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Bitcoin vs Ethereum: why one adds a block every 10 minutes and the other every 12 seconds
Bitcoin adds about 6 blocks an hour; Ethereum adds 300. The gap says a lot about how each one is built and what it is for.
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A blockchain is a shared record of transactions, grouped into blocks that are chained one after another. How often a new block arrives, the block time, is one of the biggest differences between crypto networks.
Bitcoin: slow on purpose
Bitcoin adds a block about every 10 minutes on average. Miners race to solve a puzzle, and every 2,016 blocks, roughly two weeks, the network makes the puzzle harder or easier so the average stays near 10 minutes. That pace keeps the network steady and makes old blocks very expensive to rewrite.
Ethereum: a fixed beat
Ethereum stopped using mining in 2022, when it switched to proof of stake in an upgrade called the Merge. Time is now split into slots of exactly 12 seconds, and a validator chosen for each slot proposes the next block. That is about 300 blocks an hour.
What it means for you
- WaitingA Bitcoin payment usually needs at least one block, often several, before an exchange treats it as final. On Ethereum the first confirmation comes in seconds.
- FeesFaster blocks don't make a network cheap. Fees on both rise when many people want space in the next block.
- Not a rankingSpeed is a design choice, not a score. Each chain trades speed against other goals, like simplicity and security.
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