A confirmation takes 30 minutes ?

[scarsbergholden]

I thought confirmations were 10 minutes usually at max?

No.

http://btc.blockr.io/block/list/

327489    2014-10-29 11:44:39
327488    2014-10-29 11:01:10


generation of block is variable ... like the demand and offer on bitcoin.

but block generation median time is rock stable : https://bitcoinwisdom.com/bitcoin/difficulty -on the left-

1 block: 9.8 minutes
3 blocks: 29.2 minutes
6 blocks: 58.5 minutes

The median time it takes for the miners to find new blocks is far from this stable. It can sometimes take the miners over an hour to find one additional block, or three or four blocks can potentially be found within a matter of a minute or two. You really need to look at much longer periods of time in order to get an accurate measure of average block confirmation times

[1715574481]

1715574481

[1715574481]

1715574481

[fa]

It's miners refusing to add your tx into their mined block.
Attached fee too small ~~

[szmarco]

Someday, the off-chain mode walllet service will make the tx instantly without any delay.

[scarsbergholden]

Someday, the off-chain mode walllet service will make the tx instantly without any delay.

There are already a number of wallet services that can do this for you. Coinbase is probably the most popular one, however you can also use things like ghash vouchers or btc-e codes to get the effect of an instant confirmation.

Realistically however, you can look at a TX and know relatively quickly that a TX will confirm or not.