How Long Does it Take to Transfer Bitcoin?

Cryptocurrency has been gaining popularity since the year 2010. With names like Elon Musk attached to it, there is no doubt in the fact that cryptocurrency is not going to be just another trend.

It has taken the economy by storm and given the common man financial liberty. In this article, we are going to talk about how you can take this ‘financial liberty’ to a whole new level by knowing just the right way to transfer your Bitcoin money to another Bitcoin wallet.

Time Taken for Completion of One Bitcoin Transaction

Some Bitcoin transactions take about a day or two to complete but some confirm payment within seconds. Bitcoin usually takes ten to twenty minutes for an average amount of Bitcoin transactions. Ethereum, another cryptocurrency in the market, is way faster than Bitcoin in some ways. We cannot really decide on the exact time a transaction will take without discussing the factors that influence the completion of Bitcoin transactions.

What is a Bitcoin Transaction?

There are three steps to every money transaction in the world. The first step is keeping the money ready to give in exchange for an item. The second step is using a medium for the exchange and the third step is finally handing the money to the previous owner of the item.

The item in this scenario is Bitcoin and the medium is called the blockchain. Blockchain is a cryptocurrency network used to connect the receiver to the sender. There are more and more blocks forming as you read this article.

What Influences the Bitcoin Transfer Time?

Bitcoin transactions can take weeks to complete but sometimes a few seconds are more than enough. What makes some transactions slow and some super fast? Read along to know the factors that determine the rate of completion of a Bitcoin transaction.

• Blockchain traffic and network activity:

Blockchain traffic depends on the production or mining of Bitcoins as well as the number of transactions occurring at a given time. Bitcoins are not produced like simple coins, you and I use on a daily basis. People receive Bitcoins upon solving difficult and highly advanced sums. Bitcoins are basically reward coins with every coin having its unique identity. Currently, there are 21 million Bitcoins mined and ready to be used by merchants and investors. Out of these 21 million, only 18 million are being used or circulated in the market.

• Transaction fee: According to CNBC news, the annual electricity consumption of Bitcoin is about 89 terawatts per hour every year. Bitcoin miners indirectly set the price of Bitcoin taking into account the energy consumption. For faster transactions, one can pay these miners an extra fee. So, if your transaction fee is low your transaction is given less priority which directly increases the time taken to complete the transaction. Since there are millions of Bitcoin users and thousands of transactions taking place at one time, Bitcoin exchange platforms charge users a nominal fee to avoid major delays in the transaction.

The 6-Block Confirmation Period

After the sender of a Bitcoin transaction clicks on ‘Send’ the graphic user interface of the website or mobile application does show ‘Payment Successful’ but it actually takes some time to enter the blockchain and remains there until a 6-block confirmation procedure is completed.

On an average, it takes around ten minutes to find each block. So, this means that for a complete Bitcoin transaction to be successful, it might take around sixty minutes or so. No matter how much math is involved in calculating the rate of completion, nothing can be precisely said.

Once the transaction goes through one block, another block is added to the chain and this goes on until the transaction completes all six blocks.

Bitcoin Memory Pool

The Bitcoin memory pool also called as mempool is a list of unconfirmed Bitcoin transactions. You can think of it as a sea of loosely bound Bitcoins. These transactions are new Bitcoin transactions that have just entered the blockchain. There is not a single mempoop but thousands of them exist all around the globe. Visit this website to get a clear idea about what kind of information mempool provides.

Mempool are a great source of keeping track of the number of transactions occurring in a given period of time. They tell you about the minimum fee to complete a transaction.

Block Explorers

After your transaction has been completed and confirmed by the website or mobile application you are using, you can hop on to the  Block Explorer. This website shows you your Bitcoin transactions upon entering the transaction ID.

If the transfer is on its way, it will show ‘unconfirmed transaction’ and if it’s completed, it will show ’1 confirmed transaction’. Use this website to know exactly the amount you transferred, the time of transaction and the fee involved during the entire transaction process.

Conclusion

Bitcoins are highly volatile in nature. You must make sure you have the correct wallet address of the receiver in the transaction. There are websites and mobile applications that help you create your own Bitcoin wallet and offer you a platform to buy, sell and store cryptocurrencies. The world is changing and so do we have to. In this world of risks and money, remember that everything is a suggestion and not an advice.

Once the transaction is completed, make sure to transfer all your Bitcoins from the website’s wallet to your own Bitcoin wallet to reduce the risk of getting it stolen. Before you start with the transaction, do a background check of the receiver and go through the payment methods he or she uses. Check out Crypto Method and start investing in Bitcoins.