"Confirmed" has two definitions depending on if you apply it to credit cards or Bitcoin:
1 "Confirmed with a certainty that's good enough for values less than 10,000USD" )
Credit cards are good for this basically instantly... unless the register is "taking longer than normal today." It is on the order of seconds. Notice that PayPal doesn't accept credit card payments over 10K AND takes a large percentage. The same is true of Escrow.com, for example. Wires (SEPA in eu) take several hours, but are much more used at these amounts.
With bitcoins, this is true once 90% of the nodes have a transaction in their memory pools which ALSO happens to be on the order of seconds (you can watch propagation of transactions on blockchain.info)
2 "Truly irreversible")
This level of confirmation is true of credit cards after, usually, 180 or 270 days. Whereas with Bitcoin this is true after 4 or 5 confirmations (~40-50 minutes).
Bitcoin's speed gets a bad rep because it is held up to definition #2 and credit cards are only held to a standard of definition #1. This whole non-sense about litecoin solving ANY problems is just that: nonsense. The some members bitcoin community clamored for bitcoin to decrease the confirmation time, but the core devs knew it wasn't necessary. In fact, Charlie Lee, in an effort to satiate these requests created an altcoin, Litecoin, to confirm faster, so that the discussion of bitcoin could regain its track.
TL;DR: Bitcoin is very much confirmed within seconds, just like credit cards. Litecoin's faster confirmation time contributes very little (unneeded) benefit.
What you don't get is #2 is a feature of credit cards. Consumers don't like irreversible spends.
Obviously, if you're a merchant, you want to reach the point of irreversibility sooner. But consumers want 30-day money back guarantees. The credit card companies provide that guarantee if stores do not (and will retract the money from the business's account).
Consumers do not have privileges with BTC, once spent, the money is gone. There is no 3-day window to contest the transaction, there isn't any 30-day money back guarantee.
I agree with you that BTC is more merchant oriented than consumer oriented, but #2 causes serious bugs: credit card transaction limits and additional fees to combat fraud (like those aforementioned). These fees function as an inefficient tax on both merchants and consumers.
Comments
"Confirmed" has two definitions depending on if you apply it to credit cards or Bitcoin:
1 "Confirmed with a certainty that's good enough for values less than 10,000USD" )
Credit cards are good for this basically instantly... unless the register is "taking longer than normal today." It is on the order of seconds. Notice that PayPal doesn't accept credit card payments over 10K AND takes a large percentage. The same is true of Escrow.com, for example. Wires (SEPA in eu) take several hours, but are much more used at these amounts.
With bitcoins, this is true once 90% of the nodes have a transaction in their memory pools which ALSO happens to be on the order of seconds (you can watch propagation of transactions on blockchain.info)
2 "Truly irreversible")
This level of confirmation is true of credit cards after, usually, 180 or 270 days. Whereas with Bitcoin this is true after 4 or 5 confirmations (~40-50 minutes).
Bitcoin's speed gets a bad rep because it is held up to definition #2 and credit cards are only held to a standard of definition #1. This whole non-sense about litecoin solving ANY problems is just that: nonsense. The some members bitcoin community clamored for bitcoin to decrease the confirmation time, but the core devs knew it wasn't necessary. In fact, Charlie Lee, in an effort to satiate these requests created an altcoin, Litecoin, to confirm faster, so that the discussion of bitcoin could regain its track.
TL;DR: Bitcoin is very much confirmed within seconds, just like credit cards. Litecoin's faster confirmation time contributes very little (unneeded) benefit.
What you don't get is #2 is a feature of credit cards. Consumers don't like irreversible spends.
Obviously, if you're a merchant, you want to reach the point of irreversibility sooner. But consumers want 30-day money back guarantees. The credit card companies provide that guarantee if stores do not (and will retract the money from the business's account).
Consumers do not have privileges with BTC, once spent, the money is gone. There is no 3-day window to contest the transaction, there isn't any 30-day money back guarantee.
I agree with you that BTC is more merchant oriented than consumer oriented, but #2 causes serious bugs: credit card transaction limits and additional fees to combat fraud (like those aforementioned). These fees function as an inefficient tax on both merchants and consumers.