Receive payments in Bitcoin almost instantly. However, there is an average delay of 10 minutes before the network starts adding your transaction to a block confirming the transaction and you can spend the Bitcoins you received. Confirmation means reaching a consensus on the network that the Bitcoins you received were not used to pay others and are therefore deemed to be your property. Once your transaction is included in a block, all subsequent blocks will include it, which will greatly consolidate this knowledge and reduce the risk of transaction reversal. Each user can determine for themselves when a transaction is confirmed, but generally speaking, receiving 6 confirmations is as safe as waiting 6 months after a credit card transaction.

Only full node clients like Bitcoin Core require longer synchronization times. Technically speaking, synchronization is the process of downloading and verifying all previous Bitcoin transactions on the network. Some Bitcoin clients need to know all past transactions in order to calculate the available balance of your Bitcoin wallet and complete new transactions. This step is very resource-intensive and requires sufficient bandwidth and space to store the entire blockchain. In order to maintain the security of Bitcoin, there needs to be enough users using full node clients, as they play the role of confirming and relaying transactions.