How quickly does a transaction travel through the Bitcoin network?

#asknostr

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Yes 🙌🏽

I've had one hang for hours before

But you'll usually get a confirmation in the first block, so about 10 minutes

A wallet can usually see an incoming transaction seconds after it's sent, but the transaction isn't trusted until a block is confirmed to prevent double-spending

Pretty quickly... As fast as gossip protocol happens. You connect to like 8-10 peers and tell them of a tx in milliseconds of creating one, then they will communicate it with their peers within seconds. Probably a matter of minutes or less than a minute to reach everyone.

Within 1–2 seconds, the transaction reaches hundreds of nodes.

Within 10–15 seconds, it propagates to the majority of reachable nodes (~90–95% of the network).

Complete global propagation (~100%) typically happens in 20–40 seconds.

These answers are all correct, but a transaction does not get confirmed until the next block. Blocks are typically 10 minutes apart. If you pay a lower fee, it may take a few blocks. Or you may get lucky and the next block is seconds after your tx is created.