Topic: Why is BTC transaction so slow (Read 604 times)

Until a miner confirms the transaction, the transactions are considered unconfirmed or pending. Approximately one new block is created every ten minutes. In other words, bitcoin transactions cannot be completed quickly. In a busy network, transactions take longer to process.

Bitcoin have the issue of scalability. Once there are too many transactions at the same time, it becomes difficult for Bitcoin network to handle such large amounts of transaction data on its platform in a short span of time. For example, Bitcoin (BTC) can only handle 4.6 TPS while Binance Smart Chain can process around 160 TPS. Bitcoin’s low TPS results in the blockchain’s inability to handle large amounts of transactions, which leads to slow transactions.

Now bitcoin does not symbolize the speed of the transaction, instead the cost is more expensive so I think it is very inefficient especially if I only want to transact with a small nominal

Are you transact bitcoin from legacy to seg-wit ? As we know that SegWit wallet is known as more faster transaction and lower fees. If you use legacy then it may be cost little more time from SegWit. There may be another reason that the high volume. And also bitcoin provide the best security so I these are the cause for the latency.
You could use others alt-coin for faster transaction (ltc,eth,matic,bnb)

To mine a block, miners must solve a proof of work problem.
As the proof of work problem is solved through brute-force method, there is no way to know when exactly it will be solved. Given the difficulty of the proof-work problem, we only know that blocks are mined (roughly) every 10 minutes on average.
If the fee you pay for your transaction is high enough, your transaction will be included in the next block. But the time it takes for the next block to be found does't depend on the fee you paid at all. In the case it takes 1 hour for miners to find the solution, you have to wait 1 hour even if you have paid a very high fee.

I want to get a little explanation about this case:
When the user pays the optimal fee so that his transaction will go in the next block, what makes the next block confirmed more than 1 hour?

My assumption: On average each block will be confirmed in 10 minutes, but when the transaction uses the optimal fee to be entered into the next block, then I think the transaction will not take much time to get confirmation. If my statement is wrong then I hope some one can correct it.

You are wrong too.
The block time isn't exactly 10 minutes. Blocks are mined (roughly) every 10 minutes on average.
A block may be confirmed a few seconds after the previous one. It's also possible that it takes more than an hour.

This is not exactly true, since the bitcoin block time is 10 minutes. Meaning if you pay the maximum fee, you will end up with a confirmation time from 10 minutes to 1 second. So to get a faster transaction time a faster block time would be needed.

The average time of bitcoin transaction is 10 minutes. But you can use bitcoin's second layer ( lightning network) which is faster than even your visa master card

1) Bitcoin lightning network simply explained
2) Bitcoin lightning network: How to send and receive payments

The transaction speed is slow because of both the amount of transactions taking place and by design. With each new block coming every 10 minutes, the minimum amount of time a transaction can take is 10 minutes. The block time can be reduced, but that doesn’t guarantee transactions will be faster, because that will depend also on the amount of transactions (in size) and the size of the blocks

This problem really exists, especially when there is congestion on the Bitcoin blockchain, so if you are in a hurry, you should use a wallet that gives you the advantage of controlling fees and then you can increase the fees to carry out your transaction quickly, but if you do not want to increase the fees, you have to wait a little. In addition, the use of SegWit addresses helps in speeding up the transaction and reducing fees. You should choose a good wallet such as Electrium or Wasabi that gives you SegWit addresses and also gives you the advantage of reducing or increasing fees as desired.

Personally I haven't heard about the Lightning network, if bitcoin did develop it, bitcoin would no longer be an absolute asset store, the strength that makes bitcoin so valuable today because of that, there weren't many methods used to develop bitcoin in the past, they only positioning bitcoin as a storage asset, then is it possible that the owner or development will make a new breakthrough, which actually makes them no longer a full asset repository

Like some persons have said, the reason why your transaction is slow in getting a confirmation is because the blockchain fee you attached to your transaction is too low, maybe try to increase your transaction fee next time if you need a near instant transaction confirmation.
The above being said, I personally would prefer to keep my Bitcoins as a store of value than spend them on paying for goods and services in a store, for making payments, I believe there are many altcoins out there with cheaper fees and faster transaction confirmation that can be used perfectly for payments of goods and services.

Lightning Network or LN might be a great and ideal use especially if you're dealing with a transaction in a real time matter as it provides a fast transaction. Unfortunately, not all wallet provides option to use LN on them which is one of the conflict that must be done. Also, just as the OP did not use or may not know LN, more people doesn't really understand how LN work.

Haven't you heard of the Lightning network? Moreover there are new solutions being built like scannable chips, paper-like "vouchers" from which those who scan them can claim a certain amount of Bitcoin instantly. We have great minds developing on the Bitcoin network so we should only expect incrementally better solutions for making day-to-day payments.

Nevertheless, I think Bitcoin's main use case is being a store-of-value asset and not a currency to use for mundane expenses.

It has happened to me maybe 2-3 times that the time between blocks was about 60 minutes or a little less, but that rarely happens - it's much more common to wait about 20-25 minutes, and I've noticed that this happens very often at a certain time, although I don’t know what exactly the reasons are for it. What many people don’t know is how insecure transactions with many alts actually are given that some need hundreds or even thousands of confirmations to be considered secure.

10 minutes is faster than the average. Even if you set up a high fee you can be waiting up to un hour or more until de next block gets confirmed. So if you get desperate after 5 minutes, I don't know what you'll do when you have to wait for an hour.


Wrong. As I explained above, there are times when the next block doesn't get confirmed in an hour or more, and the high fee doesn't speed up the next block confirmation process. So when you say that you will get your transaction confirmed in less than 5 minutes by changing the fee, you need to brush up on the basics of transactions.

Due to rising demand for transactions per block, bitcoin network traffic is currently exceptionally high. Due to the restriction on block sizes, transactions that are larger than the block's capacity are placed in a queue for confirmation by bitcoin miners.

It can be frustrating most time especially when you need to do an urgent transaction

I guess you have not been following the developments in Bitcoin and only relied on some random youtubers promoting their altcoins. Yes you still see the 10 minutes (on average) confirmation time but you seldom see the heavy congestions in the network these days. 20 sats per byte is already considered cheap before, use the same fee today and your transaction will most likely be on the highest priority.

You shouldn't ask too much about bitcoin, is the first blockchain network and it is completely decentralized. It is true that bitcoin transactions are processed more slowly because bitcoin's block size is smaller than today's altcoins, and transactions on the blockchain become more sluggish when there are many transactions being made at the same time. If you are in a hurry to trade then increase the priority fee or you can use altcoin instead.

yep everything had already the answer why is getting slow because the mempool is very small, the transcation is a lot and the fee is normal if you are using high fee than you will get approved but there is solution like lightning network or using segwitbech32 address to gain less fee

and usually merchant that accept bitcoin is not directly send they using third part app or only need 1 confirmation. and accept other crypto like litecoin eth or token

This has something to do with the fees associated with your transaction. The more people that use the network, the more delay would be incurred. As you increased the fees, then the priority also increases as miners would be able to prefer your transaction. Like what some suggested, you may opt to convert your BTC to some certain altcoins and you may transfer such to your wallet (if they offer altcoins on your wallet).

Remember that all of the transactions are posted on a ledger, so that means that the confirmations would take at least some time before they all become valid and confirmed.

Being the first one to lead and create an environment for others is the reason why Bitcoin's payment transaction is slow.
However, it's still faster than asking your bank to send $2 million to your friend in another country by just 3 clicks and waiting 5 minutes.
Ofcourse other blockchains do have advantage but why aren't they priced much higher than BTC? That's what you should ask yourself.

People up to now are still complaining with btc transaction and it is very understandable. It is one of the reasons why the adoption in using it as payment method is not very fast. The use of LN would be a very good solution but not many crypto users are well aware how to use it and so with the merchants or shops. If the transaction is fast and cheap, I believe, many people will use it for payment purposes. But until then, most are storing it for potential investments.

blocks are maid on average every 10 minutes.. by him getting a confirm in less than that means he paid optimum fee to ensure he got in the very next block.. so its not a fee issue.

paying more would not result in any faster time then the next block

emphasis to all responses about fees.. ITS NOT A FEE ISSUE.



bitcoin confirmation is the equivalent to wire transfer settled on your/recipients account, not tap and pay debit card 'pending' on your statement.

what your not realising is when you use tap and pay debit card. if you look at your bank statement you usually see the amount in a "pending" column where it takes a day to be in the settled balance column.

bitcoin can be seen by merchants as pending(unconfirmed) and accept a transaction as unconfirmed in milliseconds. but like debit/wire transfer the actual settled account(confirmation) takes longer

for fiat its 24 hours in most cases. .. for bitcoin its about 10 minutes.

if you are buying something small. many merchants can take the risk of accepting tap/pay or bitcoin while pending/unconfirmed. but some that want larger amounts like rent/mortgage payments wont accept it as paid until the funds are settled.

EG places dont accept your rent/mortgage is paid if you hand hem a signed cheque unless that cheque has cleared 5 business days later.

It's true that trustwallet is closed source and it shouldn't be used. But it allows you to adjust the the transaction fee.
To do so, you should tap on "Setting" button at top right corner the screen before confirming transaction details. After that, you will see a new window in which you can enter the fee rate.

As if it was once a big secret Bitcoin has always been a very slow blockchain, and very expensive, at the peak of the hype transactions cost 300-500 satoshi per byte. This is especially striking when you compare transaction processing speed with altcoins. There is nothing we can do about it, it's all about block size, it's limited to 1 megabyte and blocks are created once in 10 minutes, although there were cases when block could not appear for an hour. Since the cryptocurrency is very popular, and one block can hold about 3,000 transactions, everything is very slow, and the introduction of LN is not as fast as we would like it to be.

He certainly can, but I have to suggest using an LN wallet. So far LN is very supportive of instant payments and there is not even a fee ^{[very inexpensive]} and he should give it a try before coming to a conclusion.

Another option if the OP wants to make a fast transaction with bitcoin is to use a much larger fee than recommended. I think he's just having problems because his wallet doesn't support RBF so he has to have pending transactions because maybe the mempool is congested or the fees are too low, so if the OP wants to use bitcoin as a means of payment then he should use the right wallet and make sure it supports RBF.

Suggestion: Move thread to bitcoin discussion.

Bitcoin transactions are slow because there are many transactions as well, such as the exit of many Bitcoins from an exchange,
or the entry of Bitcoins from a wallet to an exchange, yes,
and that makes Bitcoin transactions slow and requires expensive fees if you want to speed things up.

It's slow, yes but it gets the job done. There is a good reason why if you want fast, you wouldn't use Bitcoin but other coins instead. This suit well with Bitcoin too since it can opt to be more secure.

A new bitcoin block is generated approximately once every 10 minutes, but the interval can be 5 minutes and 20 minutes. Do not use bitcoin for fast payment. Better use Tron, Litecoin or other coins where transactions are much faster.

Security > Speed.

That's what bitcoin is about. Security.

You may want to use a faster coin but it comes with a price. They are not as secure as Bitcoin. The other coins are having chain reorg's from time to time and even though the chances are small, it is still there. Bitcoin on the other hand, is solid as a rock working like clockwork since 2008.

If you want a faster coin, use doge or ltc.

The reason why the transaction is slow is because your BTC fee is low.  Because if you send BTC then transfer is done with much less gas fee.  And the limit is 5 minutes.  And in 5 minutes BTC Transfer is done.  If you had sent with high priority with high fee here, it would have been sent immediately.  Thanks.

The answer to that is just simple. With the current crypto market situation, everyone is just taking a chill pill not to sell dip at a time of rise and also not to buy the dip at a very wrong time. With what we see and price of Bitcoin heading to $22,000, one might be excited to to hop and end up at losses.

Why Bitcoin Transaction is slow:
Every transaction is confirmed by the miners every ten minutes to add a new block by mining.
In Bitcoin Blockchain the current Block generation is ten minutes per Block.it means every 10 minutes, a new block is mined.
A New Block of the transaction is added to the blockchain and considered to be processed That's called Bitcoin transactions.
Bitcoin Transaction average on the previous assumption is 2,759.12 and the current Block is
10 minutes which is equal to 600 seconds. By the way, Bitcoin Blockchain can guarantee only 4.6 transactions per second.

Bitcoin transactions are getting slower because of the huge volume of transactions, this is what makes a lot of altcoins can be used as an alternative to send cryptocurrencies, even since the last 3 years I have never sent with bitcoin directly, I usually switch to altcoins that are faster and cheaper like Tron , BNB or matic.

Is this true? Can we confirm this with someone who uses it? I haven't tried this Trustwallet yet so I have no idea they don't have that type of feature.
If that is the case then it's not Bitcoin blockchain that you should blame but the wallet itself.
Perhaps it was set at the lowest rate while they are charging you with higher amounts. What you could do is change the type of software wallet that you are using with options to speed up the transaction. Like Electrum, Mycellium, and more.
Go here for more information: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=37.0

Instead of blaming, blame yourself for what you did to make yourself receive such frustration in return. I think it's simple if you accept to increase transaction fees for fast speed, and let's understand the fact that people don't think of small use cases to say a big thing. It is similar to the way you take a gold nugget to the coffee shop to ask for payment.

It will get worse as time goes on because the more crowdy BTC holders become the lesser the transaction speed will be, its why some Youtubers are saying that some altcoins beats BTC out of the water, I wanted to buy a gift card online using crypto and the website accepts BTC and LTC, after two transactions with BTC I decided to use LTC and I saw a noticeable difference in speed.

Having limited blockchain was a problem for bitcoin since the mass adoption have been starting to happen. The thing is if bitcoin is still having limitation on its network capacity. i meant if you must also try to read why bitcoin is slow compared with the new tokens in the market with their own blockchain. The problem that appaered in the bitcoin has become a mass topic a few years ago but this time it's already solved but by the way do you watch all of story about bitcoin scalability debate?

Actually spending more fees will do the trick and it will get your priority in time but I don't do such complain on such bitcoin transactions though. Some network as well are slow and having high fees as well are too much like Ethereum network for example. ETH network has high fees compared to bitcoin network.

To troubleshoot your bitcoin transaction, you should look bitcoin explorer first.
If the transaction has been confirmed on explorer, then it should be the exchange side which have problem.
Usually the transaction on bitcoin network need 10 minutes to be confirmed because bitcoin block time is 10 minutes.

I myself have experienced something like you, the transaction I did experienced obstacles but I don't think it's a problem, because when compared to ethereum the BTC network is much faster, maybe when you are making transactions at the same time the network being very crowded because many users are making transactions, but if you change the fee a little higher, then your transaction process is much faster,

slow compared to what?
most altcoins need more than 100 confirmations to ensure the second party that the transaction will not be reversed. These 100 confirmations need a time equal to 1 confirmation time in Bitcoin. The only difference is that these currencies disappear from your wallet automatically (because they were included in the block), but the transaction is not considered. Complete only after waiting for several blocks.

Another reason is that altcoins have many empty blocks while most of bitcoin blocks are full.
you and also try LN

Bitcoin confirmations may be slow due to the congested network, and when there are more transactions than can be processed, miners will prioritize the transactions with the highest fees.
this means that lower fee transactions may take longer to confirm, I think most of the slow confirmations are caused by that problem.

Is this your first time to use bitcoin transaction? if that's true and i would not be surprised if you are feeling bad with how long the time is actually needed to deliver your transactions. Bitcoin is a bit better caused by the transaction fees are still rational unlike ethereum which is not even rational. I think that if you have been in the crypto since a long time ago and you may know if this is a usual thing in the bitcoin. Many people have been feeling better caused by bitcoin already got some solutions.
Don't you try to use bitcoin lightning network?

It's a common problem on the bitcoin network, however, if you want to speed up your transactions, you can add gas (sats/byte) to your transactions. In the trust wallet itself, you can find it on the gear icon after you determine to which address and how many bitcoins you want to send. No need to worry about what happened to you mate, make it an experience.

It's caused by the capacity of bitcoin blocksize is small compared with the new altcoins that has been making so many improvements in this case. If you can't wait up to 5 minutes and it's better if you are converting your money from bitcoin to the another coin that has better scalability than bitcoin. Complaining about how slow bitcoin will never solve your problem and you can solve your problem by yourself. This is the best thing that can be done.
Your complaints meant nothing caused by that's bitcoin. It is still having limitation on its scalability

It's funny seeing post like this, when we all know that users have the opportunity of selecting the time frame on which their transactions could be completed. I want to believe you're not aware of this or you don't know that the transaction fee could be adjusted to enable your transaction complete speedily.

Well thats really it is. Adjust to a higher transaction fee if its slow. If you cant take the transaction fee on btc, then pick an altcoin faster than it. There is so much plenty of choices with faster transaction. In terms of this, btc well isnt gonna much on transactions cause theres too much usage on btc network but if you shift to altcoin youll find it faster. Thats the truth about blockchain, the more uses a certain network, it becomes slower.

Nah, you are 100% wrong, Trust wallet automatically pay the transaction fee and I never adjusted it anyways, if this isn't from BTC itself then Trust wallet is to be blame, at first I sent 50$ worth of BTC with 0.15$, tell me how this isn't fair?.

So far I have not seen how fast transactions through the Bitcoin network are, but if you just wait for a few moments or hours and the transaction is successful at a very low cost, I think it is still a very normal thing to happen. Because dense transactions already have a slight delay when transacting, but they can still be used by those who are patient.

Transaction speed is not the only bad reason why bitcoin is foolish to use as a means of payment. Returning a purchase and its value is also very difficult because bitcoin is volatile. It seems to me that the best way to buy goods is to use fiat money or at least stablecoins, but definitely not bitcoin.

Maybe when network transactions are congested, this has implications for transaction speed, but in my opinion Bitcoin transactions have been slow for a long time so it doesn't reflect speed anymore, but the solution is always trying to increase the transaction fee but be careful not to make the transaction fee more expensive than

It's not worth imagining. When you can't think that you can increase your costs and check the current network health, don't think that you will be able to use it universally. While, for many people, it is viewed as a large speculative asset and is not always traded on a regular basis, user behavior will contribute to its value going up or down. It is not born to meet someone's needs but to solve a common problem in society.

What wallet do you use, then send your bitcoins to which exchange, because what I experienced was not so slow in the delivery process or transactions in bitcoin, almost what I've ever done is no more than 10 minutes, all transactions went quite well and haven't had any problems for now, can you tell me which wallet and exchange do you use to make transactions and send

If you want it on an almost instant to an instant transaction, you really have to pay the priority fee but that's not really much at all. Always check if the network is clogged because that plays a part in why transactions are slow. But if there's no cause there then it's just usual that you've paid for a lower fee.

The reason why your transaction is slow because you're pay with small amount fee, if you increase it at the high priority, your transaction will got confirmed less than 5 minutes, see the mempool.space https://mempool.space/ if you want to set the fee.

However Trustwallet is suck closed source wallet and doesn't have feature to set your own fee based on sat/byte.

I am probably going to get nailed for this but its the truth, BTC transaction sucks🤦‍♀️ its slow as a snail, I am trying go send some bitcoin to exchange using my trust wallet and it's just there over 5 minutes, imagine been in haste in a store nearby trying to pay with BTC using your wallet and this happens, you are forced to wait around till the transaction go through, not a good feeling at all.