Actually, I was shocked how quickly Bitcoin transfers were. About a week ago I watched someone transfer me $10 in BTC and I got "unconfirmed: $10" within a few

Actually, I was shocked how quickly Bitcoin transfers were. About a week ago I watched someone transfer me $10 in BTC and I got "unconfirmed: $10" within a few seconds. It wasn't confirmed until a few minutes later, but that was enough time to assume everything was fine and to keep doing stuff in the meantime. Concretely, you can assume almost every unconfirmed transaction will be confirmed, and you'll almost never be wrong. That means Bitcoin is effectively instant for every transacfion you don't need to care about, and in the other cases you can just wait a few minutes.