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When you make any transaction in Bitcoin, the transaction is not sent successfully to the recipient right away.
Instead, the transaction needs to be confirmed by the network, which involves waiting for a certain number of blocks to be mined after the block containing your transaction.
Since a new block is created every 10 minutes on the Bitcoin blockchain, confirming a transaction can take some time.
In this post, we’ll explain what Bitcoin confirmation is and introduce you to some useful Bitcoin confirmation time estimators.
What Is Bitcoin Confirmation?
When a Bitcoin transaction occurs, it must be authenticated on the blockchain.
This is done by ensuring that the block containing your transaction is followed by six additional blocks mined after it.
In essence, Bitcoin confirmation refers to the number of blocks mined after the block containing your transaction.
You can see the confirmation as blocks are added after your transaction block. For example, you’ll see one confirmation on your transaction when the block containing your transaction is added to the blockchain. As the next block is added, you’ll see 2 confirmations on your transaction.
Why 6 Confirmations?
6 Confirmation meaning it would take a transaction to be authentic on the Bitcoin blockchain anywhere from 40 to 60 minutes.
Even if you pay a high transaction fee, it still takes 10 minutes to mine a block, meaning that even high-fee transactions must wait to be confirmed.
The reason behind this is simple: the creator of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto, kept transaction confirmation purposefully slow to reduce blockchain rearrangement vectors which would otherwise disrupt the authenticity of the blockchain.
If transactions with higher fees were always confirmed faster, it would create a system where wealthier individuals consistently had an advantage. Additionally, quicker confirmations could allow powerful miners with advanced hardware to dominate the blockchain, leading to a monopoly. Satoshi wanted to avoid such a scenario, so the Bitcoin blockchain was intentionally kept slow to promote decentralization.
List of Bitcoin Confirmation Time Estimators
Several blockchain explorers and tools can help you estimate Bitcoin confirmation times, allowing you to choose an appropriate transaction fee. Below are some of the most popular tools:
1. Bitcoinfees.net
Bitcoinfee.net is a simple tool displaying a chart of current mempool transactions ordered by fee value.
The chart is simple, showing 3 columns. The first one is satoshi per byte, another transaction that happened on Mempool, and the last column showcases the time transaction with the particular fee taken to get confirmation.
The tool divides different periods into different colors like Red, Yello, and Green. Use the first Green value if you want your transaction to be confirmed as fast as possible.
Also, if you are using SegWit transactions, you can lower the suggested fee by ~40%. SegWit transactions are processed with priority. Therefore, only 60% of the proposed fee can be used.
2. Buybitcoinworldwide Fee Calculator
Buybitcoinworldwide is a platform providing the most comprehensive resource for finding Bitcoin exchanges and buying Bitcoin.
The platform also has the Bitcoin fee calculator that helps you fetch the correct fee for the transaction that you want to get confirmed within a specific time.
The fee calculator works simple. First, you have to select how many confirmations you want to get your transaction confirmed on the blockchain (6 confirmations are ideal for Bitcoin, but you can get transaction confirmation by 2 confirmations) and mention outputs and inputs transaction tool show you the fee price in both USD and Satoshi.
You can even select the normal and SegWit transaction types for better fee estimation.
3. Bitcoiner.live
Bitcoiner.live is also a Bitcoin fee estimator tool suggesting the fees required to get specific confirmation on the Bitcoin transactions.
However, the difference is the tool does not show confirmation time estimation on the main Bitcoin blockchain. Instead, it pulls datas from the registered Lightning Network routes on the platform.
The tool does not provide any details about how many Lightning routes are registered, so it is up to you to trust this tool while doing Lightning Transaction.
Bitcoiner.live estimates the fee on 2 basic computations. The first one is target interval (30 minutes, 1 hour, 2 hours, etc..), a tool trying to find the cheapest fee rate that is likely to become fully cleared (0 WU) with a given probability.
Probability is defined by the 3 types of “confidence” settings on the website. The first type of Confidence is Optimistic 50% which is used if your primary objective is fee minimization. The second one is Standard 80%, which seems to give reasonable balanced estimates while avoiding overestimation or underestimation most of the time. And the last one is Caution 90%, which tends to overestimate, to compensate for potential unlucky rounds of blocks.
4. Blockchain.com
Blockchain.com is a wallet and exchange service provider and also a famous block explorer for Bitcoin.
On the block explorer block detail tab, you can view all the details of Bitcoin blockchain blocks like transactions, fees, and confirmation time.
There are two confirmation times shown on the explorer one is Median confirmation which is the time for a transaction with miner fees to be included in a mined block and added to the public ledger, and another is an Average confirmation representing the average time for a transaction with miner fees to be included in a mined block and added to the public ledger.
These two options can help you estimate your transaction confirmation.
Conclusion
Understanding Bitcoin confirmation is crucial for managing your transactions effectively.
While six confirmations are generally considered secure, the total number required may vary depending on the exchange, wallet, or transaction size.
Some exchanges process transactions after just one confirmation, while others may require up to six.
Using the tools mentioned above can help you estimate confirmation times and choose the right fee to ensure your transaction is processed promptly.
What is Bitcoin Confirmation? A Guide with Top Bitcoin Confirmation Time Estimators was originally published in Coinmonks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.