TLDR

A Bitcoin transaction usually takes 10–60 minutes to reach high-confidence finality.
This delay is intentional. It’s how Bitcoin stays secure and decentralized.

Step 1. You press “Send”

Pressing Send does not move Bitcoin instantly.

Your mobile wallet creates a signed transaction request containing:

• sender and recipient addresses

• amount

• transaction fee

At this point:

• the transaction has 0 confirmations

• it is included in 0 blocks

Nothing has been processed yet.
The wallet is only preparing and signing the request locally on your device.

Step 2. The transaction enters the mempool

After broadcasting, the transaction enters the mempool, a global queue of unconfirmed transactions shared across the Bitcoin network.

Some context:

• during normal activity, the mempool holds tens of thousands of transactions

• during congestion, it can exceed 300,000 pending transactions

• blocks are limited to roughly 1–4 MB, so not all transactions fit at once

You can observe this in real time here:
https://mempool.space

Step 3. Miners process transactions

Miners continuously scan the mempool and select transactions for the next block.

Key facts:

• Bitcoin targets one block every ~10 minutes

• the network processes about 5–7 transactions per second

• transactions are prioritized by fee rate, not by when you pressed Send

More on how Bitcoin mining works:
https://bitcoin.org/en/how-it-works

Step 4. The transaction is added to a block

Once included in a block, your transaction receives its first confirmation.

Typical benchmarks:

• 1 confirmation: transaction is included on-chain

• 3 confirmations: extremely hard to reverse

• 6 confirmations: widely considered final

You can verify confirmations here:
https://blockstream.info

Where mobile wallets fit into this

Mobile wallets do not change how Bitcoin works.
They simply make this process accessible and understandable.

A good mobile wallet should:

• sign transactions securely on-device

• broadcast them reliably to the network

• clearly show confirmation progress

• help users understand what “pending” actually means

This is where wallets like UnityWallet focus their effort — not on speeding up the blockchain, but on making the experience transparent and predictable for users.

The network does the verification.
The wallet does the communication.

The simple takeaway

When you send Bitcoin from a mobile wallet, you are not skipping steps.

You are:

1. creating a signed request on your device

2. entering a global mempool

3. being processed by miners

4. becoming part of an immutable blockchain

Understanding this flow makes Bitcoin feel less mysterious and a lot more trustworthy.