Confirmation
Bitcoin transaction confirmation is needed to guarantee that a payment is finalized. One of the main advantages of bitcoin is that it solves the problem of double-spending[1], i.e. the risk that a digital currency token may be copied and spent more than once. In spite of having no central authority to verify that its tokens are not being duplicated, bitcoin successfully avoids double-spending through a system of decentralized transaction confirmation, based on the consensus of a network of validators. Bitcoin SV transaction confirmation time cannot be precisely predicted. However, once a transaction has been relayed around the network it has a high probability of being included in the next mined block.
How to confirm bitcoin transaction?
A transaction is a transfer of value between Bitcoin wallets that gets included in the blockchain. Bitcoin SV are not immediate but very fast. When a user wishes to send bitcoins, information is broadcast from her wallet to the (validators/miners in the) network, who verify that she has enough coins, and that they have never been spent before. Once validated, miners will include this transaction – along with others – in a new block in the blockchain. This is called a transaction confirmation. The transaction is now said to be confirmed. Each time a new block is added to the chain (every ten minutes), the transaction is said to be confirmed again.
Bitcoin SV Confirmation Time
To answer the question "How long does it take to transfer bitcoins?" one needs to understand that bitcoin transaction confirmation time depends on many factors. The deeper a transaction is buried, the harder it will be to manipulate. Although 0/unconfirmed transactions could be reversed via Finney attack, race attack, or [[|Attacks|51% attack]], small amounts of money will not be worth the trouble. Larger sums are worth protecting under more bitcoin confirmations. The number six is just an arbitrary limit, beyond which the feasibility of an attacker being able to amass more than 10% of the network's hashrate for purposes of a transaction falsification becomes negligible (a risk lower than 0.1%).
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 that it can slow down. Usually at the final time is affected by:
- network utilization;
- commission;
- variation in network hash rate.
The influence of the first factor is only noticeable when transaction throughput capacity is close to being reached. When the system needs to process many requests, users have to wait. However, as Bitcoin SV transaction volume rarely ever reaches block or network capacity and transactions are usually validated within a few seconds. Some transactions that pay ultra-low fees (<1 satoshi/byte) may not be relayed by a proportion of mining nodes on the network, reducing the likelihood of confirmation within 1 block. These transactions, however are rare as Bitcoin SV default minimum-fee settings are low.
Number of Bitcoin SV Confirmations
A regular bitcoin sv client will show the number of confirmations as part of the transaction metadata. In some older implementations of bitcoin the transactions were labelled "unconfirmed" until they had 6 confirmations. There is nothing special about the default, often-cited figure of 6 blocks. 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 blocks are overkill for casual attackers, and at the same time powerless against more dedicated attackers with much more than 10% hashrate (see: Analysis of hashrate-based double-spending).
Users and cryptocurrency exchanges that accept bitcoins as payment set their threshold in the number of required blocks until the payment is confirmed.
To find out how many checks are required to process the transaction and how long to wait for the receipt of funds, it is necessary to understand the features of cryptocurrency transfers. This process consists of several stages:
- addressee sends money;
- information about transactions is made in special blocks, each of which has a room and a hash (special data);
- the blocks are sent for scanning to different computers;
- if everything is done correctly, the received information replenishes various databases;
- checked blocks complete the chain;
- the money goes to the recipient.
Note that
- Unconfirmed transactions do not expire.
- Freshly-mined coins cannot be spent for 100 blocks.
- It is advisable to wait some additional time for a better chance that the transaction will be propagated by all nodes.
See Also
References
[1] Nakamoto, Satoshi. "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System."