How Long Does It Take Bitcoin To Send
It is an open secret that Bitcoin block time is 10 minutes.
Give the Bitcoin network some time to process your transaction. It takes two confirmations from the network before your balance is fully available in your Paxful wallet. This is the industry standard for a truly secure wallet. This can take anywhere from five minutes to an hour, depending on the Bitcoin network. A How to send Bitcoin from an exchange. Sending Bitcoins from an exchange is by far the easiest method. And Coinbase is the easiest of the easy: all you need to do is send your Bitcoins from your Coinbase account to your recipient's email address (the one associated with his/her Coinbase account). Source: coinbase.com. How Long Does Bitcoin Take to Send? Because it takes about ten minutes for a block to be mined, this means the fastest a transaction can be completed is ten minutes. The requirement for a transaction to be approved in several blocks (usually three to six, depending on the nature of the transaction) to be considered “safely completed” means.
But have you wondered why it takes more than 10 minutes to confirm a Bitcoin transaction successfully?
How does Bitcoin work? From a user perspective, Bitcoin is nothing more than a mobile app or computer program that provides a personal Bitcoin wallet and allows a user to send and receive bitcoins with them. This is how Bitcoin works for most users. Behind the scenes, the Bitcoin network is sharing a public ledger called the 'block chain'. That’s why the current BTC transaction time can take from 10 minutes to 4-6 hours for operations to be confirmed on the blockchain, depending on the Bitcoin blockchain congestion at the time you initiate your transaction.
I guess you haven’t !!
I know you are a busy man (or woman), but since many times, receivers of Bitcoin have been fooled due to their lack of knowledge on this simple topic.
That’s why I think it is my responsibility to make you aware and make sure that you don’t fall for such silly mistakes again.
So in this post, we are going to learn what’s the ideal Bitcoin transaction/confirmation time and what to do when the transactions are stuck for long hours?
So let’s dive right into it:
What Is Bitcoin Transaction Confirmation Time?
For those of you who don’t know:
Bitcoin transactions are not instantly confirmed or finalized.
These transactions first go to a pool of unconfirmed transactions called Bitcoin mempool from where miners pick up these transactions. That’s why one needs to wait for atleast 10 minutes to get the first confirmation for a Bitcoin transaction.
In any case, the average time a Bitcoin transaction takes for confirmation is 10 minutes, and that’s because the Bitcoin’s block timing is 10 minutes.
But this isn’t true every time because your Bitcoin transaction confirmation can take up to several hours and sometimes even days after you have made a transaction.
Think I am exaggerating?
Well, I am not !!
This can happen due to many factors and those factors we are going to discuss in the next section.
What Determines Bitcoin Transaction Speed or Bitcoin Transfer Time?
The speed of Bitcoin transactions depends on many factors and out of those, these two factors are very critical to BTC transfer time:
- Congestion on Bitcoin’s network
- Bitcoin transaction fees attached to each BTC transaction.
The congestion or load of Bitcoin’s blockchain can be seen in real-time by monitoring the mempool. At the time of writing these many unconfirmed transactions are present on the network.
How Long Does It Take To Send Bitcoin Cash
But needless to say, more the number of unconfirmed transactions the more time blockchain will take to confirm them.
After all, we have limited space and limited throughput on the chain as it can only include 1 MB worth of transactions every 10 minutes.
And due to Bitcoin’s design, only one miner can add a block every 10 minutes, no matter how much mining hash power he/she has. (See our guide on Bitcoin Mining)
Moreover, miners are bound to act in a way that incentivizes them the most and in case of mining these miners prefer to take those transactions first that have more transaction fees attached to it.
If you don’t know:
Miners receive 12.5 BTC plus the ‘X’ amount of Block mining fee for their mining work. And if you see, here that 12.5 BTC reward is fixed for all the miners, but ‘X’ amount of block mining fees varies.
So the higher the ‘X’ amount, the higher the income/reward for miners to mine a successful block.
I know you are thinking, how block mining fee is related to your transaction not getting picked from the mempool?
Well, for that let’s understand, block mining fee first,
Block is merely a collection of transactions, and each transaction has a transaction fee attached to it. And the sum of the transaction fees attached to individual transactions that a miner has taken into his block is called ‘Block mining fee.’
So assume for a moment that you are a Bitcoin miner.
What would you do?
Well, if I am a miner, I would try to maximize the ‘X’ amount by always picking up those transactions from the mempool which has higher transaction fees attached to it so that I can get more block mining fees as a reward.
Hence it makes economic sense for the miners to pick up those transactions first from the mempool which has higher fees attached to it.
And miners are quite proactive in this, as all the miners keep their mempool in descending order of transaction fees (bitcoin mempool fees) attached to it.
That’s one of the main reasons for your Bitcoin confirmations taking hours and being stuck in the mempool as your fee is too little to be noticed by the miners.
How Many Bitcoin Confirmations Are Enough On A Transaction?
Generally speaking, ‘6 confirmations’ are recommended and that many considered enough to make sure a Bitcoin transaction is successful.
This ‘6 confirmation’ limit is even advised by Satoshi Nakamoto- the creator of Bitcoin because after six confirmations the receiver can be sure that the bitcoins he/she has received aren’t double-spent.
But as we know that a Bitcoin confirmation will minimum take 10 minutes and hence for six confirmations one needs to wait atleast 60 minutes (provided the transaction is included in the very next block)
But this is an ideal scenario that is often different from reality because there are enough chances that your transaction will not be included in the very next block.
Here is the median time for a transaction to be accepted into a mined block and added to the public ledger (note: only includes transactions with miner’s fees).
Here is the overall average confirmation time on Bitcoin’s blockchain:
Also, these confirmations are nothing but the number of blocks added after your transaction is included on the chain and first confirmation means your transaction is included in the most recent block mined.
And as the blocks are found after the recently mined block, the confirmation count for your transaction will keep on increasing to ‘6 confirmations’ or more. Check this transaction now and you will able to see more than 6 confirmations on it: 3230b0b9c0bd5cd196cc23b1e5bf4b41604b31e04bc9d9f5071cfa8117ba70a9
Is There Any Bitcoin Transaction/Confirmation Time Calculator/Estimator?
Yes, of course, there are some Bitcoin transaction time estimators that you can use, but they all rely on the Bitcoin transaction fees you have attached to that particular transaction.
So let say you have attached ‘X’ Satoshis/byte of fees for a Bitcoin transaction then you can very well calculate how much time (or how many blocks) you will need to wait before getting the first confirmation.
See this estimator that tells you based on the Satoshi/byte fees, how much time and how many blocks one needs to wait:
So as per this estimator, if you are using 14 Satoshis/byte of fees or more, you will get included in the next immediate block, and in less than 30 minutes you will receive your confirmation.
Whereas if you use 3 Satoshis/byte of fees, then you might get included in the second block and if the fees are lower than that you might need to wait for 3-4 blocks more to get included in a Bitcoin’s block.
So this way you can easily calculate your approximate Bitcoin confirmation time and know exactly how long does Bitcoin takes to transfer?
What To Do When Bitcoin transactions taking a long time?
But, I use this time estimator before I am making my transaction because that way I can determine appropriate transaction fees and hence reduce the expected time of confirmation.
I have explained this method very comprehensively in my article on, ‘A Beginner’s Guide To Bitcoin Transaction Fees For Fast Confirmations.’
I also know that you want to know, what needs to be done when your transaction is stuck for a long time.
Actually, there are a couple of things that you can do when your transaction is stuck, such as:
- Use a Bitcoin transaction accelerator to bump the fees off-chain.
- Replace your stuck transaction with higher a fee through Replace-By-Fees method.
- Make a child transaction with higher fees using Child Pays For Parent technique.
Of course, these techniques are specific to Bitcoin and are to be used when your transaction is stuck for many hours.
But on the flip side, if you don’t have the technical competency to do these things then you can leave your transaction for 72 hours and the network will automatically drop your transaction and return your coins in your Bitcoin wallet.
Conclusion: How long does bitcoin transfer take?
Now, I know you must be thinking if that’s how long do Bitcoin transactions take, then how could it be used as a currency?
Well, that’s what Bitcoin developers also think, and that’s why they are working on technologies like Segwit, Schnorr Signatures, & Lightning network to make Bitcoin transactions nearly instantaneous.
But there is a long road towards that as Lightning network has recently started getting traction from the community and Segwit’s penetration has also increased.
And I believe that when these technologies are at its full throttle, questions like ‘how long do bitcoin transactions take to confirm?’ or ‘how long does Bitcoin transfer take?’ will become a thing of the past.
But as of now, if you want to transact on Bitcoin’s main chain, you need to wait for atleast 60 minutes before being able to claim that your transaction is 100% successful.
So that’s all from me today in this guide on Bitcoin transaction time, and I shall be back very soon with more such interesting and knowledgeable topics around Bitcoin.
Untill that time keep learning and keep sharing the Bitcoin love with TheMoneyMongers
And do share this article with your friends through your social media !!
Contents
- What Is Bitcoin Transaction Confirmation Time?
- What To Do When Bitcoin transactions taking a long time?
Did you send some BTC to someone a little while ago? Maybe even a few hours ago? Is your transaction is still “unconfirmed” or “pending”? How long does it take to send Bitcoin? If you think that it should happen immediately, then perhaps you don’t quite understand Bitcoin transactions. But you’ve come to the right place. Here you will learn about how a Bitcoin transaction works, why it takes time, and what to expect. You will get a clearer understanding of how long a Bitcoin transaction takes.
When you initiate a Bitcoin transaction, it needs to be approved by the network before it can be completed. The approval process consists of “confirmations”.
The Bitcoin community has set a standard of 6 confirmations that a transfer needs before it is accepted by the receiving wallet, and recognized by the entire network.
How does Bitcoin work – the basics for newbies
The blockchain is a shared public ledger on which the entire Bitcoin network relies. All confirmed operations are included in the blockchain. It allows Bitcoin wallets to calculate their spendable balance so that new transactions can be verified, thereby ensuring they’re actually owned by the spender. The integrity and the chronological order of the blockchain are enforced with cryptography.
A transaction is a transfer of value between Bitcoin wallets that gets included in the blockchain. Bitcoin wallets keep a secret piece of data called a private key or seed, which is used to sign transactions, providing mathematical proof that they have come from the owner of the wallet. The signature also prevents the transaction from being altered by anybody once it has been issued. All operations are broadcast to the network and usually begin to be confirmed within 10-20 minutes, through a process called mining.
Mining is a distributed consensus system that is used to confirm pending transactions by including them in the blockchain. It enforces a chronological order in the blockchain, protects the neutrality of the network, and allows different computers to agree on the state of the system. To be confirmed, transactions must be packed in a block that fits very strict cryptographic rules that will be verified by the network. These rules prevent previous blocks from being modified, because doing so would invalidate all subsequent blocks. Mining also creates the equivalent of a competitive lottery that prevents any individual from easily adding new blocks consecutively to the blockchain.
What is a Bitcoin transaction?
When you send Bitcoin, a single data structure, namely a Bitcoin transaction, is created by your wallet client and then broadcast to the network. Bitcoin nodes on the network will relay and rebroadcast the operation, and if the transaction is valid, nodes will include it in the block they are mining. Usually, within 10-20mins, the transaction will be included, along with other operations, in a block in the blockchain. At this point, the receiver is able to see the transaction amount in their wallet.
Transaction confirmation
It seems simple: a transaction is “unconfirmed” once it has been produced and cryptographically signed, and “confirmed” once it has been successfully included in the blockchain. Keep in mind that confirmed transactions cannot be canceled.
Unfortunately, the blockchain does not offer strong consistency, understood as any data included in the blockchain is guaranteed to be included forever. For technical reasons, the blockchain features a weaker property called eventual consistency, meaning that eventually all parties will agree on the blockchain up to a certain ever-increasing prefix.
However, it is possible (although rare) for the last n blocks to be orphaned in a reorganization. This is exponentially less likely to occur the larger n gets. It typically happens multiple times a day, for example, that a single block is orphaned. But it has happened only a few dozen times in history.
In practice, the community has adopted 6 blocks as a standard confirmation period. That is, once a transaction is included in a block in the blockchain which is followed up by at least 6 additional blocks, the transaction is “confirmed.”
How long does a bitcoin transaction take?
Unfortunately, this process does not occur instantly. In fact, BTC transactions are subject to delays ranging from a few minutes to a few days. This is because Bitcoin requires miners to verify transactions. As mentioned before, operations are usually lumped into “blocks,” to be verified and added to the public blockchain; according to standard Bitcoin protocol, it takes about ten minutes to mine one block. That’s how the blockchain ensures that the money you’re sending is yours to send; it’s one of the ways they prevent fraud in the system.
Some people would say that “one hour” is the standard BTC transaction time. But it’s not always true. Since blocks are found by a random process, there is no telling precisely how long it will take for 6 blocks to be found. On average, it takes about 10 minutes to find each block. The average block time can actually be slightly shorter or longer depending on if the total hash power of the Bitcoin network is growing or shrinking. That’s why the current BTC transaction time can take from 10 minutes to 4-6 hours for operations to be confirmed on the blockchain, depending on the Bitcoin blockchain congestion at the time you initiate your transaction.
However, due to its rising popularity, the Bitcoin network is often backlogged with transactions waiting to be lumped into a block. Block sizes are limited, and those which do not make it into one are lumped into a large queue known as the “bitcoin mempool.” The mempool fluctuates in size, with wait times also dependent on transaction priority and fees.
Average Bitcoin Transaction Time
“One hour” is the common answer, but this is not quite the whole story. Because blocks are found by a random process, there is no telling precisely how long it will take for 6 blocks to be found. On average, it takes about 10 minutes to find each block. The average block time can actually be slightly shorter or longer depending on if the total hash power of the Bitcoin network is growing or shrinking. Ignoring this detail though, this is why 6 confirmations take about 1 hour on average. However, the block-creation (or mining) process is random and each block may take much longer or shorter.
This process does not occur instantaneously. In fact, bitcoin transactions are subject to delays ranging from a few minutes to a few days. This is because bitcoin requires miners to verify transactions. As it was mentioned earlier, transactions are usually lumped into blocks to be verified and added to the public blockchain; according to standard bitcoin protocol, it takes about ten minutes to mine one block.
In theory, the 10 minutes time frame is only the average time. That means the time between blocks can be 1 minute or 20 minutes, or even longer, or anything in between. It’s just some mathematical variance playing into it, but the expected timeframe would be 10 minutes indeed.
Like, if you throw a coin ten times, your expected result would be 5 heads and 5 tails, but in the real world you’d frequently see 6 heads 4 tails, 3 heads 7 tails and all that. If you’d throw a coin a thousand times, the real world results would be closer to the expected result.
Same with blocks: if you take the times of the last, say 1000 blocks, they’d be pretty close to an average time of 10 minutes, but the single blocks within this sample size can deviate quite strongly from the expected value.
Delays could also happen in confirmations because of miners not finding a solution to the algorithm. This part is random, so sometimes it doesn’t happen 10 minutes on the dot.
However, there is a greater than 60% chance your transaction will be confirmed within 10 minutes if you pay a high enough fee.
Transaction fee
How Long Does It Take Bitcoin To Send Bitcoin
Fees are calculated by the size of the transaction. Every transaction has a size, just like a file size, and it depends on many factors. The fastest and cheapest transaction fee is currently 60 Satoshi/byte. So if, for example, your transaction is 257 bytes, you will need to pay 257*60 = 15,420 Satoshi as a transaction fee in order to be included in the next block. Most wallets today will either automatically add the required fee to get the operation confirmed as soon as possible or will let you choose from a variety of fees according to the requested Bitcoin confirmation time (e.g. fast, medium, slow).
How Long Does It Take Bitcoin To Send
Conclusion
How Long Does It Take To Send Bitcoin Through Coinbase
We hope that this article helped you become a more confident cryptocurrency user. In a nutshell, a transaction is confirmed when it is permanently included in the Bitcoin blockchain. And there is no need to worry if it takes more than an hour before the addressee gets the BTC you sent.