Bitcoin Forum

When someone sends BTC to a wallet, how long until they appear.

Thank you

It should be instant although each confirmation generally takes 5~10 minutes. Yes, they are irreversible.

in normally in most cases takes maximum 30 minutes to arrive.

You'll see it arrive within seconds and once the tx is included in a block (confirmed), you can trust it.

Unless the sender did something wrong (such as fail to include a transaction fee on a transaction that requires a fee), you should see the transaction in your blockchain wallet within a few seconds of it being sent.


To be considered "irreversible", you should wait until the transaction has at least 1 confirmation (better yet, a few confirmations).

Thank you all so much, still getting the hang of this.

Search for the receiving address you told to the payer on http://blockchain.info or http://blockr.io/

You should see the transaction there within seconds after he sent it.

If you see it then it's already very, very unlikely that it can be reversed (or to be technical, never spent) but for large amounts to be sure you should wait until 1 confirmation. Or for super large amounts wait until 1-3

Thanks again, just curious what exactly will the confirmation be?

So newb of a Q I am sure but again, just starting out, thanks.

A confirmation just means that the transaction has been officially recognized by the bitcoin network by including it in a mined block.

Additional confirmations just means that more blocks have been added to the blockchain burying the block with your transaction deeper and making more difficult for the transaction to be modified by an attacker.

If you view the transaction in your blockchain wallet it should tell you how many confirmations the transaction has.

Typically, as long as the sender pays a reasonable fee and doesn't include any outputs from the transaction that are valued at less than 0.000054 bitcoins, confirmations average about 10 minutes.  They are random, with a long term average of 10 minute intervals, so it is possible occasionally for multiple confirmations to occur within a second, and it is possible occasionally for a period of more than an hour to occur between confirmations.

Thank you sir, simple :)