> The designer(s) of Bitcoin could have favored short confirmation times, but they didn't. Shorter confirmation times do not help with anything, because the sy

> The designer(s) of Bitcoin could have favored short confirmation times, but they didn't. Shorter confirmation times do not help with anything, because the system is based on proof-of-work. The idea is the longer you wait for the network to compute things, the more solidified your transaction becomes. A coin network that has a shorter block duration (like Litecoin with 2.5 minutes instead of 10) doesn't make any difference because what you really want to wait for to ensure you got your coins is "time spent computing", not "number of blocks computed". Bitcoins (and any other cryptocurrencies) can never have secure real-time transactions as long as they rely on the proof-of-work network.