Bitcoin for casino deposits: fees and waiting time
Bitcoin was cheap to send on 12 November, around $0.15 for a typical transfer, and slow. Blocks averaged 11.9 min, and one gap that day dragged on for 54 minutes. For a casino deposit, plan for the wait first. The fee mostly comes down to your wallet's address type and how many old coins it has to spend.
- Median fee, last 24 hours
- $0.15
- Average fee, last 24 hours
- $0.50
- Blocks in 24 hours (Blockchair)
- 121 (target 144)
- Typical fee rate in a block
- 2 sat/vB (median of each block's median)
- BTC price at snapshot
- $71,444
How long a deposit waits
Keep mempool.space open for an evening and you'll see blocks arrive in clumps, two inside a few minutes and then a long silence. On 12 November the longest silence ran 54 minutes. Each confirmation your casino wants is one more of those draws, so a deposit that needs three can clear in a quarter of an hour or still show pending after sixty minutes.
| Measure | Value |
|---|---|
| Blocks | 122 |
| Median gap | 9.5 minutes |
| Average gap | 11.8 minutes |
| Longest gap | 54.7 minutes |
| Gaps over 30 minutes | 12 |
| Gaps over 45 minutes | 4 |
Block timestamps from mempool.space. Timestamps are set by miners and can be off by a few minutes, so single gaps are approximate.
| Confirmations | Expected wait | Slow case (rough) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | about 12 minutes | 30 minutes or more (1 gap in 10 was that long) |
| 2 | about 24 minutes | over 40 minutes |
| 3 | about 35 minutes | about an hour |
| 6 | about 71 minutes | two hours |
Expected wait = confirmations × 11.8 minutes. The right-hand column is a rough reading of the same day's gaps, not a guarantee. Each casino sets its own number of confirmations.
What sets the fee
The amount has nothing to do with the fee. A $20 deposit costs the same as $20,000 if both transactions take up the same number of bytes, and you pick the rate per byte. Most wallets pre-fill a rate on the safe side. On a quiet day like 12 November, 1 or 2 sat/vB got into a block, so open the fee screen and drop it a notch if one extra block of waiting is fine.
| Wallet address starts with | Size | At 2 sat/vB | At 27 sat/vB |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 (legacy) | 226 vB | $0.32 | $4.36 |
| 3 (nested SegWit) | 166 vB | $0.24 | $3.19 |
| bc1q (native SegWit) | 141 vB | $0.20 | $2.71 |
| bc1p (Taproot) | 154 vB | $0.22 | $2.97 |
Sizes from the Bitcoin Optech size calculator, with input and change of the same type. 2 sat/vB was the typical rate in a block on 12 November. 27 sat/vB was the busiest block group of the past month (90th percentile, mempool.space). BTC at $71,444.
Small casino withdrawals add up later
Every withdrawal a casino sends you lands in your wallet as its own coin. Ten small cash-outs are ten coins, and when you later send a bigger amount, your wallet has to spend all ten at once. Each extra input adds about 68 vB on a bc1q wallet, so the fee climbs with each of them.
| Coins spent | Size | At 2 sat/vB | At 27 sat/vB |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 141 vB | $0.20 | $2.71 |
| 5 | 413 vB | $0.59 | $7.96 |
| 10 | 753 vB | $1.08 | $14.52 |
| 20 | 1433 vB | $2.05 | $27.63 |
Size = 10.5 vB overhead + 68 vB per input + 31 vB for each of two outputs (Bitcoin Optech).
If you cash out often, ask for fewer and larger withdrawals where the casino allows it. Some wallets also let you merge small coins into one while the mempool is quiet, which mempool.space shows live. Merging ten coins at 2 sat/vB came to about a dollar on 12 November.
Low fee rates and stuck deposits
Of the 122 blocks that day, 86 still took in transactions paying under 1 sat/vB, some as low as 0.12. So a very low rate can work on a quiet day. It can also sit in the mempool for hours when traffic picks up, and the casino won't credit anything until it confirms. If your wallet supports Replace-by-Fee, you can bump the fee of a waiting transaction. Check that it's switched on before you send.
- Lightning is a different door. Some casinos take Bitcoin over Lightning. That deposit is an invoice starting with lnbc, not an address, and it can't be paid from a plain on-chain send.
- Wrapped BTC is not BTC. Tokens called BTC on other chains (BEP-20, ERC-20) need their own network option at the casino.
- The casino's fee is separate. Some casinos charge a withdrawal fee or a minimum for BTC that is higher than the network cost. Read the cashier page first.
18+. Crypto casinos aren't legal everywhere, and Stake has no licence in Germany. This page covers the Bitcoin network, not any casino. Help: Responsible gaming.
Not affiliated with mempool.space, Blockchair, Bitcoin Optech or any casino. Names belong to their owners.
Questions
How long does a Bitcoin casino deposit take?
As long as the confirmations the casino asks for. On 12 November 2026 blocks averaged 11.8 minutes, so one confirmation took about 12 minutes on average and three about 35, with single gaps up to 54 minutes.
Why is my Bitcoin fee higher than the fee estimate?
Estimates usually assume one input. A wallet that holds many small coins, for example from several casino withdrawals, spends them together, and each extra input adds about 68 vB.
Which Bitcoin address type is cheapest to send from?
Native SegWit (bc1q) produced the smallest standard payment, 141 vB for one input and two outputs. Legacy addresses starting with 1 needed 226 vB for that payment.
Can I speed up a stuck Bitcoin deposit?
Yes, if your wallet supports Replace-by-Fee: it sends the same payment again with a higher fee. Without it, the receiver can sometimes speed it up by spending the unconfirmed coin with a high fee, which a casino will rarely do.
Sources
- mempool.space: blocks API (timestamps, median fee rate, fee range). last 300 blocks to height 975,595 Checked 12 November 2026
- mempool.space: block fee rates, 24 hours and 1 month Checked 12 November 2026
- Bitcoin Optech: transaction size calculator Checked 12 November 2026
- Bitcoin Optech: Replace-by-Fee Checked 12 November 2026
- CoinGecko simple price Checked 12 November 2026
- mempool.space recommended fees Checked 12 November 2026
- Blockchair stats (Bitcoin, Litecoin, Dogecoin) Checked 12 November 2026
- Ethereum RPC (publicnode) eth_gasPrice Checked 12 November 2026
- BNB Smart Chain RPC (publicnode) eth_gasPrice Checked 12 November 2026
- TronGrid getchainparameters Checked 12 November 2026
- XRP Ledger fee method Checked 12 November 2026
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