Topic: Why does it take so long to confirm? - page 2. (Read 2101 times)

Except when it takes *forever*

It's true, 10 minutes is the norm, but somehow, I seem to often manage to wait at least 20-30 minutes for my first confirmation. But I don't send too often either, so it's a small sample size.

Typically, a transaction takes 10 minutes on average to confirm and any other blocks mined after that will increase your confirmation.

I will say, long confirmation time came in handy once when I was trying to panic sell during a crash. By the time my coins got there, the price had bounced and we were flying back up. 

For the probabilities and statistics of time between blocks, you may refer to the following post.
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.6386925

No, I wouldn't say it's super rare. It will definitely happen from time to time. I just wouldn't call it the norm. The norm would probably be ~ 10 minutes per confirmation.

Oh okay. So pretty much its super rare that would happen to anyone. 

Thanks for helping me understand a bit.

When this happens, it is not because of the fee. No matter how big of a fee was included in the transaction, sometimes miners just don't solve a block for a long time -- like an hour or more. Other times you might get two blocks in 5 minutes. It doesn't happen often in my experience.

Damn, I was going to say isnt .1 big? But that unlucky part, does that happen a lot? I`m new to all this so every input would help.

How often does this happen when you have to wait for a whole hour?

Or would he has to enter .11 or something?

gosh yeah i remember bitcoin was crashing HARD and i was sending some coin to an exchange to panic sell and then it took over 2 hours for 6 confirms! by then it was already bouncing so i did not sell.

Variance. It's supposed to be every 10 minutes, but nothing is perfect.

sometimes if you watch for the next block, though, it literally takes an hour or more for the next block to be found. so it isn't about unconfirmed inputs.

What I've seen happen is that an output spends unconfirmed inputs. So, even thought the transaction paid the correct fee, the underlying inputs didn't. So, those inputs are talking longer to confirm which slows down the outputs that spent them. I've seen this a few times spending from Coinbase. I think they need to clean up there implementation and spend older inputs. Perhaps they just aren't keeping enough BTC in their hot wallet which is causing this, but that is just supposition.

i've waited about 90 minutes before for a single confirmation. it doesn't happen often, though. sometimes i get 2-3 confirmations within only a few minutes. but those times where a single confirmation takes over an hour -- very frustrating.

After a transaction is broadcast to the Bitcoin network, it may be included in a block that is published to the network. When that happens it is said that one confirmation has occurred for the transaction. With each subsequent block that is found, the number of confirmations is increased by one. To protect against double spending, a transaction should not be considered as confirmed until a certain number of blocks confirm, or verify that transaction.

The classic bitcoin client will show a transaction as "n/unconfirmed" until 6 blocks confirm the transaction. Merchants and exchanges who accept bitcoins as payment can set their own threshold as to how many confirmations are required until funds can be considered valid. When potential loss due to double spending as nominal, as with very inexpensive or non-fungible items, payments can be considered confirmed as soon as it is seen on the network. Most exchanges and other merchants who bear the risk from double spending require 6 or more blocks.

There is nothing special about the default, often-cited figure of 6 confirmations. It was chosen based on the assumption that an attacker is unlikely to amass more than 10% of the hashrate, and that a negligible risk of less than 0.1% is acceptable. Both these figures are arbitrary, however; 6 confirmations are overkill for casual attackers, and at the same time powerless against more dedicated attackers with much more than 10% hashrate.[1]
Coins generated aren't considered confirmed by the Bitcoin protocol for 100 blocks. It is advisable to wait some additional time for a better chance that the transaction will be propogated by all nodes. The classic bitcoin client won't show generated coins as confirmed until the 120th block.

Source: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Confirmation

No it's not. 1 confirmation for .1BTC should be enough. You were just unlucky, the miners didn't find blocks for a whole hour.

So I guess .1 is small?

I guess anything 1 btc below is slow as hell.  Cause I waited for my .1 bet and came in so late.

Basically, it's because things are never perfect and exact.
1 Confirmation is enough for payments of small quantities.

I never really understood, because sometimes my transaction are within seconds or mins at most.

But the other day, my transaction was literally past the 1hr mark.. like wtf? 

So seeing this explained a bit, kinda makes sens but I still dont get it lol. 

Exactly. Also, if it isn't a big amount, 1 Confirmation is enough.

Indeed, difficulty has been increasing for more than a year, and the difficulty adjustment is lagging behind (average block time is a bit lower than 10 min even after difficulty adjustment).