Can Bitcoin transaction time reduce in future?

[krishnaverma]

Currently it takes 1-3 hours for a transaction to complete if we do it with less fee? Is it possible in future that this transaction time will reduce or may be even become instant? Like when all Bitcoins are  mined and there are mainly holders instead of traders and volume of transactions decline.

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[1714583563]

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[mocacinno]

Currently it takes 1-3 hours for a transaction to complete if we do it with less fee? Is it possible in future that this transaction time will reduce or may be even become instant? Like when all Bitcoins are  mined and there are mainly holders instead of traders and volume of transactions decline.

If we don't change the protocol, the average time between 2 blocks will allways be ~10 minutes. So, even when most of the blocks are (allmost) empty, the average CONFIRMATION time will always be ~5 minutes.

AFAIK, the mempool has been flooded with ordinal transactions for quite a while now. I had hoped this was a fad that would have been long gone by now, but they keep broadcasting transactions... If they'd stop, and people would make less than 1 Mb of transactions per 10 minutes (excluding the witness data), you'd be able to send 1 sat/vbyte transactions once again and get them confirmed after an average time of ~5 minutes (after the backlog has cleared offcourse).

By the way, transactions are broadcasted allmost instantly... They remain in the mempool of the nodes untill they end up in a block, it's this process that takes very long ATM.

If you want cheaper fees, or faster confirmations, you should either look at altcoins, sidechains and/or offchain sollutions.

[tbct_mt2]

You can use off chain solution like Bitcoin Lightning Network.

[Table] All Lightning Network Threads In One Place

For onchain, I like how it is now because Transactions per second, transaction time is not my most concern when using Bitcoin blockchain. I care more about security and safety of my transactions on Bitcoin blockchain. If the Bitcoin blockchain with it current parameters, can provide me safe and secure transactions, I like how it is.

https://howmanyconfs.com/

[Despairo]

I believe it's impossible Bitcoin transaction become instant because the ~10 minutes per block is used to make the network secure.

The reason why you need to wait for 1-3 hours is you not send a big amount of fees, currently <42 sat/vbyte will be confirmed at least a hour, but when you use 58sat/vbyte (assuming not many people create a new transactions use 58 or more sat/vbyte) your transactions will be confirmed in the next block which is ~10 minutes.

[Zaguru12]

Currently it takes 1-3 hours for a transaction to complete if we do it with less fee? Is it possible in future that this transaction time will reduce or may be even become instant? Like when all Bitcoins are  mined and there are mainly holders instead of traders and volume of transactions decline.

The time to mine a block which is set at a default of 10 minutes but still varies, although your claim of it been confirmed in 1-3 hours is not valid because even the current blocks mined in the space of that 1-3 hours is upto 12 blocks. In the future no one is issue if the block time will reduce except if we got a fork on the increase of block size or people do not make too much transactions then (which I don’t think will happen since we all are expecting a higher number of users).

Also even if all bitcoin are mined I don’t think they will be no traders or the volume of transactions will reduce, it would be same like we have now or even higher. Mining ending doesn’t mean that bitcoin protocol will change, the only thing that will change is the stopping of mining and everything will practically still be the same

[Luzin]

I believe it's impossible Bitcoin transaction become instant because the ~10 minutes per block is used to make the network secure.

The reason why you need to wait for 1-3 hours is you not send a big amount of fees, currently <42 sat/vbyte will be confirmed at least a hour, but when you use 58sat/vbyte (assuming not many people create a new transactions use 58 or more sat/vbyte) your transactions will be confirmed in the next block which is ~10 minutes.

A classic problem that is still a problem today. Currently there are several solutions such as Lightning network or taprot. But there are indeed some other weaknesses and problems posed in those 2 ways.  I am also increasingly worried about this situation, because the fee will be bigger and it makes me a little insincere if I have to use a large fee.   Because sometimes it's not worth the amount we send.

Bitcoin as the first crypto does have scalability problems. Moreover, several other coins that use the bitcoin network are increasingly adding to the dense network. It looks like there should be further consensus development on the basis of Bitcoin remaining secure.  CMIIW

[hosseinimr93]

Currently it takes 1-3 hours for a transaction to complete if we do it with less fee?

What do you mean by complete? Do you mean getting confirmed? Or do you mean getting enough confirmations, so that your transaction is credited on an custodial services like exchanges?

The confirmation time depends on the fee rate (in sat/vbyte) of your transaction and how congested the network is. It's possible that a transaction stays unconfirmed for months.
And take note that even if the fee rate you use for your transaction is high enough, you have to wait until the next block is mined.

[CryptSafe]

I believe you use wallet App for doing transfer and possibly in the course of doing the transfer payment option pops up for you to choose and after that, you approve of the transaction and what you approve is what you get "garbage in, garbage out " that is the result of what you get based on the payment option for confirmation you choose and each of them has their own fee attached depending on the timing or how fast you want your transaction to be confirmed.

I believe if their are more miners, the confirmation speed or time would be lesser than it used to be and possibly, the price would reduce irrespective of the increase in daily transactions if I am not mistaken.

[mocacinno]

I believe you use wallet App for doing transfer and possibly in the course of doing the transfer payment option pops up for you to choose and after that, you approve of the transaction and what you approve is what you get "garbage in, garbage out " that is the result of what you get based on the payment option for confirmation you choose and each of them has their own fee attached depending on the timing or how fast you want your transaction to be confirmed.

I believe if their are more miners, the confirmation speed or time would be lesser than it used to be and possibly, the price would reduce irrespective of the increase in daily transactions if I am not mistaken.

I'm sorry to say, but you are mistaken...
If there would be more miners, the time between 2 blocks would slightly decrease for a maximum  of ~2 weeks. Every 2016 blocks (= ~2weeks), the difficulty gets adjusted, so if new miners would flood in and the average time between 2 blocks would decrease very slightly, the next diff adjustment would just increase the difficulty so the average time between 2 blocks would once again be 10 minutes. Same logic goes when a lot of miners would leave our ecosystem: the average time between 2 blocks would increase untill the next diff adjustment, the difficulty would decrease at the next diff adjustment, and the average time would be ~10 minutes again.

I'm also having trouble following the first part of your post... which app, which garbage,... ?

[hugeblack]

Currently it takes 1-3 hours for a transaction to complete if we do it with less fee? Is it possible in future that this transaction time will reduce or may be even become instant? Like when all Bitcoins are  mined and there are mainly holders instead of traders and volume of transactions decline.

If the time between blocks is reduced, then you will need more than one block, and you may find that some services consider the transaction complete after 10 blocks or even more blocks, as in BSV, where the matter reached 1k of confirmations^[1].
Therefore, an average of 10 minutes is useful, and the higher fees you pay, the higher the probability that your transaction will be confirmed within less than 10 minutes. If you want instant transactions, use the Lightning Network or side networks.


[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/bitcoincashSV/comments/lpp0kb/bsv_transaction_taken_4_days_and_still_less_than/

[stadus]

Currently it takes 1-3 hours for a transaction to complete if we do it with less fee? Is it possible in future that this transaction time will reduce or may be even become instant? Like when all Bitcoins are  mined and there are mainly holders instead of traders and volume of transactions decline.

Fees rely on network congestion. If it's congested, you need to pay higher fees so your transaction will be prioritized. I think that has been the norm, and that's the reason why altcoins are created. Yet, Bitcoin is still the most popular since altcoins generally does not gain the trust of the people. I know there's this LN but it hasn't gain good adoption rate yet, probably because people find it complicated to follow?

[wallet4bitcoin]

You can use off chain solution like Bitcoin Lightning Network.

[Table] All Lightning Network Threads In One Place

For onchain, I like how it is now because Transactions per second, transaction time is not my most concern when using Bitcoin blockchain. I care more about security and safety of my transactions on Bitcoin blockchain. If the Bitcoin blockchain with it current parameters, can provide me safe and secure transactions, I like how it is.

https://howmanyconfs.com/

Security and safety on the bitcoin netwrok is somewhat in order and shouldn't be much of a worry to users but transaction time is also a vital part of the tech. I once had a bitcoin transaction pending for days a few years ago, the receipient thought I was been fradulent and it took loads of explanantion process to 'calm the waters' before it finally arrived. That should be a cause for worry in the space. The OP's concern might not be unconnected to something similar.

[AmoreJaz]

Currently it takes 1-3 hours for a transaction to complete if we do it with less fee? Is it possible in future that this transaction time will reduce or may be even become instant? Like when all Bitcoins are  mined and there are mainly holders instead of traders and volume of transactions decline.

Fees rely on network congestion. If it's congested, you need to pay higher fees so your transaction will be prioritized. I think that has been the norm, and that's the reason why altcoins are created. Yet, Bitcoin is still the most popular since altcoins generally does not gain the trust of the people. I know there's this LN but it hasn't gain good adoption rate yet, probably because people find it complicated to follow?

if only crypto exchanges will have LN in their network options, i believe the adoption will grow faster for this network. however, as we have seen, LN has been here long time and yet i haven't seen any top crypto exchange integrating this in their options.
and that's the reason why most crypto users are not also using this route. and not very many are also familiar using this network, hence, they just stick to what is available for them.
this phase i think will also pass, just like previous hurdles before. fees will go down again. for now, we need to sacrifice some fees if we really need to make a transaction. or better yet, look for alts that can also address your needs.

[Learn Bitcoin]

I'm also having trouble following the first part of your post... which app, which garbage,... ?

He was talking about centralized services like Binance and other exchanges. Sometimes, they release withdrawals with low fees, and their user cannot bump the fees. They have no way other than waiting hours to confirm their transaction. Most centralized exchanges charge a fixed fee from users, but they release many transactions in a single transfer and that's where they try to save money. Sometimes they spend good enough as well. But the problem is, their user has no control. That is one of the reasons we suggest not to use centralized services.

[PX-Z]

Lightning is made for that purpose, and every wallet or exchange should implement this features, or just users use wallets with lightning.

Well, although i have in mind that bitcoin won't scale in "instant payment globally" on some offline physical stores or even online stores because of this 10 minutes confirmation time even though there is lightning since lightning has still limitations, say in amounts, centralization concerns too.

[Jawhead999]

yet i haven't seen any top crypto exchange integrating this in their options.

Many exchanges already adopt lighting network including Binance, Kraken and Bitfinex, I don't think these three exchanges aren't in top or big exchanges.

I once had a bitcoin transaction pending for days a few years ago, the receipient thought I was been fradulent and it took loads of explanantion process to 'calm the waters' before it finally arrived.

It's normal for the recipient become emotional because when the transaction is unconfirmed, there's a possibility you can double spend the transaction.

[moneystery]

that might be possible if more people use the lightning network in their transactions. LN offers fast and cheap transactions between users compared to the regular bitcoin network.

LN is the best solution for fast and cheap bitcoin transactions, especially in the adoption of bitcoin for everyday transactions, the use of the lightning network can help people complete their transactions more quickly, such as merchants and customers to make transactions without having to worry that they have to wait 10 minutes to complete their payment.

even though LN is still in the development stage and from several articles i read, there are still many loopholes and it is vulnerable to being hacked, but maybe in the future many people will give LN the opportunity to develop and it could become a better protocol.

[krishnaverma]

Currently it takes 1-3 hours for a transaction to complete if we do it with less fee? Is it possible in future that this transaction time will reduce or may be even become instant? Like when all Bitcoins are  mined and there are mainly holders instead of traders and volume of transactions decline.

If we don't change the protocol, the average time between 2 blocks will allways be ~10 minutes. So, even when most of the blocks are (allmost) empty, the average CONFIRMATION time will always be ~5 minutes.

AFAIK, the mempool has been flooded with ordinal transactions for quite a while now. I had hoped this was a fad that would have been long gone by now, but they keep broadcasting transactions... If they'd stop, and people would make less than 1 Mb of transactions per 10 minutes (excluding the witness data), you'd be able to send 1 sat/vbyte transactions once again and get them confirmed after an average time of ~5 minutes (after the backlog has cleared offcourse).

By the way, transactions are broadcasted allmost instantly... They remain in the mempool of the nodes untill they end up in a block, it's this process that takes very long ATM.

If you want cheaper fees, or faster confirmations, you should either look at altcoins, sidechains and/or offchain sollutions.

Who has the authority to change the protocol?

[Z-tight]

I believe it's impossible Bitcoin transaction become instant because the ~10 minutes per block is used to make the network secure.

BTC blocks are confirmed ~ 10 minutes of average, but this time doesn't have anything to do with the security of the network, blocks can be found in a shorter period and the network would still be secure. I believe the average confirmation time of 10 minutes was chosen to avoid waste of computational power. BTC nodes validate blocks and propagate them to other nodes, so the network needs time for this propagation and to ensure that miners do not waste power looking for blocks that have already been mined.

I think that has been the norm, and that's the reason why altcoins are created.

That is not why altcoins were created, too many of them were created to scam people and to enrich the creators.

I once had a bitcoin transaction pending for days a few years ago, the receipient thought I was been fradulent and it took loads of explanantion process to 'calm the waters' before it finally arrived. That should be a cause for worry in the space.

You should have sent them the tx id and also sign a message from the sending address, so your recipient can verify that you have sent payment, but the network congestion or low fees is the cause of the delay.

[Faisal2202]

Currently it takes 1-3 hours for a transaction to complete if we do it with less fee? Is it possible in future that this transaction time will reduce or may be even become instant? Like when all Bitcoins are  mined and there are mainly holders instead of traders and volume of transactions decline.

Yeah, it is possible because the congestion on the network is due to the Ordinals and dust transactions, and these problems are due to the scalability issues of the BTC blockchain. If you have used lightning network then you would have known that the lowest transaction fee is on LN. Like it is in 0.001 to 0.003 dollars. They are really good because they are making transactions off-chain.

Besides this solution, there would be other solutions might be brought but till now they are not like I mentioned in my previous replies about side and drive chains, they are like child chains of the main blockchain but I don't know that if its is possible or not