Re:Professional Traders Show Interest in Bitcoin
by maaku on Monday April 02, 2012 @12:20AM
(#3786300)
> ...and meaning longer transaction confirmation times (for at most 2 weeks, while the network adjusts to the change in capacity)
To be clear, it wouldn't be two weeks. The network adjusts every 2016 blocks, which under normal circumstances would be approx. 2 weeks. Typically it's a little less as new hash power comes online, but in the case of a drastic loss of hash power, it could be much much longer than two weeks. We saw that with namecoin where it took almost half a year between adjustments (or would have, if developers hadn't intervened with merge mining).
To be clear, it wouldn't be two weeks. The network adjusts every 2016 blocks, which under normal circumstances would be approx. 2 weeks. Typically it's a little less as new hash power comes online, but in the case of a drastic loss of hash power, it could be much much longer than two weeks. We saw that with namecoin where it took almost half a year between adjustments (or would have, if developers hadn't intervened with merge mining).