A bitcoin payment can take an hour to clear. That hinders bitcoin's acceptance as an everyday means of exchange.
The community supporting bitcoin has long tried to avoid a so-called “hard fork” splitting the currency in two. On Tuesday, it happened anyhow. The idea behind the change is to speed up transactions and, consequently, mainstream acceptance – but even an early adopter community like the bitcoin one can be conservative about its money.
Bitcoin transactions are validated as more currency is “mined” by computers solving certain mathematical problems. To be validated by the decentralised network of bitcoin miners, the transactions are bundled in “blocks.” The bigger the size of the block, the more transactions can be validated in a second. For bitcoin, with a maximum block size of 1 MB, it's just two or three transactions per second. Enthusiasts compare that with the 2,000 per second that Visa processes. A bitcoin payment can take an hour to clear. Nobody wants to wait that long at a gas station or a store. That hinders bitcoin's acceptance as an everyday means of exchange and partly explains why speculation (or investment, if you want to be more charitable) remains its main use.
