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> The 10 minutes required for a Bitcoin transaction to complete We've been seeing longer and longer transaction times of late, into the hours. > with either f

• yellowapple 11y ago
  > We've been seeing longer and longer transaction times of late, into the hours. The longest I've seen so far was maybe two hours. That's still 12 times faster than most credit/debit transactions. Now granted, if confirmation time keeps growing like it has been, then yes, the Bitcoin folks will need to figure out some kind of solution (it's not like other cryptocurrencies haven't already found such solutions). Keeping it under 24 hours, however, means it's still on par with expectations for credit/debit transactions, which was my point. > It means any currency without a physical backing. Wikipedia [0] disagrees with you on the definition of fiat: "Fiat money is currency which derives its value from government regulation or law." I'm too lazy right now to go corroborate that with a dictionary. Bitcoin - unlike fiat currencies - isn't based on a government declaring its value. It's much closer to commodity or representative money (the defitions of neither requiring the "commodity" in question to be a physical commodity - just one that's difficult to reproduce, a trait which blockchain entries possess). [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiat_money https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiat_money