I'm so tired of seeing the complaint on block confirmation times. Here's why.

[iluvpie60]

its a valid complaint. don't try to explain how things aren't instant in an instant wanting world.

[scarsbergholden]

agreed 99% of Tx's dont really require confirms..

but for all of those that do need confirms.. they cry when they wait over 10 minutes.. but i have never ever seen them post when their TX's have taken them just a couple minutes to confirm due to fast hashing

The only reason why most transactions would need a confirmation would be because it is large (in terms of the amount being transacted), and large value transactions tend to take a long time anyway because of various features being explained, questions being answered, ect. If someone were to pay and then continue a conversation with the merchant about the product then any TX that needs to be confirmed will likely be confirmed long before the conversation is complete/winding down

[colinistheman]

its a valid complaint. don't try to explain how things aren't instant in an instant wanting world.

Yes but I think you've missed the point. Bitcoin is more instant than the current technologies (debit cards, credit cards and bank-wire) of the "instant-wanting world."

From your post, I assume that you think credit card and debit payments are instant. But they aren't. Bitcoin can do what you think is happening with credit card/debit card transactions.

Take the time to read the entire OP and satoshi's post and maybe you'll see what is being said and why.

[colinistheman]

Credit card confirmations take 180 days.

True, that's how long you can call up and get the transaction reversed, right?

[colinistheman]

Besides, 10 minutes is too long to verify that payment is good.  It needs to be as fast as swiping a credit card is today.

See the snack machine thread, I outline how a payment processor could verify payments well enough, actually really well (much lower fraud rate than credit cards), in something like 10 seconds or less.  If you don't believe me or don't get it, I don't have time to try to convince you, sorry.
http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=423.msg3819#msg3819

^ Thank you! That is a great post by satoshi that is saying about the exact same thing!  I should go read all his posts. There is some wisdom there!

Other people argue differently in that same thread.  Spitting out 2 spends from the same time is easily done.  It can work enough to be a valid attack.  That is why everyone insists on at least a confirmation for transactions of any significance.

The problem is that for people are fascinated by the pure technical aspect of being able to spend digital money, this wait time causes a severe problem.  The answer of the koolaid drinkers is not better technology, it is layering on kludges to fix the problem.

Yes, but if two simultaneous spends get detected then both transactions can be cancelled. And if one of the transactions was first, even if only by seconds, then it will propagate a majority of the network more quickly (exponentially) and be accepted by miners while the second one is rejected. This is as satoshi explains in his post (see link in OP).

This would be coded by payment processors to make the threat of double spends a non-factor. satoshi explains this and it makes sense if you think about how it could be implemented.

It helps if you can think like a programmer to imagine how this would be implemented in a workable fashion and all its ramifications.

[jbrnt]

I don't complain about confirmation times. There are situations where confirmation times are important. Like sending funds into exchanges for trading, or sending money from cold wallet to hot wallet for an online purchase. Most of the time, people are just impatient. Bitcoin is already very very fast compared to wire transfer, but users are used to "credit card" speed.

[rz20]

If you pay a digital item through bitpay or coinbase it is automatically given to you without any confirmation.

[Alty]

Confirmation times aside, already been well explained in the OP... I read a comment today that mentioned Visa can do 100,000 transactions per second whilst Bitcoin is capped at 7 max per second.

On that basis btc would allow for max 400 (approx) transactions per minute and 604800 per 24 hours.

Just wondering what peoples thoughts are on this (perhaps it's not even true)?

http://pastebin.com/Vf6XkDm3

[balu2]

Litecoin is faster.
If you need to send money quick: use not bitcoin

[Alty]

Just did a quick google search and found an interesting Bitcoin wiki about scalability.

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Scalability

Scalability targets

VISA handles on average around 2,000 transactions per second (tps), so call it a daily peak rate of 47,000 tps. [1]

PayPal, in contrast, handles around 10 million transactions per day for an average of 115 tps. [2]

Let's take 4,000 tps as starting goal. Obviously if we want Bitcoin to scale to all economic transactions worldwide, including cash, it'd be a lot higher than that, perhaps more in the region of a few hundred thousand tps. And the need to be able to withstand DoS attacks (which VISA does not have to deal with) implies we would want to scale far beyond the standard peak rates. Still, picking a target let us do some basic calculations even if it's a little arbitrary.


Network

Let's assume an average rate of 2000tps, so just VISA. Transactions vary in size from about 0.2 kilobytes to over 1 kilobyte, but it's averaging half a kilobyte today.

That means that you need to keep up with around 8 megabits/second of transaction data (2000tps * 512 bytes) / 1024 bytes in a kilobyte / 1024 kilobytes in a megabyte = 0.97 megabytes per second * 8 = 7.8 megabits/second.

This sort of bandwidth is already common for even residential connections today, and is certainly at the low end of what colocation providers would expect to provide you with.

When blocks are solved, the current protocol will send the transactions again, even if a peer has already seen it at broadcast time. Fixing this to make blocks just list of hashes would resolve the issue and make the bandwidth needed for block broadcast negligable. So whilst this optimization isn't fully implemented today, we do not consider block transmission bandwidth here.

[MarketNeutral]

I consider Bitcoin, due to its irreversibility and aspects of trustlessness, better suited for larger, big-ticket items than small-change transactions. A merchant selling yachts may have more confidence in Bitcoin's finite supply and blockchain technology anything else. I foresee part of Bitcoin's future as being either a means of international remittance, or a preferred currency for luxury goods such as bullion, luxury cars, diamonds, etc. And as I mentioned previously in this thread, one of Bitcoin's direct competitors is the SWIFT system. Bitcoin is faster and more secure than SWIFT, the de facto standard for wire transfers. Banks or Western Union could easily adopt Bitcoin as a means of transferring money.

I'm mystified that so many people see Bitcoin as a direct competitor to the likes of Visa or Mastercard. Goods and services aren't denominated in "visas" or "mastercards." No one says, "That'll be 22.50 visas, please."

Absent a (preferably decentralized) payment processor layer atop the blockchain, and assuming Bitcoin users push for its use as a small-transaction payment method, then the issue of network strength vis-à-vis confirmation times take precedent over other areas of development.

[Alty]

Here is a good post from one of the core bitcoin devs that explains how he / they are actively seeking to deal with foreseen scalability issues.

https://bitcoin-foundation.ghost.io/a-scalability-roadmap/

[MarketNeutral]

Here is a good post from one of the core bitcoin devs that explains how he / they are actively seeking to deal with foreseen scalability issues.

https://bitcoin-foundation.ghost.io/a-scalability-roadmap/

Great link. Somehow I'd missed this. Thank you.

[dwma]

Besides, 10 minutes is too long to verify that payment is good.  It needs to be as fast as swiping a credit card is today.

See the snack machine thread, I outline how a payment processor could verify payments well enough, actually really well (much lower fraud rate than credit cards), in something like 10 seconds or less.  If you don't believe me or don't get it, I don't have time to try to convince you, sorry.
http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=423.msg3819#msg3819

^ Thank you! That is a great post by satoshi that is saying about the exact same thing!  I should go read all his posts. There is some wisdom there!

Other people argue differently in that same thread.  Spitting out 2 spends from the same time is easily done.  It can work enough to be a valid attack.  That is why everyone insists on at least a confirmation for transactions of any significance.

The problem is that for people are fascinated by the pure technical aspect of being able to spend digital money, this wait time causes a severe problem.  The answer of the koolaid drinkers is not better technology, it is layering on kludges to fix the problem.

Yes, but if two simultaneous spends get detected then both transactions can be cancelled. And if one of the transactions was first, even if only by seconds, then it will propagate a majority of the network more quickly (exponentially) and be accepted by miners while the second one is rejected. This is as satoshi explains in his post (see link in OP).

This would be coded by payment processors to make the threat of double spends a non-factor. satoshi explains this and it makes sense if you think about how it could be implemented.

It helps if you can think like a programmer to imagine how this would be implemented in a workable fashion and all its ramifications.

I assume a cancelled transaction does not meant funds are lost, just sent back.  This means the cost of the attack is too close to 0.

There are reasons people who think like programmers and want funds fungible ASAP still rely on confirmations.

Bitshares fixes this and the scalability factor at the expense of managed centralization.  This centralization is in fact less than the current bitcoin centralization which centers around a handful of mining pools.  Effectively meaning that the BTC network is controlled by as many people as I can count on one hand.

[hhanh00]

The network is more centralized than we think it is. Once the first transaction reaches the main mining pools, it's practically impossible to do a double-spend. A merchant could maintain a direct connection to them and make sure that it was propagated there before handling the goods. It would only take a few seconds of waiting.

[cbeast]

The network is more centralized than we think it is. Once the first transaction reaches the main mining pools, it's practically impossible to do a double-spend. A merchant could maintain a direct connection to them and make sure that it was propagated there before handling the goods. It would only take a few seconds of waiting.

'Centralized' isn't the word you're looking for. Perhaps 'mature' would best describe that observation. Well connected nodes don't add anything to the hashrate.

[hhanh00]

I was talking about the main mining pool. I meant centralized - not mature. You are free to disagree though.

[franky1]

agreed 99% of Tx's dont really require confirms..

but for all of those that do need confirms.. they cry when they wait over 10 minutes.. but i have never ever seen them post when their TX's have taken them just a couple minutes to confirm due to fast hashing

\

It isn't fast hashing, it is just luck.  I've had to sit around a BTC ATM machine an extra 30 minutes because hashes were coming through that were longer than 10 minutes.

not really luck.. in short if i hashed 1 number a minute and wanted an average 10 minute hash time.. each hash would be a number between 0 and 20..
10 times it would average below 10 minutes.. 10 times it would average over 10 minutes.. but on average.. you will get a 10 minute hashtime when repeated the process a few thousand times..

its not lucky that a block is found in 1 minute or unlucky if it too 19 minutes.. its all based on maths, not luck. so its just a standard feature of randomness that some take alot of time some take very little time.

but i do laugh that you complain about 30 minutes, whilst a western union takes much longer. and then for instance trying to get paypal or apple pay to transfer money to your bank and then to a FIAT ATM... even longer..

[cbeast]

I was talking about the main mining pool. I meant centralized - not mature. You are free to disagree though.

As I understand it, there are centralized mining farms, but not centralized mining pools. Miners on pools are free to jump to other pools. Mining farms don't mine on pools, but compete with them instead. Miners don't generally allow a pool to get too large. I realize that pools can conspire. As cypherdoc is fond of saying, it's not a fault with the Bitcoin protocol, it's a human choice.

[hhanh00]

I was talking about the main mining pool. I meant centralized - not mature. You are free to disagree though.

As I understand it, there are centralized mining farms, but not centralized mining pools. Miners on pools are free to jump to other pools. Mining farms don't mine on pools, but compete with them instead. Miners don't generally allow a pool to get too large. I realize that pools can conspire. As cypherdoc is fond of saying, it's not a fault with the Bitcoin protocol, it's a human choice.

True, but still looks pretty centralized to me. https://blockchain.info/pools. If a merchant connects to the top 5 pools, he has access to more than 51% of the total hashrate. I'm not criticizing the network, it's working as intended. I'm saying that it wouldn't take much for a merchant to accept 0-confirmation transactions while getting reasonable security.