What Are The Ways To Verify A Bitcoin Transaction?

The transition to a world where you are the bank and you have to handle your money can be daunting. The first transaction you make on the blockchain will have you sweating bullets for every new Bitcoiner. 

Are you wondering if you did it right, if you copied the address correctly, if it’s normal to take this long to process, and how you can follow up with your transaction. You should never overlook this scary but liberating process.

It’s important to remember and harness the feeling you get when you send your first on-chain transaction. When moving Bitcoin, don’t ever get complacent; check, double-check, and recheck everything because once the transaction reaches the chain, there is no reversal.

You may find Bitcoin’s electronic value exchange system strange and unfamiliar at first. It is prudent to understand how bitcoin transactions function, regardless of whether you are spending or accepting bitcoin. By doing this, you will save yourself a great deal of stress and become more comfortable with transactions. 

Bitcoin transactions: what are they?

A Bitcoin transaction is like an email message. It is a digital message that has been signed with cryptography and sent to the entire Bitcoin network for verification. A digital ledger known as the bitcoin ‘blockchain’ maintains transaction information that is publicly accessible. The history of every Bitcoin transaction can be traced back to the point when bitcoins were mined.

If you are considering either spending your Bitcoin, sending it to your Bitcoin wallet or converting it to another exchange, you must first know that transactions are verified on the blockchain. There is a chain as a means of achieving final settlement, as well as a digital distributed ledger containing every Bitcoin transaction ever made. As a result of this chain, Bitcoin is safe and reliable since all transactions are immutable and cannot be altered in any way. 

In what ways does Bitcoin transaction confirmation work?

Every time you make a Bitcoin transaction, you encrypt the request with your private key. You are the only one with access to this key, and it is generated automatically and unique for each transaction. By using the private key, you will be able to request a Bitcoin transaction, and the request will then be broadcast across the Bitcoin network.

A miner will then take your request, among many others, and mine the coded request privately to ‘solve’ it. 

The miner adds the solution to their personal blockchain once he or she has solved it. Later, other miners and other users known to run nodes will take a look at whether the block meets Bitcoin consensus requirements. 

When this occurs, all nodes confirm that the first miner’s proposal is valid, and the new block containing all those transactions will be added to the public blockchain. By being included in a block on the blockchain, your transaction is now confirmed.

Blockchain blocks are mathematically linked to the blocks that came before them. Once the block containing your transaction is added to the chain, any subsequent blocks become further confirmations of your transaction. Each block following the first confirmation confirms that the transaction is legitimate.

What is the average confirmation time for Bitcoin?

The blockchain adds a new bitcoin block every 10 minutes containing all the most recent transactions. In theory, your transaction will be confirmed within ten minutes of being added to a block by a miner. In most cases, your Bitcoin should reflect after one confirmation, but it can take up to six conformations depending on the rules of the receiver. 

Since it’s unlikely you will need more than six confirmations for the transaction to be fully processed, typically it won’t take more than one hour for the transaction to be fully confirmed unless you’re sending a large amount of Bitcoin.  

The best way to track Bitcoin transactions

In general, it’s pretty straightforward to check the status of your Bitcoin transaction and see whether it’s been confirmed and how many times it’s been confirmed. 

As part of sending bitcoin, you’re given a Bitcoin transaction ID labeled TxID, which is unique to the transaction and can be used to track its details.

Then you can grab the TxID and visit any of the many Bitcoin blockchain websites known as block explorers. You’ll be able to track your transactions by entering your Bitcoin TxID or your exchange or wallet address. 

A summary of information will be presented, including the number of confirmations for the transaction. Additionally, you’ll be able to see how much you paid for the transaction. Every transaction comes with a fee that goes toward rewarding miners for solving equations.