Topic: Why Should people wait for confirmation of Bitcoin? - page 4. (Read 3827 times)

It also depends on the level of confirmation from the miners, if they have a very fast then the confirmation level we have also quickly. Only now the mining rate is extremely difficult. so I think indeed the level of confirmation right now is very low, it will not be a problem if confirmation still estimate in terms of standards and do not have a low transaction fee rate

technically its more.. thats why block rewards are unspendable for 100 confirms.

but the chance of a orphan block is 1-2% (atmost risk is 3blocks a day)
in a period where upgrades and consensus changes are happening where pools wont do anything to the blocks unless >95% compliance, means a <5% risk = ~6-7 blocks might orphan

so in a time when there is a bug or a time of consensual feature upgrade where risks are higher, some services may request upto 10-20 confirms, until the risk level subsides.

as for the "trust" / honourability between buyer and seller of zero confirms.. its still not good
some people say its ok to risk $1-2 without confirming.. but.

people buying something for $1-$2 may only see it as value of a loaf of bread in western countries so no big deal.
but people making $1-$2 transaction is not going to pay 7cents-14cents to make such a purchase (7% cost)
so chances are the tx wont even have a fee and it WILL get dropped by the network rather than accepted into a block.

also in the third world. that $1-$2 is a weeks wages. and the tx fee is 1-3 hours minimum wage labour. again chances are no fee added
again dont trust it, if you are transacting with someone from a developing country. treat $2 spend as if they were trying to spend $400 U.S.
you may think its just a loaf of bread. but they think of it as a weeks wage so would be happy to put the effort in to double spend and keep the weeks wage.

its not about how much you spend. its about WHO you are transacting with and the tell tell signs that the transaction may or may not get into a block EG low fee, or opted in for RBF or spot the same inputs being used elsewhere

yes, i agree with the comments here. if we will not wait for the confirmations then we may have double spending those coins. besides its not too much to ask to just wait 10-25 minutes right.

they are only irreversible after a certain amount of confirmations, i think its about 6

Thanks for the link. A very good source of information. Indeed the confirmation of transactions is explained in detail.

Situation is different on many webaite. For example bitpay accept bitcoin payments with only one confirmation. Also there are gambling websites which are immediately adding your coins without confirmation but it doesn't mean they you will withdraw them without confirmation. Confirmation is for to be secure against double spending.
You can see more detailed information here: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Confirmation

I know most people here have already told you it's because of double spending, but I'd like to elaborate on why you so rarely see double spending attempts now: because people wait for confirmations. If people didn't wait for confirmations, there would likely be many more double spending attempts.

Bitcoin do not have a central entity that validates all the transactions being done, because it is a decentralized network. So to simplify things,

the network of people help to validate that the bitcoins you are using in your current transaction, was not spend before. The more people

doing this, the stronger the validation. It is things like this, that makes Bitcoin special.  ... Some of the guys here are too technical. 

Yes, in gambling sites - if you invest Bitcoins, play, win and want to withdraw, gambling site will wait for all confirmations before withdraw. It is strange, but most possible gambling sites received some fake BTC transactions, therefore they wait for all confirmations.

The next block has room for ~2000-2500 transactions (500-400 byte average), if your fee is high enough to be in the top 2000 its enough. You can pay extra to be top 10, but its still the same block.

This is the common misconception I think most of us here believe. The higher the fee, the faster the transaction. 

No, your fee will not decrease the time miners need to find a valid block. It will only give miners an incentive to put your transaction into the next block. Raising the fee beyond a certain amount is pointless.

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At the very least this is misguiding, if not plain wrong.

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If only you are in control of your private keys only you can double spend your transaction. Its always the person receiving bitcoin that has to wait for a confirmation, never the one that sends them.

I have not yet made a transaction where there is double spent but it's likely to happen so users should wait for the confirmation before proceeding,sometimes it takes long time to confirm but this is the only drawback but I still prefer to transact using crypto currency than paypal or payza.

It is because that's the feature which makes bitcoin a secure digital currency. People have to wait because every single transaction needs to be confirmed by random people from all around the world. That's how it works.

we all know that one of the factors that affect the speed of delivery of bitcoin is the amount of the fee we include.
so the larger the fee it will be more easily split the bitcoin block. so that will make financial transactions faster we sent.

After a transaction is broadcast to the Bitcoin network, it may be included in a block that is published to the network. When that happens it is said that the transaction has been mined at a depth of 1 block. With each subsequent block that is found, the number of blocks deep is increased by one. To be secure against double spending, a transaction should not be considered as confirmed until it is a certain number of blocks deep.

maybe you can get more information from this article. https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Confirmation

No, a single input has 148 (compressed pub key) or 180 (uncompressed pub key) byte. An input can be worth any (valid) amount of bitcoin. A transaction spends inputs and creates outputs (~34 bytes each).

For bigger amount I think its the same. Once you see that there are confirmations already, I think its ok, meaning it is already being processed on the system.But of course, we are very cautious , since it is a bigger amount.

May I ask @shorena , the transaction size (in bytes) is directly proportional to the amount? tia

Why no one talking about zero confirmation? Even though it has risks of double spending, it shouldn't problem for small transaction and users add high transaction fees.
Some bitcoin services and casino already accept zero confirmation these days.

Thats a really confusing sentence, but it sounds like you are trying to say that transactions need a confirmation in order to be check for validity. Thats not true. Every full node (e.g. the bitcoin core wallet) can do this, with or without confirmation.


A miner cant tell how much bitcoin you have in your wallet.


Thats bullshit. Transaction fees have nothing to do with the amount of bitcoin you transfer. They depend on the size of the transaction in byte.