Quote from: Wouter Drucker on April 25, 2013, 07:11:21 PM

But couldn't the verification process be sped up over time?

As I described above Bitcoin uses a target time of 10 minutes between blocks. The only way to speed up verification for using Bitcoin with the blockchain (as opposed to off-chain transactions) would be to make a protocol change reducing the time between blocks. There is no large priority to do this. For example, even if you cut the time in half to 5 minutes that's still 30 minutes for full 6 block confirmation. If you're using bitcoins to pay for a cup of coffee somewhere, you probably would rather use an off-chain transaction solution so it can be confirmed instantly.

Note that one of the features of Litecoin, however, is a reduced target time between blocks of about 2.5 minutes, so that means a full 6 block confirmation time of about 15 minutes.