The currency convertor gets it's data from the Yahoo! Finance site, at downloads.yahoo.com. In theory, it should take as long to download using gcur as it would through a web browser. However, I've also seen a wide range in download times (a few seconds to a few minutes).

The "timeliness" and accuracy of the data are dependent on Yahoo. One future enhancement to the program would be to specify and use multiple data sources (xe.com, ecb.eu, ucb.ca, etc.), much as the KDE package "keurocalc" does. I would gladly welcome assistance from any developer interested in enhancing the program.