How Long Does Bitcoin Take to Send?

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How Long Does Bitcoin Take to Send

Bitcoin is the best currency in the crypto market for over a decade now. It was launched by an entity called Satoshi Nakamoto on January 9th,2009. In this article, we will discuss how long does bitcoin take to send?

Bitcoin transactions take around 10 minutes to complete. The transaction time depends on many factors. Bitcoin transactions are verified by a process known as mining. This is the process through which miners have to solve complex puzzles.

The more the number of transactions, the more difficult mining becomes. Verification of each one of them consumes a lot of time. I will discuss later the detail about, how long does bitcoin takes to send.  

If there is a spike in the transaction then it may take hours or even days for the BTC to reach your wallets. But on normal days it only takes around 10 minutes.

What is a Bitcoin Transaction?

Bitcoin does not exist physically because it is a digital currency. Bitcoin cannot be held in hand. A paper cannot denote the value of bitcoin.

It is a virtual currency that is verified on a secure public ledger called blockchain that has a history of signatures and transactions in it. Your bitcoin contains a public key and a private key.

You can share the public key with others so they can accept your bitcoins. However, the private key is only for you. The private key helps to transact bitcoins.

The information of the transaction is provided by the public key and the transactions are authorized by the private key.

A bitcoin transaction message has three sections. The input is in form of a code that shows the history of bitcoin in the public key. It also shows the source of the coins.

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The second one is the amount which shows the number of bitcoins that are in the transaction. Then comes the output that is the public key or the address of the transaction.

When the blockchain gets the transaction message with these three sections, the miners start to verify the transaction.

In this process, the miners have to solve complicated mathematical problems to make new signatures and update the transaction history for the new transaction that has been made.

What Determines the Transfer Time of Bitcoin?

Bitcoin transfers can take time from 10 minutes to hours, days, and even a week or more. The main reason behind this is that the miners have to verify the transactions and the system can also lag at times.

These factors decide how long does bitcoin take to send. The transactions done are then added to the blocks that are required to be verified and added to the public blockchain.

It takes around 10 minutes to mine a block normally. The transaction time of bitcoin is influenced by transaction fees and the amount of network activity.

The Amount of Network Activity  

The transactions that take place in a day are the network activity of Bitcoin. The more the transactions, the more the network activity. For a 1MB block, there are a limited number of miners who will process the transaction.

Sometimes the network can experience a backlog of transactions waiting to be verified. This happens due to the increasing popularity of Bitcoin.  

There are limited block sizes that are joined into a large pool called bitcoin mempool. The mempool size changes and it changes with increasing wait times, fees, and transaction priority.

If you assume that your transaction is the block and mine, you will get your first confirmation within 10 minutes and the confirmations which are left in 50 minutes.

So, it may take around 60 minutes to transfer the Bitcoins to your wallet.  I hope the problem of how long does bitcoin take to send is getting clear.

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Transaction Fees

Mining is a task that requires technology, effort, scale, and power. So the bitcoin transactions require you to pay the transaction fees.

The fee that you pay, helps to make your transaction a priority. So, this means that the more you pay the miners to get your transaction verified, the faster it will be processed.

If your transaction fee is low the miners will pick your block in the last. This is how the main delay occurs.

The bitcoin transaction fee is expressed in Satoshis per byte, which is one hundred millionth of a bitcoin per byte size of the transaction.  

The bitcoin transaction fee is not always necessary but they make your transaction a priority so that it get verified first.  The transaction fee is set by the users creating the blocks that are to be mined.

Bitcoin is a decentralized currency and is highly volatile. The transaction fee can rise and fall and the wait time may require to stabilize.

The developers building on Bitcoin knows that if you wait for 30 to 60 minutes for a transaction is not acceptable for scaling adoption. 

That is the reason they are working to make new solutions that will make bitcoin transactions quicker. Just like the lighting network once enabled wallets will make the transaction fee less and even reduce the transaction confirmation time.

When is a Transaction Confirmed?

The transaction can only be confirmed when the miner processes your block that has your transaction. If your fee is high, then the miner will process your transaction quickly.

Most of the time the exchanges give a nominal fee to make sure that your transaction is taking place in a limited time.

For transactions under $1000, one confirmation is enough. In the case of Zipmex customers, if the network is busy then the transaction may take around one hour. But normally you can expect around 10 minutes.

The standard for most transactions between $10,000-$1000,000 is 6 confirmation. For transactions above $1000000, sixty confirmations are suggested keeping in mind the safety and the security. The bitcoin transaction status can be checked on Zipmex in the deposit and withdrawal area of your wallet.

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How to Send Bitcoin Faster?

I hope all your queries regarding how long does bitcoin take to send have been solved. You can speed up the time it takes to send bitcoin.

The most common method to speed up the procedure of sending bitcoin is to pay a higher transaction fee. In this way, the miners will prioritize your transaction.

It can help you choose a bitcoin wallet that will let you set the transaction fee, so you can spend on fast transactions. Most of the wallets make you pay a high transaction fee to make the transaction faster.

There is another way to make bitcoin payments faster by using the lightning network. It is a separate payment network that is built on top of bitcoin, just like web pages are built on top of the internet.

The lightning network has its own rules and regulations which differ from the ones used by the bitcoin network. It uses the bitcoin currency.

This allows payments to be made immediately and with no fees at all. So, this is the answer to the question, how long does bitcoin take to send.

FAQ’s Related to Topic

Why is my bitcoin transaction taking so long?

Now.a.days bitcoin traffic is unusually high because there is an increase in demand for transactions per block. The block sizes are limited.

So that’s why the transactions which overtake the capacity for a block get stuck in a line for confirmation by the miners.  

How long does it take for a bitcoin transaction to confirm?

The average bitcoin transaction may take around 10 minutes to get confirmed.

How do I know if my transaction is confirmed yet?

If you receive a confirmation for your transaction, your wallet should update automatically. If the transaction is not confirmed then the funds can be spent again from the sender’s wallet. It may take around 30 days.

Summary

If you want to send bitcoin it can be quick for low-value transactions but it can even take hours and days. It all depends on the value of the bitcoin you are sending.

In general, the rule is to wait for six confirmations, which will take an hour before accepting that the bitcoin transaction is final. To send bitcoin transactions faster you will have to make a high-end transaction so that miners will give your transaction a priority over lower fee transactions.

Bitcoin transactions cannot be so quick. If you are looking for an instant payment experience then you can buy from merchants who accept the zero-confirmation transaction.

You can also use a lightning network. So this was a precise description of how long does bitcoin take to send?

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