Can Bitcoin transaction time reduce in future?

[Ndabagi01]

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.

Practically, it makes no difference how much you set as your transaction fee for a transaction; it must wait at least 10 minutes before being confirmed and added to the blockchain. Since it is expected that the number of bitcoin users will increase significantly in the future, I do not believe or expect that the bitcoin transaction time will be reduced. The time will vary depending on the transaction fees you use, the number of transactions, and the transaction fees set for them. Transactions could be approved in less or more time by that point in time.

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[Z_MBFM]

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.

We don't know if the creator of bitcoin is still alive so we all don't know if there is someone to idiot its function. on the other hand, the use of Bitcoin is increasing day by day and the volume of transactions is starting to increase. Due to the huge amount of transactions happening at the same time, we find that it takes a while for Bitcoin to block confirm and the fees increase along with the time. So I don't know if Bitcoin's clock confirmation is likely to get faster in the future. But I don't think Bitcoin transactions can ever be completed as quickly as other altcoins transcation

[adaseb]

The reason why your transactions take 2-3 hours is because you didn't use the best fee to get your transaction included on the next block, if you did the average transaction time would be around 10 minutes. Its actually even less right now since the difficulty is going up, so average transaction time is maybe 9 minutes or so.

Will this get reduced in the near future? Most likely not. It would mean a bitcoin hardfork which nobody will agree too. If we made 1 minute block times the blockchain size would be way too large and would result in less nodes which is not what we want for decentralization.

[hosseinimr93]

it must wait at least 10 minutes before being confirmed and added to the blockchain.

It's possible that a transaction is confirmed in less than 10 minutes. We don't know when the next block will be mined.

Its actually even less right now since the difficulty is going up, so average transaction time is maybe 9 minutes or so.

What do you mean by "difficulty is going up"?
The difficulty is adjusted every 2016 blocks. It was adjusted 2 days ago and the next adjustment will be around 12 days later.

[EL MOHA]

Practically, it makes no difference how much you set as your transaction fee for a transaction; it must wait at least 10 minutes before being confirmed and added to the blockchain. Since it is expected that the number of bitcoin users will increase significantly in the future, I do not believe or expect that the bitcoin transaction time will be reduced. The time will vary depending on the transaction fees you use, the number of transactions, and the transaction fees set for them. Transactions could be approved in less or more time by that point in time.

Yes 10 minutes is the default but it can be less than that, as at the time of this post when I check the Memepool from block 818745 to 818742 had an average of 8 minutes to get a block confirmed. Also the number of transactions in the pool will determine how fast you get your transaction confirmed as you said but once you set a fee that is high then it will wouldn’t take much block to get your transaction confirmed.

Its actually even less right now since the difficulty is going up, so average transaction time is maybe 9 minutes or so.

I think if there is increase in difficulty then the transaction is suppose to actually get confirmed within that 10 minutes or higher than that time except if the hash rate increases which will effect another difficulty adjustment after 2016 blocks

[Abu-Naim]

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.

Confirmation of Bitcoin transaction depends on the transaction fee you pay to process the transaction.
Most times, using CEX to send bitcoin transactions might be delaying because they have a fixed transaction fee which is estimated based on the network congestion, therefore, you have no right to speed up the transaction in case if the network get congested along the line. But using non custodial open source wallets that allow you to customize you transaction, you can run your transaction within 10 minutes or in less than 10minutes depending on the fee you used.

For instant transcription to happen in seconds or less than 5 minutes I don’t know if it is possible, but I will await response from other bitcoin experts to shade more light on that.

[hosseinimr93]

For instant transcription to happen in seconds or less than 5 minutes I don’t know if it is possible, but I will await response from other bitcoin experts to shade more light on that.

This has been already answered in previous posts.
Bitcoin blocks are mined at the rate of 1 per ∼ 10 minutes on average and there is no way to know the exact time the next block will be mined.
It's possible that the next block is mined in less than a minute and the miner includes your transaction if you have paid enough fee.

[PeRo]

It really depends on the fee you pay, I've recently moved some Bitcoins and the transaction got confirmed in a few minutes and I didn't even put a high fee- it was pretty cheap. The transaction time has had much worse days so I don't think it's much of a problem right now.
If you really want it instant now that's a different story, you could try some already mentioned services but I really don't think you need to complicate what could be solved by just waiting a few minutes, I doubt regular users need that speed right now.

Anyways, the transaction time has been like this for a long time, I don't think that it will change soon.

[nakamura12]

It depends on how long it will take for a transaction to get confirmed and if you talk about block then the average time for a block to mine is 10 minutes. Why I said it depends on how long for a transaction to get confirmed is because of the fee. If your fee is less than the current fee at this time then it may take a day before it is confirmed. There's a transaction where it was sent and it takes 13 hours before it gets confirmed and by the way, the fee that is used in the transaction is 42.1 sat/byte while the lowest fee in the next block that will be mined is around 43 - 60 before the fee reach 42 or lower. Well, you can imagine yourself how long it will take for a transaction getting confirmed if the fee used in that transaction, let's say 20 sat/byte but the current fee is let's say 50 - 60 sat/byte.

[mocacinno]

--snip--

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.
--snip--

Who has the authority to change the protocol?

Anybody can launch a proposal or create a (hard) fork themselves (to see if the majority of the network will switch to their version).

The thing is that changing the time between 2 blocks, the diff retarget mechanism, the block size,.. you'll have to create a hard fork... People will have to chose if they run a node/mine/etc on the "old" network or on the "new/forked" network.
There's no way to change these things without forking (and even a soft fork won't work since this is really the basic fundamentals of how bitcoin works). I don't see this happening. Even if you find a dev that is willing to create a fork for you (or if you create a fork yourself), odds are only a very small amount of people will follow you. This is what we saw when Bitcoin Cash forked off: they tried to increase the block size and created a hard fork to do so. I can only imagine they had hoped the majority of the community would switch to their fork and the "old" bitcoin would die off. The clash resulted in only a very limited amount of people following the new fork, 1 BCH =~ $200 whilst 1 BTC =~ $37000

[EarnOnVictor]

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.

In my understanding, the transaction time will not be reduced to an instant payment, that's how the blockchain was structured. This will continue unless they find a way to scale it more which is not advisable as it would definitely reduce its current decentralized characteristic to achieve that.

But for the recent high transaction fee, yes, it will go down over time. Such had happened in the past and the fee later returned to normal, at least bearable amounts. This often happens because of network congestion and I hope there is a lasting solution to this to avoid more discouragement and people preferring to transact with altcoins.

[Questat]

We can expect as the development and transactions improvement is ongoing. But for now, moving BTC is quite expensive, and have no other option aside from converting it to altcoins like XRP and TRX for cheap fees which is mostly done when the time like this happens.
The situation has already happened in the past years and it appears again, which makes those people who experience remain calm and of course, they are aware that it will be over soon. If we have other options in order not to touch our Bitcoin, I think that suits this time. Even though we can see now that the fees are gradually lowering, still we're unsure how long this will end.

[Abiky]

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.

Yes. It's possible. But only if the community approves developers' proposal to reduce the block time or increase the block size. Don't expect any improvement in the time-being, especially when miners are profiting off high network fees. If you want to skip the wait or pay less, just use an altcoin such as Litecoin or Dogecoin. Even ETH is cheaper than BTC these days.

I wouldn't recommend using Bitcoin's Lightning Network unless you're only planning to send very small amounts of BTC. Anything more than $100 on the LN would be considered a huge risk. That's because the L2 scaling solution is full of bugs. Hopefully, Bitcoin developers would be able to solve scaling issues in the future without compromising decentralization/censorship-resistance. Who knows if things are bound to get better soon?

[Y3shot]

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.

This is not the first time delay in transaction is happening , I think this is the second time I'm experiencing the delay in transaction this year but critical thing about this one is that it has taking much time, but I know this issue of hight transaction fee and delays of transaction won't last forever. I think for this issue to be resolved their is need for new development in the blockchain,  I think this will make transaction process to be fast.

[Z-tight]

I think for this issue to be resolved their is need for new development in the blockchain,  I think this will make transaction process to be fast.

There are layer 2 solutions that you can use, especially for micro payments, but i don't think the protocol in the BTC main chain is going to be changed for this reason, blocks would be found ~ 10 minutes on average and the transaction fees would be determined by the 'community', meaning if the mempool is congested for any reason, fee rate is going to rise and if the mempool is free, fee rate will drop.

Take note that no matter what, you decide the fees to attach to your tx, but the problem of using a low fee when fee rate is high is that there are so many other users who would outbid you for block space and push your tx down the mempool. That is why it is called a free market and there is nothing to be 'resolved' about this, except for using later 2 or offchain solutions.

[SquirrelJulietGarden]

Anybody can launch a proposal or create a (hard) fork themselves (to see if the majority of the network will switch to their version).

Those forks are dead.

How Many Bitcoin Forks Are There? You will be surprised!!!. Surprised because many of those forks (hundred) are dead.
https://forkdrop.io/how-many-bitcoin-forks-are-there

The clash resulted in only a very limited amount of people following the new fork, 1 BCH =~ $200 whilst 1 BTC =~ $37000

If they are not dead, like BCH, their networks are very quick and vulnerable to 51% attack. Bitcoin is the best.
How many confirmations are equivalent* to 6 Bitcoin confirmations?
BCH needs 1060 confirmations to have equivalent security like confirmations of Bitcoin blockchain. It is 181x slower. Anyone like BCH?

[btc78]

Like when all Bitcoins are  mined and there are mainly holders instead of traders and volume of transactions decline.

Even if all bitcoins are mined, there are still those who use bitcoin as a daily currency and most likely by the time all bitcoin has been mined, the general public have probably (hopefully) accepted bitcoin as a mean of payment therefore there’s still a possibility that transactions might even increase

[Asiska02]

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.

With the way the consensus operates now, it takes 10 minutes or less for the next block to be mined into the blockchain. After all bitcoin has been mined, I am not thinking the volume of transaction will decline because of how I have envisage bitcoin adoption to be by that time. If more people now hold bitcoin, we won’t have decline in transaction volume and more people will be transacting from time to time as we are experiencing now which will give the miners more competitive advantage when bitcoin owners set the transaction fee for their transaction to be processed faster. There won’t be decline in transaction fee and the time can also be reduced but not below an average time of five minutes.

Confirmation of Bitcoin transaction depends on the transaction fee you pay to process the transaction.
Most times, using CEX to send bitcoin transactions might be delaying because they have a fixed transaction fee which is estimated based on the network congestion, therefore, you have no right to speed up the transaction in case if the network get congested along the line. But using non custodial open source wallets that allow you to customize you transaction, you can run your transaction within 10 minutes or in less than 10minutes depending on the fee you used.

Centralized platforms add more than one transactions together and set a transaction fee to disburse them all. If they set high transaction fees for transactions, it could be bad market for them, so they set it to a price that will be profitable for them after the transaction has been processed. Maybe in the future, centralized platforms may allow users to set transaction fees for themselves but the disadvantage of it will be when users mistakenly set high transaction fees for small transactions as it is already happening to some people using decentralized platforms.

For instant transcription to happen in seconds or less than 5 minutes I don’t know if it is possible, but I will await response from other bitcoin experts to shade more light on that.

I have not come across a transaction that took place in less than five minutes before, they mostly happen within the time range of 8-10 minutes. Difficulty is increased when a miner mines a new block faster than the 10 minutes set averagely for mining a block into the blockchain. Thus, the next block to be mined will become harder than the previous one that was mined in less than 10 minutes. If the new one takes more than 10 minutes the difficulty will be reduced for the next block to be mined. That is how the whole process continues.

[mocacinno]

--snip--
With the way the consensus operates now, it takes 10 minutes or less for the next block to be mined into the blockchain.

No, a miner is creating a block header based on (amongst other things) the previous block's header, the merkle tree of the transactions in the block and a nonce. They loop trough the nonces and test if the sha256d hash of the header with the current nonce is under the current target. ON AVERAGE, this should take about 10 minutes. It's perfectly possible the time between two blocks is 30 minutes, an other times it'll only be a couple seconds/minutes... It's all random and average, there is no set maximum time.

--snip--
I have not come across a transaction that took place in less than five minutes before, they mostly happen within the time range of 8-10 minutes.

It's perfectly possible to broadcast a transaction with a sufficient fee and have it confirmed in mere seconds... As long as aminer received your transaction, put it in the block he/she is trying to solve AND succeeded in finding a block header whose sha256d hash is under the current target. There is no set minimum time before getting a confirmation...

Difficulty is increased when a miner mines a new block faster than the 10 minutes set averagely for mining a block into the blockchain. Thus, the next block to be mined will become harder than the previous one that was mined in less than 10 minutes. If the new one takes more than 10 minutes the difficulty will be reduced for the next block to be mined. That is how the whole process continues.

the retarget doesn't happen per block, it happens every 2016 blocks... If the last 2016 blocks have had an average time between two blocks of more than 10 minutes, the diff decreases (and vice versa)

[BitcoinTurk]

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.

Unfortunately, I think this will not be possible unless there is a protocol change but with alternatives such as Lightning Network, Bitcoin can be sent in a shorter time and with lower fees. There has been a significant increase in the Bitcoin transfers especially in the last few weeks and accordingly there is a serious waiting period in the transfer process. Unfortunately, although this is an annoying situation, the process must continue this way due to the structure of Bitcoin. I hope that with some developments in the near future we can see that both transfer fees and transfer time are shorter.

Although today it is possible to send money faster and more cost-effectively with Bitcoin compared to bank fees and this is one of Bitcoin's visions, being able to transfer under better conditions would be better for all of us and more attractive for Bitcoin.