confirmation times -

[prophetx]

i know sometimes it can be "fast" but this time it's been 50 minutes and i dont even have 1 confirmation... 

[Kluge]

That'll happen.

If you're a bad gambler, though, you'll note that since this block is taking a particularly long time, the next two to your three will be particularly short, because umm probabilities.

[vm1990]

depends if you paid the 0.005 transaction fee then usualy less than 30 mins

[DannyHamilton]

Depending on the specifics of the transaction, if the sender doesn't include a reasonable transaction fee it can take hours or even days.

Depending on the wallet used to send the transaction, I've even seen them expire and revert back to the sender's wallet after a couple days.

Assuming the sender has included a reasonable transaction fee, I'd expect the transaction to receive its first confirmation within an hour (usually within 20 minutes). Then I'd expect an additional confirmation with every block mined after that.*

New blocks are mined approximately every 10 minutes "on average", but it isn't unexpected or surprising to occasionally see multiple blocks within a minute or 90 minutes between blocks.  The process is random and unpredictable.


*Note that it is possible, though not common, to have a confirmation or two and then lose those confirmations and be back to 0 confirmations and have the confirmation process start all over.