Bitcoin transaction tracking. Bitcoin transaction confirmation time: how long to wait

Bitcoins being electronic currency, can be used to conclude transactions and pay for goods or services. But since they only exist in electronic form, they can only be used to pay online. At the same time, the created system requires confirmation of each completed operation. This is the only way to achieve safety and security of financial transactions.

But how to check how long it will take to transfer funds, how to get confirmation of a Bitcoin transaction in the blockchain? Sometimes the time it takes to receive goods and even the conclusion of important transactions depends on these issues.

To find out how many checks are required to complete a transaction and how long to wait for funds to arrive, you need to understand the features of cryptocurrency transfers. This process consists of several stages:

the addressee poisons the money;
information about transactions is compiled into special blocks, each of which has a number and hash (special data);
then the blocks are sent to different computers for verification;
if everything is done correctly, the information received adds to various databases;
verified blocks complement the overall chain;
the money goes to the recipient.

To complete a transfer, the transaction must be verified in 6 blocks. If this does not happen, the crypto money will not reach the final recipient. Accordingly, the time of sending finance depends on the speed of confirmations.

Bitcoin transaction confirmation time: how long to wait?

Having understood how transactions occur, you should find out what affects the speed of processing and verification of information. To speed up the process, you need to know what can slow it down. Usually the final time is affected by:

network congestion;
sharp fluctuations in the exchange rate;
low commission.

The influence of the first factor is especially noticeable. When the system needs to process many requests, users have to wait. You have to wait especially long on days of peak activity, which are rare, but they do happen.

The commission paid to miners is also of great importance. The larger it is, the higher the priority will be. The size of the transaction also has an additional impact: sending larger amounts is much faster.

In general, Bitcoin holders should expect anywhere from 2-3 hours to 2 days.

Bitcoin transaction accelerator: ways to speed up confirmation

Theoretically, it is impossible to speed up the confirmation of Bitcoin transactions. Because it is impossible to increase the data processing speed on someone else's computer. But in reality everything is somewhat different. Cryptocurrency holders have several options:

increasing the size of the commission;
using proven reliable wallets;
opening a transaction;
using multifunctional wallets that support multi-signature creation.

Additionally, those interested can use alternative option, which involves preparing transactions in reserve. This option requires the creation of private, wallet-independent Bitcoin addresses. At the right time, it is enough to simply hand over the keys to the recipient, and they will easily take their cryptocurrency.

It is worth remembering that, despite the absence of the need to worry and think about how long to wait for funds to arrive, this approach is only available experienced users, therefore, you should not check its effectiveness without having enough knowledge and practice.

Transaction confirmation

Sending cryptocurrency is important not only for the sender, but also for the final recipient of cyber money. Sometimes, when you don’t want to wait for the funds to arrive, you can simply confirm their sending. In situations where the use of accelerators is inconvenient or impossible, you can use two convenient approaches that can confirm the recipient’s honesty even before the operation is completed. Users can:

choose convenient wallet, supporting confirmation of the transfer (this wallet must be used by both parties);
use the functionality of the site blockchai.info.

When choosing option 2, it is enough to know the payment hash. It should be communicated to the recipient so that he can enter the received numbers in a special field on the mentioned website. These steps will allow you to see everything necessary information about the transaction, and the participants in the transaction will stop thinking about how to push the cryptocurrency.

Bitcoin transaction: acceleration

Depending on the conditions, the time for making a bitcoin payment can be either instant or delayed for several days. Therefore, in order not to find yourself in a difficult situation, you should think through all the details in advance and decide how to speed up the process. A highest value has the size of the commission and the reliability of the selected wallet. If miners receive a good reward, the priority of data processing will increase sharply. And a high-quality payment resource can do financial transaction instant.

Sending or receiving bitcoin is simple. But behind this elementary process lies a whole ecosystem.

Its cornerstone is transaction confirmation.

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Why do you need Bitcoin when there are a whole bunch of banks?

Although many crypto enthusiasts believe that cryptocurrency can completely reshape the global financial system, the principle of its operation is very similar to traditional banking fundamentals.

Let's say a person from Europe needs to send money to his grandmother in South Africa. He goes with them to the bank. The financial institution accepts the money and sends it to its intermediary – the correspondent bank. He, in turn, sends the money directly to the South African bank, where the grandmother can finally collect it.

Each of these banks verifies the identity of the original customer and their money. Because of this, a bank “parcel” can take more than a week to reach the final recipient.

Moreover, it itself can grow depending on the country of location of the sending bank and its working currency.

Bitcoin- the most famous cryptocurrency in the world - allows you to get rid of this long chain of intermediaries, as well as speed up and reduce the cost of the process.

But, just like with a bank transfer, the transaction on the Bitcoin network must be confirmed. Without verification, the recipient will never be able to receive crypto coins.

How and who confirms transactions on the Bitcoin network

Miners are the “worker bees” of the Bitcoin blockchain.

Most of those “uninitiated” in the principles of operation of cryptocurrencies believe that the main purpose of miners is . This is wrong.

The main task of miners is to confirm transactions. They do this by mining blocks. Each block in the Bitcoin network weighs 1MB.

When information about transfers “clogs” this entire space, the block is considered closed and confirmed.

For mining, miners use large computing power. The first miner to close a block receives a reward for his work in the form of bitcoins.

Each transaction on the Bitcoin network must receive 6 confirmations. This means that information on it is still included in 6 subsequent blocks.

The creators of Bitcoin came up with this system in order to avoid double spending of the same cryptocurrency, otherwise anyone could use crypto coins in endless quantities.

As soon as the miners confirm the transaction 6 times, the bitcoins arrive at the recipient’s address and he can dispose of them.

Some services may change the number of confirmations for crediting to the balance.

Magic number

The number 6 was not chosen by chance. The theory says that in this protection system, an attacker must accumulate more than 10% of the power of the entire network in order to double spend Bitcoin.

Crypto fraudsters would have to invest millions of dollars in computing power of this level.

Therefore, the six reduces the risk of such a situation occurring.

On the other hand, they may well receive 6 confirmations in a row and verify the transfer.

The miners themselves can use the bitcoins they received as rewards only after confirming 100 blocks.

Proof of Work

To make the Bitcoin network fair, the creators came up with the concept Proof of Work– proof of the work done.

According to this concept, the more power a miner has, the greater the likelihood that he will receive a reward for verification.

Proof of Work in the Bitcoin network has disadvantages: miners compete with each other and over time, more and more power is required to find a block.

Because of this they become more expensive.

Moreover, the amount of energy consumed is increasing, which harms the entire planet.

Can I become a Bitcoin miner?

Yes. Anyone can become a miner. True, now the “entry point” is too high. There are millions of miners in the world.

Some have huge data centers that cost hundreds of millions of dollars.

To compete with them, you will have to fork out a lot for equipment and electricity.

That's why regular users Those coins that cost less are mined, but their generation is not so expensive.

How to speed up Bitcoin transaction confirmation

Every crypto investor can speed up Bitcoin transaction confirmation.

First way– increase the translation priority. For this you will have to pay a higher commission to the miners.

Second option– send bitcoin with multi-signature. considers such translations as more reliable, and accordingly, they are more likely to undergo verification. Multisignature also increases the security of the transfer itself.

Third way- be “open”. considered open when a block is written to full information about the identity of the sender and recipient. The speed of getting into a block increases, but one of the main principles of cryptocurrencies – anonymity – suffers.

So you’ve been “standing” here for the second year already! Yes, I’m waiting for confirmation of the bitcoin transaction. He probably appointed a small commission. (From an anecdote overheard on the blockchain)

Simpler, faster and easier! I will be guided by these “slogans” in order to clearly explain to you how long it takes to confirm a transaction. But first, let's list the questions that we will try to answer:

How does this work?

Sorry, but I will “load” 😉 Without this, it will not be possible to understand the principle of manipulation with cryptocurrency.

1) Information about transactions with bitcoins is recorded in special blocks, which represent a list of transactions. If you add blocks into a chain, you will get the history of the “circulation” of the cryptocurrency.

2) A block consists of a header and a list of transactions. The header contains the hash codes of the transactions, its own and the hash of the previous block. The first in the list is a transaction that specifies the reward (commission) for creating a new block.

3) To verify the authenticity of cryptocurrency transactions, transactions must be validated on the blockchain. It is a distributed database. Parts of it are stored on many computers on the Bitcoin network.

Confirming and recording transaction data into blocks is a complex process and requires powerful equipment. Computing processes take place on the side of the user connected to Bitcoin.

Confirming a transaction is when it is added to the list of transactions in a block.

After a transaction with cryptocurrency is carried out, the accounts on the sender’s and recipient’s sides are not updated immediately. In traditional custom applications To confirm a transaction, six blocks must be found that prove its validity.

In this case, the user performing the operation can reduce the number of checks. This should be done if you are dealing with a small amount of bitcoins. This simplifies and speeds up the transaction confirmation process.

If the crypto money transfer has not been verified, the system returns the funds back to the sender’s wallet.

How long to wait?

On average it takes me from 20 minutes to an hour.

The waiting time depends on several components:

1)Congestion of the “crypto network”— over the past two years, the number of transactions with bitcoins has increased more than 8 times. This can be seen in the graph below.

It shows the growth in the number of trillions of hashes performed per second on the Bitcoin network.

There are also spikes in the grid, when the average number of transactions in blocks increases, and the size of the blocks itself increases to a critical value. This happened last year.

A similar situation also arises when a huge number of unconfirmed transactions accumulate.

2) Small commission– in the “crypto network” transactions with large size rewards for miners. In some cases, if you save a lot, the confirmation procedure may take several days.

3) Cryptocurrency rate jumps– also increases verification time.

Here is a video that talks about a similar case on blockchain.

How can I find out how many confirmations have passed?

I advise those who are looking for “who knows what” regarding their (and not only) transactions with bitcoins to go to blockchain.info. Here you can find any information on blocks and transactions. And also “monitor” the general situation on the market.

To find out how many confirmations have passed for a certain transaction, go to the platform indicated above and enter search bar known hash. After this, information about the block will be displayed.

At the bottom of the page there is a list of transactions carried out with it. Click on the one you need and get the desired value.

How to increase speed?

Methods to reduce transaction time:

Increased commission for miners - experts advise “not to be greedy” and pay 0.0002 BTC or more for confirmation.
The volume of transferred funds - the more cryptocurrency you transfer, the higher the status of the operation in the “crypto network”.
Using specialized platforms like coinbase.com - on such services, buyers and sellers save their keys. Thanks to this, confirmation occurs within this platform, and not on the general network.

Using Bitcoin wallets with the function of creating a multi-signature - on such services, to confirm a transaction with cryptocurrency, the user will only need to indicate private key. The second “signature” is the service key. This way, money and time are not wasted on confirming the transaction.

This is the overview for beginners taking their first steps towards cryptocurrency. I hope my material will help you take these steps more confidently!

The Bitcoin network stores information about all transactions throughout the history of the cryptocurrency.

If a crypto investor is worried about the status of the transfer, he can easily track the status.

Detailed instructions– how to find and verify a Bitcoin transaction.

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How to send bitcoins

A transaction on the Bitcoin network is essentially remittance. Only it is much faster and simpler.

To implement it, the owner of the cryptocurrency will need only one thing - the recipient’s payment details.

For convenience, in most crypto wallets it is generated in the form of a QR code.

If you don't have a device that reads QR codes at hand, you can always copy the address as a unique set of characters.

When the recipient's details and the BTC amount are entered, you can safely send bitcoins.

It's not that simple

Behind this seemingly simple process lies a unique and vast world where everyone does their job.

So, before the transaction arrives in the recipient’s account, it must be confirmed by miners.

They do this through prey.

Each of them holds only a certain amount of data. This is due to its size of 1 MB.

When this space is filled, the block is considered closed. After this, the data cannot be changed.

Each subsequent block stores information about the previous one. When the BTC transfer information reaches 6 blocks, it is considered confirmed.

How to search for bitcoins

Information is stored according to a certain structure, which allows you to obtain details about any translation.

Each block contains the following information:

Version;
Date of creation;
Code (hash) of the newly created block;
Hash of the previous one;
Hash codes of all transactions contained in the block.

Also here you can find the details of the sender and recipient of Bitcoin in the form of wallet numbers, as well as the quantity. It is this data that allows you to find your BTC among hundreds of others. It is worth noting that in the Bitcoin network it is impossible to cancel the sending, as well as change data about it. Therefore, before sending BTC to someone, you should carefully check the details.

Where to check Bitcoin (BTC) transaction

You can find your bitcoins and check the transaction status using the Blockchain.info resource.

To do this, you need to go to the official website and enter the wallet address, transaction or block hash, or IPv4 address in the search bar.

Blockchain.info will give details about the address:

Total number of transactions;
How many bitcoins are transferred to this wallet;
Final balance.

Blockchain.info will also tell you about all the wallets that have ever transferred coins or accepted bitcoins in the bundle of the desired number, the amount of BTC and the date.

These details can be filtered by sender, recipient, and verification status.

Check the status of a Bitcoin transaction - click on your address and see from the inside all the transfer data, including: amount, date, commission and the number of current confirmations.

The first confirmation tells us that the money has not yet reached the recipient, since at least five more confirmations must be received.

Blockchain.info, in addition to searching for your own bitcoins, provides quite interesting statistics.

Another option

Chain.so is another resource that allows you to find your bitcoins.

The search principle is the same: enter the address, transaction or block hash.

Chain.so will return all available details. Unique number, confirmation status, transfer amount.

Chain.so will tell you about all transactions contained in the block, the addresses of the sender and recipient, as well as the amount of the transfer fee paid.

You can also see on Chain.so which miners worked more hard. Here you can create your own.

The Bitcoin blockchain is a chain of blocks that includes a public database with information about all transactions with, that is, the transfer of BTC from one recipient to another.

Each element of the block chain of the blockchain network stores:

history of previous operations;
information about new transactions.

Thus, a blockchain is a linked list in which each subsequent entry refers to one previous one and so on down the chain until the very first transaction in the network.

Material navigation:

What are transactions on the Bitcoin network?

Information about transactions with bitcoins is recorded in special blocks, which represent a list of transactions. If you add blocks into a chain, you will get the history of the “circulation” of the cryptocurrency.

A block consists of a header and a list of transactions. The header contains the hash codes of the transactions, its own and the hash of the previous block. The first in the list is a transaction that specifies the reward (commission) for creating a new block.

To verify the authenticity of cryptocurrency transactions, transactions must be validated on the blockchain. It is a distributed database. Parts of it are stored on many computers on the Bitcoin network.

Confirming a transaction is when it is added to the list of transactions in a block.

After a transaction with cryptocurrency is carried out, the accounts on the sender’s and recipient’s sides are not updated immediately. In traditional user applications, to confirm a transaction, six blocks must be found that prove its validity.

If the crypto money transfer has not been verified, the system returns the funds back to the sender’s wallet.

Transaction time in the Bitcoin blockchain

On average, a transaction takes from 20 minutes to 60 minutes, but at times of peak load this time can be increased many times.

The waiting time depends on the load on the blockchain network. Over the past two years, the number of transactions with bitcoins has increased more than 8 times. This can be seen in the graph below:

It shows the growth in the number of trillions of hashes performed per second on the Bitcoin network. There are also bursts in the network when the average number of transactions in blocks increases, and the size of the blocks itself increases to a critical value.

Methods to reduce transaction time:

Increased commission for miners - experts advise “not to be greedy” and pay 0.0002 BTC or more for confirmation.
The volume of transferred funds - the more cryptocurrency you transfer, the higher the status of the operation in the “crypto network”.
Using specialized platforms like coinbase.com - on such services, buyers and sellers save their keys. Thanks to this, confirmation occurs within this platform, and not on the general network.

How to check a Bitcoin transaction?

You can track your Bitcoin transaction using public services (no registration required):

To find out how many network confirmations have passed for a certain transaction, go to the Blockchain.info or Chain.so site and enter the transaction hash known to you in the search bar. After this, all information about the block and its current status will be displayed.

Confirmed and unconfirmed transactions

The process of including a transaction in a found block is called transaction confirmation. Inclusion in 1 block = 1 confirmation, when 6 or more such confirmations are collected, the transaction is considered confirmed. This function was introduced to protect against repeated spending of the same bitcoins.

A classic Bitcoin client will display a transaction as “unconfirmed” until there are 6 confirmations (6 blocks found). Sites or services that accept Bitcoin for payment for their goods or services may set their own restrictions on the number of blocks needed to confirm a transaction.

The number 6 was not chosen by chance: it is based on the theory that the likelihood that an attacker could accumulate more than 10% of the network hashrate to forge transactions is small, and that a negligible risk (less than 0.1%) is acceptable.

How to Accelerate Bitcoin Transaction?

Let's look at several ways to use the blockchain system in “high-speed mode”:

Use of centralized services with a separate transaction system. There are resources offering creation and use services that conduct digital currency transactions between their clients without involving the blockchain ecosystem. Such services offer their clients instant transactions, but only if the currency transfer occurs within the system. One such service is Coinbase. It has a transaction system separate from the blockchain, thanks to which transfers can be made almost instantly.
Using multisignature to speed up transaction confirmation in the Bitcoin system. Some companies, such as GreenAddress, in addition to the standard transaction signature provided by the system, put their own multi-signature as confirmation of the reliability of the transfer. The blockchain system considers such transactions as reliable and they are quickly accepted into the generated block. In addition, the use of multi-signature technology increases the security of cryptocurrency transactions.
Use of open transactions and trust servers. The bottom line is that an open transaction, when all the information about the sending and receiving side is present, quickly receives confirmation from the system by accepting the data into the generated block. But few people use open Bitcoin transactions, since this contradicts the very idea of using digital currency, namely the anonymity of money transfers.

Speed up your transaction with Opt-In Replace-by-fee

The easiest way to force your transaction to jump the queue is to use an option called Opt-InReplace-by-Fee (Opt-InRBF). With its help, you can resend the same transaction, but with a higher commission.

Without this feature, when a transaction on the network is resent with an increased fee, the network rejects the new transaction. Bitcoin nodes usually consider a new transaction to be a double spend and therefore do not accept or delay it.

However, by sending a transaction using Opt-InRBF, you are essentially telling the network that you can resend that transaction at a later date, but at a higher fee. As a result, most Bitcoin nodes accept the new transaction instead of the old one; thus, the new transaction jumps the queue.

Whether your transaction will be included in the next block depends on which miner mines new block: Not all miners use Opt-InRBF. Either way, this option is supported by enough miners that your transaction will be included in the next few blocks.

Currently, the Opt-InRBF function is supported by at least two wallets: Electrum and GreenAddress. IN Bitcoin Core it is supported when processing transactions, but creating your own RBF transactions is only possible using third-party scripts. Depending on the wallet, you may need to update the Opt-InRBF in the menu settings before sending the (first) transaction.

Bitcoin transaction fees

A special feature of the Bitcoin system is the fact that the user can set the commission amount at his own discretion. But the duration of the transfer directly depends on this value. The larger its amount, the higher the priority level of the corresponding operation and the less time it takes to receive confirmation from the system.

IN Bitcoin blockchain Transactions with a large reward amount are validated first. In some cases, if you save a lot, the confirmation procedure may take several days.

What commission? set so that the transaction does not hang - table!

The size of the commission does not depend on the transaction amount, but depends only on the transaction size in Bytes. A transaction is essentially a script that takes up a certain space in Bytes, and the larger it is, the harder it is for miners to process.

Below is a table of priorities for including a transaction in a block. The recommended commission is predicted taking into account the load of the Bitcoin network for quick confirmation Your transaction.

The last column in the table shows the forecast for a payment with a transaction fee corresponding to this line to fall within the confirmation time interval from 0 to 25 minutes.

How to conduct anonymous transactions on the Bitcoin network?

Also, if necessary, you can find out; a detailed manual is available on our website.

This guide will help you create a safe environment in which you can anonymously communicate, browse the web, and, of course, receive and send bitcoins.

It will also be useful to familiarize yourself with (some of which are still in development).