Quote from: DeathAndTaxes on June 25, 2013, 02:01:55 AM

Quote from: PeeJWeeJ on June 25, 2013, 01:57:46 AM

Quote from: DeathAndTaxes on June 25, 2013, 01:53:36 AM

Why wait an hour then? You are accepting less security just starting accepting Bitcoin with 2 confirmations. Tada 66% faster.

I've recently (in the past few days) seen BTC often have over 40 minutes between blocks. LTC rarely approaches 10 minutes. If that's not an advantage, I don't know what is.

So using your numbers 2 blocks of Bitcoin = ~80 minutes max (95% of time) and 8 blocks of LTC is ~80 minutes (95% of time). Why are you assumming security in Bitcoin for X blocks = X blocks for Litecoin given the second network is much smaller, and more vulnerable to low cost botnet attack. You should be waiting significantly more blocks and if you aren't you are simply holding them to unequal standards "look I don't know why people buy expensive safes, that expensive safe only has 1 lock but my cardboard box has TWO locks and it is faster to unlock".

There is no free lunch. BTC & LTC blocks are relatively small now however in time they will be much larger and when they are the propogation delay will be larger a higher % of hashpower/security will be lost due to orphans. The orphan rate for LTC will grow significantly higher, significantly faster given the same transaction volume.

What I'm considering is it's usability as a currency. Obviously if you're making a large transaction, you want to wait a significant amount of time/confirmations. However, if, say, you want to go buy coffee with bitcoins and your local coffee shop, if I were the merchant I would need to wait at least till that transaction had been included in a block. Since the amount used will be pretty small, (like 1-5$) numerous confirmations would generally not be necessary. But if the blocks are at times 40+ minutes apart, who's going to wait that long just to get their coffee? Not me!

PeeJWeeJ

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