Funny, if a Bitcoin developer worded the sentence in the same way you wouldn't have said that.
I'm not sure what you mean by that?
This is why I secured my post by saying on average. It all depends on variance.
But the code in Bitcoin has been made so that blocks are found on average every 10 minutes.
But the code in Bitcoin has been made so that blocks are found on average every 10 minutes.
Yes, in the same way that you'll roll a 1 on a six sided die every 6 rolls on average. But the point is, if you roll your own die and get a 1, it has no bearing on whether or not my next roll will be a 1. The fact that you "solved" a block before me, does not delay my ability to solve a block (ok, perhaps I'm delayed by a fraction of a second while I build a new block header, but it isn't enough of a delay to really matter as far as this discussion goes).
If the miner were to gain that 99% of the network hashing power all at once before the next difficulty adjustment, then you would see blocks being solved every 6 seconds. 1 out of every 100 of those blocks "on average" (in other words every 10 minutes "on average") would be a block from some other miner that actually includes transactions. The blockchain would grow fast, and once people got their first confirmation (in approximately 10 minutes on average), they would get the rest of their confirmations very quickly.
Now eventually, a difficulty adjustment would occur. At that time, blocks would slow down and confirmations would start coming slower. If the "0 transaction miner" then stopped mining completely, you wouldn't see confirmations every 10 minutes on average, you'd still see them every 16.67 hours on average. This would continue until the next difficulty adjustment.
So, the "0 confirmation miner" can delay transactions that will occur later (after the next difficulty adjustment), but they have no effect on the time for your first confirmation at the current difficulty.
