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If I'm not wrong miners are trying to find nonce that satisfies a rule.

Then why is btc so slow? I want a technical answer.

Can btc ever match eth speed, given no politics?

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  • You have two answers that address different questions - one asked by the title, and one implied by the first sentence. Are you talking overall transaction throughput - that would be Rutger Versteegden's answer - or individual transaction latency - that would be Max Vernon's answer. Or something else. Clarification would be useful.
    – davidbak
    Nov 30, 2017 at 23:45

2 Answers 2

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Most simple and foreseen reason:

Bitcoin's blocktime is set at 10 minutes, while Ethereum has a block every 10-20 seconds, making it much faster.

See Ghost protocol, https://www.cryptocompare.com/coins/guides/what-is-the-ghost-protocol-for-ethereum/

So no, bitcoin will probably never be able to match Ethereum's speed. ( In it's current state)

(Unless they would implement something like the lightning network.)

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BTC transaction confirmation can be "slow" because of a combination of factors, including:

  1. Maximum block size is limited (the NYA was an attempt to rectify that), thereby limiting the number of transactions that can be contained in each block. Typically less than 3000 transactions are included in any given block.
  2. There are a large number of transactions occurring every minute (over 300).
  3. There is competition for confirmation in the form of user-configurable transaction fees.

If you want fast confirmation, you up the fee, thereby ensuring you get prioritized by miners for inclusion in the next block.

See https://www.cryptocompare.com/coins/guides/what-is-the-block-size-limit/ for an interesting discussion about the pros and cons of the block size limit, and the effect that has on transaction processing.

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