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It’s one of the first questions that many people have about Bitcoin but ultimately — when it comes to sending BTC — you’ll likely get the frustratingly vague answer of “It depends.”
The main reason it depends is that the Bitcoin network is actually variable and speeds will change depending on how many transactions are currently being processed. It also depends on your definition of “sending bitcoin”.
In general sending Bitcoin can take anywhere from seconds to over 60 minutes. Typically, however, it will take 10 to 20 minutes. In order to understand how long bitcoin transactions may take, it’s important to understand what occurs when sending bitcoin.
This article explains what happens when you send bitcoin, gives tips so you can estimate how long your bitcoin transaction will take, and provides some options to help you send bitcoin faster.
Written by Billy Garrison Arrow Right Technical Writer
Billy Garrison focuses his research and writing on Bitcoin and the Lightning Network. He is interested in the technical details that allow these technologies to survive and grow without the need for a central authority. Billy also loves helping people learn...
|Oct 19, 2023
What Happens When You Send Bitcoin
You typically send bitcoin using some sort of bitcoin wallet software. The software broadcasts a message to the bitcoin network saying something like “I, Alice, am sending 0.1 bitcoin to Bob, and whoever mines this transaction will earn a 0.0001 bitcoin transaction fee”. Bitcoin miners will receive the transaction and add it to their list of unconfirmed transactions, known as the mempool.
Miners take transactions from the mempool and bundle them into “blocks” that can hold around 3000 transactions each. Because of this limit, miners choose transactions that will reward them with the highest transaction fees. On average, one block is mined every 10 minutes, so if you pay a high enough transaction fee, your transaction should get confirmed (mined) within roughly ten minutes. Note that this is just an average time and blocks can sometimes take under a minute or over an hour to mine. That’s why the question of “How long does it take to transfer Bitcoin” can be so confusing to new crypto users.
To understand why mining is necessary, check out our article Why Does Bitcoin Need to be “Mined?”.
Bitcoin Transaction Confirmations
While it’s almost impossible to change bitcoin’s transaction history, there is an exception. When two miners mine different blocks at the same time, computers on the bitcoin network end up with two different transaction histories. This is known as a chain split or a fork. Eventually, a new block will be added to one of the two chains before the other. When this happens, everyone agrees that the longer chain (the one with more blocks) is the valid one.
When a bitcoin transaction gets mined into a block, it changes from being unconfirmed to being “confirmed with one confirmation”. Each additional block that gets added to the blockchain after that gives your transaction another confirmation. Because miners keep adding blocks to the chain containing your transaction, you can be quite sure there won’t be a chain split that removes the block with your transaction.
If you are only sending or receiving a small amount of bitcoin, then you might be willing to accept the risk of trusting a single confirmation. For larger transactions, the general rule of thumb is to wait for six confirmations, or approximately one hour, before accepting that the transaction is final. For extremely large transactions, it makes sense to wait a day or two before accepting them as final.
Some merchants will accept a large number of transactions transactions with zero confirmations, so that you can receive what you pay for right away without requiring you to wait for more confirmations. Deciding how many confirmations you want to wait for depends on your risk tolerance and the value of the bitcoin you are sending or receiving.
How to Send Bitcoin Faster
There are a couple ways that you can speed up the time it takes to send bitcoin. The most common method is to pay a higher transaction fee so that miners will prioritize your transaction. It can be helpful to choose a bitcoin wallet that lets you set the transaction fee, so you can spend more on a fast transaction, or less if you are not in a hurry. By default, most wallets make you pay a high transaction fee to make the transaction confirm faster.
Another way to make faster bitcoin payments is by using the lightning network, which is a separate payment network built on top of bitcoin, in the same way that web pages are built on top of the internet. The lightning network uses the bitcoin currency but has its own set of rules that are different than the ones used by the bitcoin network. This allows payments to be made almost instantly and with nearly zero fees.
It’s worth noting that in the crypto world, Bitcoin is one of the slowest networks and it’s a big reason why the altcoin market (Ethereum, Litecoin, Solana etc.) even exists in the first place.
Still, most Bitcoin purists would argue the security of BTC more than makes up for the relatively slow speeds.
Summary
Sending bitcoin can be nearly instant for low-value transactions, but can take up to an hour, or even days, depending on the value of the bitcoin you are sending. The general rule of thumb is to wait for six confirmations, which should take around an hour, before accepting that a bitcoin transaction is final.
If you want your bitcoin transaction to send as fast as possible, make sure you include a high enough transaction fee so a large enough number of miners will prioritize your transaction over other, lower fee transactions. Bitcoin transactions cannot be instant, but if you are looking for that type of payment experience then you can choose to buy from merchants who accept zero confirmation transactions, or you could try using the lightning network.
Where to Buy Bitcoin
Ready to invest in crypto? Check out the very best exchanges
Best Crypto Exchanges
Frequently Asked Questions About Sending Bitcoin?
You’ll notice that crypto exchanges have ways of speeding up transactions so you can expect sending Bitcoin to take anywhere form a few seconds to several minutes.
Of course withdrawing from a crypto exchange can take more time because they need to make sure the withdrawal is legitimate so it can take anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour in some cases.
Yes. Sometimes it takes a little more time than sending to a person wallet but you can absolutely transfer from exchange to exchange.
Every time you send Bitcoin you pay a small fee to the miners to validate the transaction. Usually the fee is in the range of $1-$5.
Sometimes crypto exchanges will actually pay the transaction fee but it varies from company to company.
It depends. If you send Bitcoin to a completely invalid address then the transaction will not be valid and won’t be processed.
On the hand if you accidentally send your Bitcoin to a legitimate address then it will be sent and you’re very unlikely to ever recovery it.
Type in your addresses carefully!
Strike is a Bitcoin-based app that uses the Lightning Network to provide nearly instantaneous transactions with no transaction fees. It’s one of the most popular methods of sending Bitcoin quickly and cheaply, although it’s not available in all jurisdictions.
This is normal and you shouldn’t be worried. Bitcoin usually takes a minimum of 10 mins to go through. If it’s been more than a day you should take a closer look at your transaction history and see if anything has been inputted incorrectly.
It’s worth sending small amounts of Bitcoin to get experienced with the process.
Article Tags
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About the Author
BillyGarrison
BillyGarrison focuses his research and writing on Bitcoin and the Lightning Network. He is interested in the technical details that allow these technologies to survive and grow without the need for a central authority.Billyalso loves helping people learn about Bitcoin which led him to start the Halifax Bitcoin Meetup.
Learn more aboutBilly Garrison
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