Mon Apr 04, 2016 2:04 am

The point is that even though bitcoin transactions aren't completely safe until they have been included in several blocks, the community should strive to make zero confirmation transactions as safe as possible. Having the blocks be completely full makes double spending attacks much easier.Just this weekend, I paid $1000 worth of Bitcoin from one of the most popular iPhone wallet apps. It calculated the fee poorly, and my transaction was unconfirmed for about 36 hours. That is a huge window for some one to be able to decide to double spend. It's so long that it even makes doing e-commerce with Bitcoin dangerous. The person I sent the payment to isn't a Bitcoin expert and was annoyed that the transaction was unconfirmed for so long, and his wallet wouldn't let him make use of the unconfirmed funds. He asked me to use Paypal with him the next time. The problems caused by full blocks greatly damage the user experience of Bitcoin, and are driving new users to use something other than Bitcoin. This is a true shame, and for no good reason.