Cryptocurrencies Processing Time
Sometimes it's desireable to not expose our payment cards to the merchants. Besides services like PayPal, are there other alternatives? Can we use cryptocurrenices like Bitcoin?
Another interesting service to not expose your payment card is Revolut. You can create exposable card to protect your privacy and its exchange rates are one of the best. But it's not available to all in Canada and you need to join the waitlist which I highly recommend it.
what about cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin? Without going into details, most cryptocurrencies require mining during which a block is confirmed that is legit. It requires to solve a complex mathematical problem. That block contains a bunch of transactions. If you want your transaction to be in a block, you must pay for miner fees. The more you pay, the more likely your transaction will be in the first available block.
If a merchant accept your transaction after 6 confirmation, it means you must wait until the block that contains your transaction be confirmed and then wait for 5 descendent blocks to be created and confirmed. Each block in Bitcoin network is generated almost every 10 minutes. So it means you must wait 60 minutes (6 x 10) that your transaction will be accepted! I don't think you like it when you'are waiting in a line to pay for your coffee with Bitcoin.
Block time is a measure of the time it takes to produce a new cryptocurrency block. You can explor Bitcoin blocks in this website and see that on average every Bitcoin block is generated roughly every 10 minutes. The next time that you want to pay with cryptocurrency it's a good idea to know its block time. You can see a list here:
| Crypto | Block Time |
|---|---|
| NANO | 3s |
| XLM | 5s |
| XRP | 10s |
| Ether | 13.1s |
| Tron | 15s |
| DigiByte | 15s |
| Litecoin | 2m 25s |
| Dash | 2m 36s |
| Bitcoin | 8m 2s |
| Bitcoin Cash | 9m 48s |
Note that these measurments are on average so they are not always accurate but they are good for a rough estimation. For example if a merchant accept Ether after 3 confirmation it means you need to wait for 39.3s which is reasonable. You can also read this website. A new technology named Lightning Network wants to enable fast transactions for Bitcoin.
Miner Fees
Another important factor to consider is miner fees, how much you should pay for your transaction. According to Binance fee schedules widthrawal fee for Bitcoin is 0.0004 (5.74 CAD at the time of writing) but for Tron is 1 (0.37 CAD).
