How do you answer the question "Why 10 mins?" for beginners?

Question

I'm often asked "Why is the average mining time about 10 mins?". How do you answer this question if you are asked by beginners?

Did you see http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/1863/why-was-the-target-block-time-chosen-to-be-10-minutes?rq=1 — David W, Jun 05 '16 at 14:36
Thank you for the link. I think that's difficult for beginners and too long to explain. — Satoshi Nakanishi, Jun 05 '16 at 14:46
@DavidW: Why did you link the second post that doesn't seem directly related? –– Also related: Why is a short blocktime considered to be unsafe?, What is the expected time until the next block is found? — Murch, Jun 06 '16 at 10:06

score 5 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 05 '16 at 14:38

5

Block time is a tradeoff between:

Network propagation time
Amount of work wasted due to chain splits (miners continuing to work on the last block before becoming aware a new one was found)

answered Jun 05 '16 at 14:38

Javier

286
1
6

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jun 09 '16 at 08:42

I'm not really against on Javier answer but i think it's still complex for a beginner to understand it.

Maybe give a realistic example of mining. "Real mining also takes time before you produce pure minerals out of stones which is the same with bitcoin mining, it takes some time before you receive fees from processing transactions."

How do you answer the question "Why 10 mins?" for beginners?

2 Answers2