What is Bitcoin Confirmation? A list of Bitcoin Confirmation Time Estimators
When you make any transaction in Bitcoin, the transaction is not sent successfully to the recipient right away.
The transaction contained block must have a certain number of successor blocks to consider if a transaction is successfully sent or received.
A block is created every 10 minutes on the Bitcoin blockchain. So a transaction to get confirmation takes time.
Here is a post explaining what is exactly Bitcoin confirmation. And Criterias?
What Is Bitcoin Confirmation?
When a Bitcoin transaction happens to prove the transaction authenticity on the blockchain, a block that contains the transaction must have the 6 blocks mined after it.
This means Bitcoin confirmation is nothing but the number of blocks mined after the transaction block.
You can see the confirmation as blocks are added after your transaction block. For example, you will 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 paid a high fee, the time to mine a block will take 10 minutes, so the high fee transaction also waits to get confirmation.
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 a high fee transaction always gets confirmed quickly then the person who can pay the high fee always wins over the person who can’t pay that much. Also, the quick confirmation gives the powerful miner meaning a miner who has powerful hardware to mine blocks quickly and take over the blockchain, and create a monopoly. Satoshi does not want a monopoly so he/she intentionally kept the Bitcoin blockchain slow to maintain decentralization.
List of Bitcoin Confirmation Time Estimators
There are many Blockchain Explorer that provide the data of Bitcoin Mempool size and activity but there are some tools providing a Bitcoin fee estimator that can help you to know the current status of transaction confirmation so that you can decide fees accordingly.
Here is the list of those 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, yellow, 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 data 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 mins, 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.
Final Thought
These are all the things you need to know about Bitcoin confirmation.
But the total confirmation needed for a transaction is dependent on Exchange or a Wallet or transaction size. Some exchanges will process a transaction after just one confirmation. Many require three confirmations or more, while some may require up to six. Many Bitcoin wallets won’t process transactions until they’ve been confirmed at least three times.
Six confirmations are widely considered to be safe and secure enough to prove your transaction will be valid and permanent.
