Bitcoin time to transfer

How Long Does a Bitcoin Transaction Take?

On the Bitcoin network, the average confirmation time for a BTC payment is about 10 minutes. However, transaction times can vary wildly — and here, we’re going to explain why.

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Ahhh blockchain. It’s the future of money, you know. But even though cash sent through old-fashioned banks often hit accounts instantly, a Bitcoin transaction can take a *little bit* longer.

On the Bitcoin network, the average confirmation time for a BTC payment is about 10 minutes. However, transaction times can vary wildly — and here, we’re going to explain why.

The Importance of Transaction Fees

Did you know that you could end up waiting days before a transaction on the Bitcoin blockchain is completed?

In some ways, using a cryptocurrency is like driving down a freeway. A high number of transactions means there’s going to be a lot of congestion, slowing everything down.В

Paying bigger Bitcoin transaction fees is a surefire way to jump to the front of the queue and cut wait times. It’s the equivalent of passing through traffic with a police escort.В

When you are sending Bitcoin, you need to incentivize miners on the blockchain to include your transaction in the next block — especially when the mempool is full. Given how block sizes are fixed at 1MB and there’s a limited number of miners, you may end up having to pay a much higher fee to get first-class treatment.

How Long Does a Transaction Confirmation Take?

A Bitcoin transaction often goes through several confirmations on the blockchain before it is fully cleared. That’s because there’s a risk that unconfirmed transactions could be reversed, or the cryptocurrency could be spent twice. A confirmation takes place whenever a new block is created.

If you’re transferring a big amount of cryptocurrency to a company, some will require as many as six confirmations. How long would this transaction for the transfer take to confirm? About an hour.

Remember, each time you send a transaction, you are making a transfer (or transfers) and you need to wait until the transfer is “confirmed” by the miners.

There are some great tools out there which can give you an estimate of the average time it’ll take to complete a BTC transaction or transfer, like Blockchain.com and Statista. You can also get guidance on the transaction fees you should add — often denoted in the form of satoshis (there are 100,000,000 satoshis in one Bitcoin).

If you submit a Bitcoin transaction with lower fees, you have a real risk of upsetting Bitcoin miners. They’ll throw a tantrum (or, in reality, will just ignore your lower transaction fees in favor of higher ones) and it’s possible your payment will end up languishing in a long list of unconfirmed transactions. However, you shouldn’t worry too much, as it will get processed whenever there’s a massive lull on the Bitcoin blockchain and miners have nothing else to do.

Will BTC Ever Be Faster?

The long confirmation time associated with a Bitcoin transaction or transfer gives some BTC enthusiasts sleepless nights. They worry the blockchain won’t be able to cope with demand in years to come. (Fun fact: this was one of the main reasons why Bitcoin Cash was created).

Projects such as the Lightning Network aim to solve this problem by adding another layer on top of the Bitcoin blockchain to speed things up. That said, it hasn’t really witnessed a huge explosion in popularity.

Another alternative to Bitcoin fees is to use a different cryptocurrency, such as Ethereum or Litecoin, that are known for faster transactions, aka faster confirmations after transfers. It’s fairly easy to transfer Bitcoins to other digital assets on an exchange. CoinMarketCap has a ranking page where you can see different exchanges’ regulation, accepted payment methods and more for those just getting into buying crypto.

We hope you’ve enjoyed our FAQ about how long a Bitcoin transaction takes to be confirmed. By following our advice, you’ll be out of the Bitcoin mempool in no time.

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Bitcoin (BTC) block time from 2017 to April 13, 2021

Average time it takes to mine a Bitcoin from January 2017 to April 13, 2021 (in minutes)

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January 2017 to April 13, 2021

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Bitcoin (BTC) price history from 2013 to June 9, 2021

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Bitcoin (BTC) market capitalization as of May 17, 2021

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Unique cryptocurrency wallets created on Blockchain.com as of May 18, 2021

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Bitcoin (BTC) blockchain size as of May 20, 2021

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How long does it take to transfer bitcoin

Bitcoin has been one of the top cryptocurrencies in the market for over a decade. It was launched on January 9th, 2009 by a mysterious entity called Satoshi Nakamoto.

Bitcoin transactions take an average of 10 minutes to be completed. However, the transaction time is dependent on various factors. Bitcoin transactions have to be verified by a process called mining where miners are required to solve complex puzzles.

The difficulty of mining increases with the number of transactions and verifying every one of them can take up quite a lot of time. In late 2017 when the network saw a spike in transactions, some people had to wait for hours or even days before their BTC reached their wallets. Nowadays, 10 minutes is typically the norm.

What is a Bitcoin Transaction?

Bitcoin is a digital currency, meaning that it does not exist physically. There is no Bitcoin that you can hold in your hand or any paper that denotes the value of Bitcoin.

Bitcoin being a virtual currency, has to be verified on a secure public ledger known as a blockchain which contains the history of transactions and signatures.

The Bitcoins you possess contains a history of your bitcoins and a pair of keys – the public and private key. The private key is only known to you, and this helps to transact Bitcoin, whereas the public key can be shared with others to accept Bitcoins.

The public keys provide you with the information of the transaction, and the private keys help you authorize transactions.

A bitcoin transaction message contains three sections:

1. Input – The input is the code that shows the history of the Bitcoin in your public key. It shows the source of the coins.
2. Amount – The number of Bitcoins that are in the transaction.
3. Output – the output is the public key or the address of the transaction.

Once the blockchain receives the transaction message containing these three sections, the miners work to validate/verify the transaction. This is quite a complicated process; the miners need to solve complex mathematical problems to create new signatures and update the transaction history for the new transaction.

What Determines the Transfer Time of Bitcoin?

Bitcoin transfer times can take as little as 10 minutes to hours, days, or even more than a week. This is mainly because miners have to verify the transactions, and the network can lag sometimes.

Transactions are added to blocks that have to be verified and added to the public blockchain. The standard time to mine a block is 10 minutes.

The main two factors that influence the transaction time of Bitcoin are:

• The amount of network activity
• Transaction fees

The Amount of Network Activity

The network activity of Bitcoin depends on the transactions it processes in a day. The higher the number of transactions, the more the network activity. There are a limited number of miners to process the transactions in a 1MB block.

Due to the increasing popularity of Bitcoin, the network can experience a backlog of transactions waiting to be verified. The block sizes are limited, and they are combined into a massive queue known as the bitcoin mempool. The mempool size fluctuates with increasing wait times, transaction priority, and fees.

Assuming that your transaction is the block and mine, you will receive your first confirmation in 10 minutes and the remaining five confirmations in the next 50 minutes, meaning it may take up to 60 minutes to transfer the Bitcoins into your wallet.

Transaction Fees

Mining is a mundane task and requires power, scale, effort and technology. Hence bitcoin transactions need you to pay transaction fees. These fees help to prioritize your transactions. This means that the more you pay the miners to verify your transaction, the faster it is processed.

The main delay occurs when your transaction fees are low, and the miners pick your block last.

Bitcoin transaction fees are expressed in Satoshis per byte, which is one hundred millionth of a bitcoin per byte size of the transaction. Bitcoin transaction fees aren’t necessary, but they prioritize your transactions to be verified. The fees are set by the users creating the blocks that have to be mined.

Bitcoin, being a decentralized currency, is highly volatile. The transaction fees may rise and fall, and the wait time may still need to stabilize. Developers building on Bitcoin understand that a wait time of 30-60 minutes for a transaction is unacceptable for scaling adoption. This is why they are working on new solutions that will make Bitcoin transactions instantaneous, such as the Lighting Network once enabled wallets will reduce the transaction fees and even shorten the transaction confirmation time.

When is a Transaction Confirmed?

A transaction is confirmed when the miner processes your block that contains your transaction. If your fees are higher, then the miner is more likely to process your transaction quickly. Most exchanges provide a nominal fee to ensure that your transaction is processed within a time limit.

One confirmation is enough for transactions under $1,000. For Zipmex customers, if the network is busy, then a transaction may take up to one hour, however, generally speaking, you can expect around 10 minutes.

6 confirmation is standard for most transactions between $10,000-$1,000,000. Sixty confirmations are suggested for transactions above $1,000,000 for safety and security. You can check your Bitcoin transaction status on Zipmex within the deposit or withdrawal area of your wallet.

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