way. I know it will probably never "replace" fiat or at least not soon, but I'd like to buy my candy bars with bitcoin sometime! Yaknow?

[acoindr]

Thanks! I've learned some about scrypt and am interested in mining some in the near future. I just see this confirmation time as more of a flaw in a sense to some extent, even though it was created that way. I know it will probably never "replace" fiat or at least not soon, but I'd like to buy my candy bars with bitcoin sometime! Yaknow?

You can buy low value items such as candy bars, coffee etc. using Bitcoin in an instant way by not waiting for confirmation. When you broadcast a valid transaction to the network that can't normally be undone, so it's safe for merchants to accept that type payment. It's certainly possible to make fraudulent transactions when they are not confirmed, but the work and dishonesty required to do so successfully will probably not extend to items under a few dollars.

[Light]

Thanks! I've learned some about scrypt and am interested in mining some in the near future. I just see this confirmation time as more of a flaw in a sense to some extent, even though it was created that way. I know it will probably never "replace" fiat or at least not soon, but I'd like to buy my candy bars with bitcoin sometime! Yaknow?

If necessary the confirmation time could be changed by updating the client and having the nodes and miners accept the change - provided there was a significant reason and basis for the change. On an offhand note, if I were you I'd do a lot of calcs as scrypt mining can be very volatile depending on the price of the scrypt vs BTC.

[pabpete]

Thanks! I've learned some about scrypt and am interested in mining some in the near future. I just see this confirmation time as more of a flaw in a sense to some extent, even though it was created that way. I know it will probably never "replace" fiat or at least not soon, but I'd like to buy my candy bars with bitcoin sometime! Yaknow?

You can buy low value items such as candy bars, coffee etc. using Bitcoin in an instant way by not waiting for confirmation. When you broadcast a valid transaction to the network that can't normally be undone, so it's safe for merchants to accept that type payment. It's certainly possible to make fraudulent transactions when they are not confirmed, but the work and dishonesty required to do so successfully will probably not extend to items under a few dollars.

So when you make a transaction a merchant can instantly see that? What does this require?

Thanks! I've learned some about scrypt and am interested in mining some in the near future. I just see this confirmation time as more of a flaw in a sense to some extent, even though it was created that way. I know it will probably never "replace" fiat or at least not soon, but I'd like to buy my candy bars with bitcoin sometime! Yaknow?

If necessary the confirmation time could be changed by updating the client and having the nodes and miners accept the change - provided there was a significant reason and basis for the change. On an offhand note, if I were you I'd do a lot of calcs as scrypt mining can be very volatile depending on the price of the scrypt vs BTC.

Thanks ! I'll do my due diligence.

[DeathAndTaxes]

So when you make a transaction a merchant can instantly see that? What does this require?

All transactions are nearly instantaneous.   It is confirmations which take longer.

[SlipperySlope]

My Bitcoin Proof-of-Stake project could provide 2 second or less transaction acceptance using a single temporary mint.

[counter]

yea the transacitions are rather fast but the confirmations can vary in time.  I think they aren't that bad for the most part and the need for them if important to say the least.

[bitcoinbeliever]

The reason you wait for confirmation is to avoid a double-spend.  As long as miners and the rest of us listen to the same network, you can monitor for a double-spend yourself.  If the same transactions are being shared with everyone else, after some amount of time (much less than inter-block time) no-one, including the miner, can reasonably claim to have received the second transaction first.

This is no guarantee the miner won't screw you anyway, but his incentive to do so is just the fees on a small transaction.

However, there are two structural limitations that prevent you from watching effectively for double-spends (neither of these is part of critical blockchain consensus):
 - The network is not transparent to double-spend attempts - they get silently dropped
 - Not all transactions that can get included in a block are relayed across the network

 - Also, proposals exist that would actually give some double-spends priority over the first spend a node sees of a given scriptPubKey.  

These structural considerations suggest a that other goals are more important than enabling democratic monitoring of double-spends in real time.  Myself, I disagree.  Unless bitcoin can be used as cash, in anonymous real-time transactions, it's going to fall short of its potential.

[Lauda]

Will confirmations ever be quicker? In other words, does more mining hardware in the market = faster confirmations? Because I want instant confirmations for btc to be more useful will it ever happen?


Edit I found this to be useful, https://blockchain.info/charts/avg-confirmation-time

I understand the usefulness for large amounts of btc but I think transactions under a certain amount solved quicker would be useful. IE buying something at a convenience store with btc. Will preloaded wallets be able to be solved quicker? Or maybe I'm misunderstanding a key point. Can a merchant see that you've sent the btc before a confirmation?

I highly doubt that they will be. A confirmation takes 10 minutes and that's most likely not gonna change. If you add a ton of hardware, you would temporarily speed up confirmations.