How long does it take before the transaction is confirmed?

In fact, cryptocurrency transactions are subject to delays ranging from a few minutes to a few days. This is because most of the cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin requires miners to verify transactions. Transactions are usually lumped into “blocks,” to be verified and added to the public blockchain; according to standard bitcoin protocol, it takes about ten minutes to mine one block.

When buying cryptocurrency at our Värdex ATM it usually takes between 15-40 minutes until the blockchain transaction is confirmed by the miners.

However, due to its rising popularity, the bitcoin network is often backlogged with transactions waiting to be lumped into a block. Block sizes are limited, and those which do not make it into one are lumped into a large queue known as the “bitcoin mempool.” The mempool fluctuates in size, with wait times also dependent on transaction priority and fees.

What determines the transaction times?

The two main factors influencing the transaction time are:

• The amount of network activity

• Transaction fees

The more transactions that the network needs to process, the longer each transaction takes.
This is because there are only a finite number of miners to process each block and there are a finite number of transactions that can be included in a block.

Miners on the Bitcoin network prioritize transactions by the fee that they receive for confirming them.