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@@ -1589,6 +1589,19 @@ enabling linear scalability of the database operations. Similarly,
the cryptographic verification in the frontend can be distributed over
as many compute nodes as required.
+Unfortunately it was not possible to experimentally compare the performance of
+Taler directly to other e-cash systems, since to our best knowledge there
+is no working and publicly available implementation of any of them.
+
+When compared with the current average confirmation time for Bitcoin payments,
+Taler is many orders of magnitude faster. While a confirmation time of Taler
+is in the order of a few hundered milliseconds (including database access and
+network latency), the time to mine even one block in Bitcoin is around ten
+minutes \footnote{Data retrieved in May 2017 from
+\url{https://blockchain.info/stats}}. Very conservative Bitcoin merchants,
+such as exchanges, wait up to six blocks until they consider a transaction
+confirmed.
+
\section{Discussion}
\subsection{Well-known attacks}