Bitcoin transaction confirmations: What to know about receiving BTC

Key takeaways

• Bitcoin transactions require multiple confirmations to ensure security, with most considered final after six confirmations.
• Increasing network congestion, block size limits and transaction fees have led to longer confirmation times.
• Solutions like replace-by-fee (RBF) and child-pays-for-parent (CPFP) can help speed up transactions.
• Future improvements like rollups, state channels and sidechains aim to address Bitcoin’s scalability challenges.

While Bitcoin exchanges or senders usually set the transaction fee for you, using custom settings on a crypto wallet can quite quickly turn you into the last elderly couple to board the plane.

Imagine you’re at an airport. Most people board the plane easily, but an elderly couple takes too long, missing the flight. In crypto, if you choose a low transaction fee, you’re like that couple — delayed while others have already moved ahead. Setting the right fee helps you avoid being left behind.

That’s exactly what happened to a Reddit user whose Bitcoin (BTC) transaction took 21 days to confirm after setting a fee of just 0.4 satoshis per byte.

Normally, Bitcoin nodes would have removed the unconfirmed transaction after 14 days, so this seems to have been an exception — likely due to the fact that confirmation times don’t just depend on transaction fees.

This is a can of worms that, upon opening, leaves the average crypto enthusiast with plenty of questions:

• Why is the average Bitcoin transaction confirmation time increasing?
• How does finality come into play?
• What do I do if my transaction isn’t being confirmed?

Today, we’ll dive into the answers to these and more in our guide on Bitcoin transaction confirmations.

Understanding Bitcoin confirmations simply

In traditional finance, the process of Bitcoin transaction confirmations can be likened to the clearing and settlement of a check. When you deposit a check, the bank credits your account, but the funds aren’t immediately available. 

The bank must first verify the check’s validity and ensure that the issuer has sufficient funds. This verification process involves multiple steps and can take several days, during which the check passes through various clearinghouses and banking institutions. Only after these steps are completed is the transaction considered final, and the funds are fully accessible in your account.

Similarly, on the Bitcoin network, when a transaction is initiated, it is broadcast to the network but remains unconfirmed until it is included in a block by miners. Each subsequent block added to the blockchain provides additional confirmations, further validating the transaction. Just as a check requires multiple steps to clear, a Bitcoin transaction requires multiple confirmations to ensure its validity and finality.

Did you know? Bitcoin transaction fees are paid by the sender and are determined by the data size of the transaction, not the monetary amount being sent. This means that sending 1 BTC can incur the same fee as sending 100 BTC, provided the transaction data size is identical. 

The Bitcoin wallet confirmation process

When initiating a Bitcoin transaction through a wallet, the process from creation to confirmation involves several key steps:

• Transaction creation: The user specifies the recipient’s Bitcoin address and the amount to send. The wallet software then constructs a transaction, which includes inputs (the user’s unspent Bitcoin) and outputs (the recipient’s address and any change returned to the sender).
• Digital signing: The wallet uses the user’s private key to sign the transaction, ensuring its authenticity and preventing unauthorized alterations.
• Broadcast to network: Once signed, the transaction is broadcast to the Bitcoin network, where it enters a pool of unconfirmed transactions known as the “mempool.”
• Validation by nodes: Network nodes validate the transaction by checking its structure and signatures and ensuring that the inputs haven’t been previously spent. Validated transactions remain in the mempool, awaiting inclusion in a block.
• Inclusion in a block: Miners select transactions from the mempool, prioritize them (often based on transaction fees), and attempt to include them in the next block by conducting trial and error until a hash is found that fits the network’s length requirement. 
• Confirmation: Once a miner successfully adds a block containing the transaction to the blockchain, the transaction receives its first confirmation. On Bitcoin, each subsequent block added to the chain provides additional confirmations, further securing the transaction.

Throughout this process, Bitcoin wallets provide users with real-time updates on their transaction statuses. Common status indicators include:

• Pending/unconfirmed: The transaction has been created and broadcast to the network but has not yet been included in a block.
• Confirmed: The transaction has been included in a block and has received at least one confirmation.
• Confirmation count: Many wallets display the number of confirmations a transaction has received, with more confirmations indicating increased security and finality.

Did you know? Users can also monitor their transaction’s progress by checking the transaction ID (TXID) provided by the wallet. By entering this TXID into a blockchain explorer, users can view detailed information about their transaction, including its confirmation status and the number of confirmations it has received.

Blockchain confirmations vs. blockchain finality, explained

In Bitcoin, confirmations are the number of blocks added to the blockchain after a transaction’s block, increasing its security; transaction finality is the point at which the transaction becomes irreversible and permanently recorded.

It’s important not to mix these two up.

In networks like Bitcoin, confirmations are probabilistic. A transaction becomes securer as additional blocks are added on top of the block containing that transaction. 

Each new block increases the difficulty of reversing the transaction, thereby enhancing its finality. For instance, a Bitcoin transaction is generally regarded as “final” after six “confirmations,” which typically takes about an hour.

However, there are two other broad types of blockchain finality to be aware of, which are native to other blockchains:

1. Deterministic (absolute) finality: Some blockchains achieve immediate and irreversible transaction finality through consensus mechanisms that allow for instant confirmation. Once a transaction is validated and added to the blockchain, it cannot be altered or reversed. This is often seen in networks utilizing consensus algorithms like practical Byzantine fault tolerance (pBFT). For example, Algorand employs such mechanisms to provide instant finality, ensuring that transactions are confirmed and immutable as soon as they are included in a block.
2. Economic finality: In proof-of-stake (PoS) systems, economic finality is achieved by making it financially prohibitive to reverse transactions. Validators are required to stake a certain amount of cryptocurrency as collateral. If they attempt to validate fraudulent transactions, they risk losing their stake, thereby deterring malicious behavior. This economic disincentive ensures that once a transaction is confirmed, it remains final.

Bitcoin confirmation times in 2025

As of Feb. 2, the average confirmation time is approximately 19 minutes. What’s interesting, however, is that this time has been steadily increasing over the years.

Several factors have likely driven this trend

• Network congestion: As Bitcoin’s popularity has grown, the number of transactions has surged, leading to network congestion. This high demand results in a backlog of unconfirmed transactions, causing longer waiting times for confirmations.
• Block size limitations: Bitcoin’s block size is capped at 1 megabyte, restricting the number of transactions that can be included in each block. During periods of high transaction volume, this limitation contributes to delays in processing and confirming transactions.
• Transaction fee dynamics: Miners prioritize transactions that offer higher fees as incentives. Users attaching lower fees to their transactions may experience longer confirmation times, especially during times of network congestion when competition for block space intensifies.
• Scalability challenges: The inherent design of the Bitcoin network poses scalability challenges. The combination of fixed block sizes and the 10-minute block interval limits the system’s capacity to process a growing number of transactions efficiently, leading to increased confirmation times.

Regarding the anomalies in the data

1. In 2018, Bitcoin’s popularity led to increased transaction volumes, causing network congestion. This congestion resulted in longer confirmation times as the network struggled to process the high number of transactions.
2. In 2022, the cryptocurrency market experienced a downturn, leading to decreased transaction volumes. This reduction in activity alleviated network congestion, resulting in shorter confirmation times.

With Bitcoin transaction confirmation times at an all-time high, there’s never been a greater need for efforts to enhance the Bitcoin network’s scalability and efficiency.

Strategies for fast Bitcoin confirmations

Sometimes, you need Bitcoin transactions to confirm quickly — like when trading or making time-sensitive purchases. Other times, waiting a bit longer, like for personal transfers, isn’t a problem. Knowing when speed matters helps you plan better.

Set the right fee or risk being ignored

Bitcoin miners prioritize transactions with higher fees. If you don’t include a sufficient fee, your transaction could sit in the mempool for hours or even days. In extreme cases, it might never be confirmed. Wallets typically offer fee recommendations based on network conditions, so it’s wise to follow them.

Fixing slow transactions with wallet features

If you’ve already sent a transaction with a low fee and it’s stuck, you’ve got options. One method is replace-by-fee (RBF), which lets you rebroadcast the transaction with a higher fee. Another option is child-pays-for-parent (CPFP), where you send a new transaction (the “child”) tied to the stuck one. Miners are incentivized to process both together to earn more fees.

Speed up with external tools and SegWit

Transaction accelerators, provided by some mining pools, can push unconfirmed transactions into the next block. Additionally, using SegWit-enabled addresses reduces transaction size and fees, making confirmations faster and cheaper.

Did you know? If your Bitcoin transaction remains unconfirmed after trying RBF or CPFP, you can try using third-party transaction accelerators like ViaBTC and BitAccelerate. If your transaction remains unconfirmed after attempting these methods, consider reaching out for support.

The future of Bitcoin transaction confirmations

Naturally, we aren’t the only ones aware of Bitcoin’s rising transaction confirmation times. The Bitcoin community is actively exploring and implementing several scalability solutions to enhance transaction efficiency. 

Aside from already integrated layer-2 solutions such as the Lightning Network and major upgrades like SegWit, it’s likely that the Bitcoin network will soon see:

• Rollups: Rollups process multiple transactions offchain and bundle them into a single onchain transaction, significantly increasing throughput and reducing fees. This approach maintains security by settling the final state on the main Bitcoin blockchain.
• New state channels: State channels allow two parties to conduct numerous transactions offchain, with only the initial and final transactions recorded on the blockchain. This method reduces onchain congestion and speeds up transaction times.
• Sidechains: Sidechains operate parallel to the main Bitcoin blockchain, enabling assets to move between chains. They allow for experimentation with new features and can handle a higher volume of transactions without burdening the main network.

Only time will tell whether this is going to be enough to keep the aging network relevant among a school of shiny new chains with hyper-fast deterministic finality.