(Nothing in this post except ultra simple math - feel free to skip it if you already know how many blocks take more than 53 minutes to be mined)


I just happened to spot this block, 53 minutes after it was created. There was no other block in site ... 53 minutes without any blocked being mined.

Wondered a bit about what the odds for this event are. So here are my (very simple) calculations, in case you were curious.

1. I dug up this old question, which reminded me Bitcoin block times followed the exponential distribution. It's basically like radioactive decay - each block has a "halflife time" of 10 minutes.
2. Realized that gamma = 10 minutes, and inputted 53 minutes into the cumulative distribution function.
3. Got 1-(e^-53/10) = 0.005

So, about 5 out of every 1,000 blocks take > 53 minutes to confirm. Nothing unusual about spotting a block like this every now and then.

A few interesting numbers:

1. The chance a block is not found within 10 minutes = 36.7%
2. Not found within 20 minutes = 13.5%
3. 30 minutes = 4.9%
4. 40 minutes = 1.8%
5. 50 minutes = 0.67%
6. An hour = 0.24%

(Divide by e = 2.718 to get the next number in line)