How Long Does It Take to Send or Receive Bitcoin?

Blockchain is a distributed ledger designed to transfer digital money safely without the help of an intermediary, such as a bank. The transactions are encoded in data blocks with the help of cryptology and later added to the blockchain by miners who control the input and output of data added to the peer-to-peer network. 

While this innovative system ensures the safety of your cryptocurrency transactions, some blockchains still have difficulty processing the transactions faster than banks. To this end, we’ll review the process that takes place on the Bitcoin blockchain and see how long it takes to send or receive Bitcoin on this public ledger.

But first, let’s get back to some Bitcoin blockchain basics.

How Does the Bitcoin Network Function?

The Bitcoin cryptocurrency project was created with the aim of providing decentralized digital currencies that would be transacted in a fast, safe, and easy way without the help of an intermediary. 

The decentralized architecture of the Bitcoin cryptocurrency platform functions as an open-source ledger where every transaction is recorded in a specialized unit labeled as a block, which is added to the innovative blockchain structure when verified by the Bitcoin miners. 

The Bitcoin blockchain is underpinned by the Proof-of-Work consensus protocol, which supports the validation and confirmation of the blocks on the blockchain. To validate a new transaction data block, the miners need to provide proof of their work by calculating a complex mathematical puzzle imposed by the PoW protocol. 

When the miners provide the calculation result as proof of validation and consensus is reached among all the network nodes, the new transaction data block is added to the blockchain. 

What Is the Blocksize Limit of the Bitcoin Blockchain?

According to Bitcoin’s whitepaper, the Bitcoin blockchain is limited to 1 MB, which is sufficient to store more than 2,000 transactions.

On the other hand, Bitcoin’s blockchain is unlimited by size, whereas most blockchains limit the number of transactions that can be processed. To be more specific, as long as there is one Bitcoin miner (a specialized computer unit used to calculate the cryptographic puzzle imposed by the Proof-of-Work (PoW) protocol) active in the process of mining new bitcoins, a 1 MB block carrying the transaction data can be added to the blockchain. 

By this, a Bitcoin block is limited in size, but the blockchain can keep growing limitlessly with the confirmation of new transaction blocks. 

The limited size of the blocks added to the blockchain and the underpinning PoW protocol constitutes the basic transaction processing operation on the Bitcoin ledger. As the computation puzzles imposed by this protocol demand strong miners and a lot of electrical power and time, the transactions take longer, while the processing costs are higher. 

How Long Does It Take to Send or Receive Bitcoin?

It usually takes 10 to 20 minutes for a Bitcoin transaction to be verified and confirmed on the Bitcoin blockchain. However, the confirmation time can vary greatly from transaction to transaction, as it depends on several factors, such as network congestion, the hash rate, and the transaction fees levied by the platform. 

If there are many transaction data blocks pending to be verified on the network, the platform will create a mempool that will serve as a backlog of all transactions that are yet to be confirmed by the miners. In turn, this will result in higher confirmation times and transaction costs. Every time a transaction data block becomes verified and added to the blockchain, this mempool of unconfirmed blocks gets cleared. 

At this point, it’s good to know that the transactions with higher fees will have verification priority over the ones that have incurred lower transaction fees. This means that the low-fee transactions will probably have to wait for more than one block to be verified before they get their turn to be confirmed on the blockchain.  

Given the foregoing, it would be reasonable to conclude that paying a higher transaction fee will get you a ‘faster-lane ticket’ toward faster transaction confirmation. 

Why Do Higher Fees Give Priority to the Bitcoin Blockchain Confirmations?

Whenever you are sending a Bitcoin transaction, you’ll need to provide an incentive for the miners who are trying to solve the complex mathematical puzzle imposed by the Proof-of-Work algorithm.

As the name of this protocol implies, the miners are practically putting all their efforts, time, and resources into validating your transaction on the blockchain. Here are the details. 

Since they are updating the network in real time, the miners’ work also leaves little to no room for any data manipulation on the network, thus protecting your funds and maintaining a safe blockchain environment for everyone. For this, the miners need to be rewarded. 

How Many Confirmations Does it Take for a Bitcoin Transaction to Go Through?

When a given transaction is verified and encrypted in a new transaction data block, this counts as one confirmation. The next block will be lined up for verification in about 10 or more minutes, including the new transaction and all the previous ones. This means that this will be the second confirmation of the transaction we took as an example in the first place. 

Some exchanges are able to process the transaction after only one confirmation, while others take several confirmations on the blockchain until the transaction goes through. 

When it comes to the Bitcoin blockchain, it usually takes several blockchain confirmations for a transaction to be cleared. By performing several confirmations, the miners avoid the double-spending issue of this blockchain. 

Namely, when there are several transactions with the same item, there’s a theoretical possibility that the transaction information contained in one of the transaction data blocks is modified, which could leave room for the investor to reclaim the same cryptocurrencies and use them again. 

Having this possibility in mind, the Bitcoin developer has constructed the blockchain system where every new data block is added to the previous ones while updating information across the entire network. In this way, the possibility of double-spending is almost impossible, as the network nodes would instantly detect any modification of the data of a block. 

Long story short, it will usually take up to six blockchain confirmations and about an hour to have your Bitcoin transaction confirmed on the blockchain, in case you’re trading a larger volume of bitcoins. 

Is There a Way to Speed Up a Bitcoin Confirmation?

As we already mentioned, prepare to wait for the miners to verify the higher fee transactions first if the transaction you submit for verification is a low-fee one. So, paying more for a transaction is one of the ways to speed up the verification process. 

Alternatively, you can transfer your bitcoins off-peak when the network is less congested. You can easily check the network’s mempools through a dedicated site like Blockchain.com’s explorer or directly check the Bitcoin blockchain’s volume. 

Conclusion

Compared to fiat currencies, the benefits of using Bitcoin in your transactions are multiple. As this cryptocurrency utilizes revolutionary blockchain technology, which is considered among the safest solutions for transferring money via the Internet, your Bitcoin transactions are generally safe, fast, and cost-efficient. They are also highly practical, as you can send or receive bitcoins from the comfort of your home any time you want. 

Being the world’s first officially recognized cryptocurrency, Bitcoin is widely accepted as a means of payment for your bills, everyday services, and more. The only thing you should consider is the time of the confirmation of your Bitcoin transaction on the blockchain, which, in some cases, could take an hour.