Hi team
A normal BTC transaction takes up to 10 minutes or more. But how come you get the BTC immediately in your custodian wallet when you buy your BTC on a spot exchange with fiat?
I mean the BTC have to move from somewhere to the wallet, why doens’t this take 10 minutes or more?
Can someone ellaborate?
Thank you
confirmation blocks after a transaction is made.
even if you do a transaction right now, in 10 minutes will be added to the next block, BUT some services (exchanges or custodian wallets) have a function to wait at least 2 or more blocks before they can confirm your transaction into your account.
so yeah, you have to wait 10 minutes + blocks confirmed (10 minutes per block), meaning you have to wait 2 or more blocks created after your transaction in order to show up into your balance.
Agreed.
But my question is, how come if you buy BTC with $, the BTC is added in less then a second to your custodion wallet and not 10 minutes or longer?
wich custodian wallet? you have a transaction id (tx id), even if they added right away to your account, you can use your tx id to check if that transaction is already added to blockchain… if its almost inmediatly, might be some kind of design on the service to show you the balance even if still is not accepted into the blockchain, but with the tx id you can verify.
remember: dont trust, verify.
For example people with a BTC wallet on Bitstamp. They don’t own the seed and private key nore do they see the tx id.
Nevertheless if they buy BTC with fiat for the first time, BTC is added instantly to their wallet. How does this process work, how does Bitstamp add BTC directly to your Bitstamp BTC wallet. Do they transfer from their own stack? How? Not likely with a tx, since it is done instantly.
Now, how the process exactly works i can not tell you, because thats an internal process from bitstamp.
Might be a fake number until they do all the process to approve your transaction, also can be has you said: transfer from their own stack, still, its a valid purchase, thats for sure, since you already “own” those btc, but could be an underlying process being executed to validate that transaction.
As to my best of knowledge, you never really own any coin as long as it is on an exchange. Therefore: always send it to a wallet where you are in control of (e.g. Ledger Nano) you need to be in control of the private key - and you are not if it stays on an exchange.
On an exchange (in this example Bitcoin) does not get transferred to a (hot) wallet soley designated to you. What you see in your Balance is just a ‘window’, like with any other banking transaction to the hot wallet of the exchange.
Coming back to my first point: There is no dedicated private key to ‘your’ BTC on an exchange.
As long as the BTC is on an exchange it is not your BTC. Think of what happens if the exchange gets off-line… or hacked. Hacker mainly steel coins from exchanges.
My best advise would be: Invest 60 bucks and get a Nano S and transfer your BTC 
Thank you for your reply.
I am fully aware of the functionality of wallets, seeds, public and private keys, and I personally use cold wallets.
Nevertheless my technical question remains.
How does an exchange move BTC instantly to my exchange BTC (balance)wallet on the exchange, after a purchase with fiat, and not in 10 minutes or more like a normal BTC transaction.
Blockdame,
Do you use a soft wallet as well? For example, if you are transferring your crypto out of an exchange, do you place any crypto on a wallet that is not a hard wallet so you can use the crypto on any platform you wish? Like do you use any wallets for your phone, I understand that it is not 100% secure but it does make it more flexible to move and buy, if so what do you use? Or am I overthinking this?
Second question
What is the quickest way to upload fiat currency to purchase crypto, and what platform do you use?
Thank you in advance!