Does Bitcoin need to be traded once in 10 minutes?

When Bitcoin appeared in the public view as "digital gold", on the one hand it was recognized for its secure peer-to-peer payment, and on the other hand it was criticized for wasting energy and mining methods and inefficient transfer times. , Such as the "block time" of about 10 minutes.

However, as the most basic landing application of the blockchain, as an entry user, it is even more important to understand the basic knowledge of Bitcoin. For example, this question: Does bitcoin settle every 10 minutes on average, meaning that transactions only take place every 10 minutes?

Mining

Give the answer first: Bitcoin settlement every 10 minutes is true, and this 10 minutes is the average. But as far as the actual transaction time is concerned, it is not necessarily the case, sometimes it is 1 hour, sometimes it is longer.

When referring to "Bitcoin settlement every 10 minutes", this usually refers to "mining."

First, the blockchain is essentially a decentralized database, so the core underlying layer of Bitcoin is also a database that relies on public accounting.

In the Bitcoin block, each data block contains some information about Bitcoin network transactions, which is used to verify the validity of its information and generate the next block; for each new block transaction, those maintenance decentralized The ledger must then solve a special mathematical problem created by a cryptographic hash function.

Therefore, 10 minutes is essentially the average time required for the network to find a valid transaction chain, that is, the time for the computer to answer the correct question specifically for solving the SHA256 hashing problem. Within this time, who is the first to solve this with high computing power. The problem can add the next block to the transaction, and then generate a new mathematical problem to be solved, and you can get the built-in system "settlement" of Bitcoin.

If you have to ask the deep reason of the "10 minutes" setting, the answer may be the founder Satoshi Nakamoto's "moderation" between the time required for the new block to be transmitted in the network and the workload generated by the transaction on-chain. .

In addition, when Bitcoin was added in 210,000 blocks after it was created in 2009, when new blocks were added, the number of rewards would be halved, so-called "halving".

Therefore, the reward started to decrease from 50 bitcoins to 25 and 12.5, and in the next few years it will become 6.25, and continue to decline ... Finally, Satoshi will be mined in 2140. In other words, Bitcoin will not be inflationary. Considering the decreasing speed of mining, in a sense it is shrinking.

Transactions and transfers

Similarly, if it involves real transactions, such as wallet transfers, according to the characteristics of bitcoin's "mining": transactions are recorded in blocks, and the average generation time of each block is 10 minutes, waiting for 6 After the block is generated, the transaction can be finally confirmed (taking into account the security attributes). Therefore, generally speaking, transactions in the Bitcoin system require 60 minutes for confirmation, that is, the transfer is successful.

In addition, in order to ensure that each time a transaction occurs, let the miners in the Bitcoin network scramble to help you record (confirm) this transaction. Generally, a certain fee must be set to reward the first miner who successfully records. Therefore, the higher the setting reward, the faster the relative transaction; if there are too many transactions at the same time, the network is congested, and the setting fee is reduced, it is likely that the transaction confirmation time is greater than 1 hour or even more than 24 hours.

Of course, if it is a transaction inside the trading platform, the account display is usually seconds, because the transaction is not on the chain at all. But if you want to refer Bitcoin to a wallet or another trading platform, the trading platform will generally charge you fees for miners and platform fees.

Summary

It is not difficult to see that Bitcoin's settlement and trading are still very thorough, but as our learning, as long as you understand the working principle of Bitcoin, you will understand why Bitcoin should sacrifice efficiency and use Security and PoW consensus are notable features.