Blocks are mined by guessing many many times and found by luck. The more guesses a miner makes, the greater the chance that they'll be lucky enough to find a block. Sometimes despite making many many guesses no one gets lucky.

You can think of it like a lottery. Lotteries sometimes don't have winners. Each additional set of lottery numbers you buy increases your chance of winning but only marginally. 

k00b

LOL yup .... same applies to miners (i work in the space) so their prices changes literally every day and sometimes within hours 

Thanks. So the difficulty had to be incredible high even if we are at a rate of ATH hashrate.

Mathematics are amazing in the terms that the algorithm can add inifinity difficulty if hashrate continue rising.

IgnaciobTato

To summarise it and to simplify it, miners compete between each other to solve a mathematical puzzle (the first one who does wins a block (6.25 BTC + fees) and this could happen in 1 minute or much longer. 

Governance mechanism: 
The target for increase/decrease difficulty (to mine a block) is 10 minutes... so every 2016 blocks (~2 weeks) if the average is more than 10 minutes (hard to mine)  then the difficulty decreases , if its less than 10 minutes (easy to mine) then it increases 

hope that helps 

muteness11

Last weekend I think we had four blocks in less than 10 minutes at one point. 

grayruby

It happens sometimes. Rarely over 2 hours though!

Many look at this and say it's flawed, but Bitcoin is working exactly as intended.

birdeye21

If you believe in the Store of Value narrative then that is enough by itself :) 

You have instant settlement with Lightning Network.

kristapsk

Like Elizabeth Warren says if the problem you are trying to solve is that you need fast payments, a CBDC should be able to do that for you.  Lol. 

c137Heather

nikotsla

I'm neither a maxi nor brainwashed, but the layered nature of btc, and the nature of its transactions -- and the time courses of those transactions -- has been explored at length in various places.  A solid consensus is that a settlement layer that occasionally takes a couple hours to settle is not a big deal, when considered in the broader context.

You might check out _Broken Money_ to work through this very slowly and very thoroughly.

elvismercury

It happens more often than you think. I've seen 45-60 mins between blocks a lot over the years especially when I was forced to use on chain Bitcoin frequently before altcoin support because more integrated into the things I use it for. The 10 min between blocks line is propaganda and totally false and even if it was true that's still too long when people can use an altcoin or cashapp/paypal/venmo to pay someone and its confirmed instantly. 

The majority of the world doesn't give enough fucks about staying anonymous to push the issues I mentioned to the side. It's inconvenient for them, that's what you Maxi's don't get.

What do you suggest? Other forks like BCH failed in this concept. This is a rare scenario. We are still seeing the results of Ordinals in the bitcoin chain and how do they play on block space and blocks  mining.

You only call them shitcoins because you fail to accept that Bitcoin isnt flawless. You're drinking the coolaid and you're going to be left behind because other cryptocurrencies are adapting and evolving while Bitcoin is stuck trying to mine a block for hours. Why would anyone use a payment method that can't even guarantee your transaction will EVER BE CONFIRMED AND IRREVERSIBLE. There's no guarantee of that using on chain Bitcoin! And you guys forget that most of the worlds population doesn't care enough about remaining anonymous to push those issues and others aside just for the anonymity. That's a fact! 

okpj

FartOnMyBalls

And once again another validation of one of the most important flaws of Bitcoin. THIS. This is why Bitcoin will fall short of other cryptocurrencies in the long run that doesn't have this problem. No one is going to want to wait hours or even minutes for their money to be available (most wallets don't allow you to spend unconfirmed coin..) when other cryptocurrencies confirm transactions instantly or within seconds. THIS IS A MASSIVE PROBLEM AND ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT THAT MUST BE ADDRESSED. BITCOIN IS NOT FLAWLESS LIKE YOU BRAINWASHED MAXI'S THINK IT IS. WAKE UP.

AJ1992

bitcoin

![GAWaDsQWYAAYHA9.jpg](https://m.stacker.news/6522)

Everybody has the idea that everyblock is mined in 10 minutes, but that is an average.
There are blocks mined in 1 minutes and others can be mined in 2hs.
However this is the rarest and there are many reasons for it.

If more advance users can explain the reasons of such a delay in the mining of a block we will be grateful.
Also to explain if this affect in any aspect.