The honest answer is minutes to about half an hour, with Bitcoin sometimes taking longer. The more useful answer explains where that time actually goes, because once you know which part of the process you are waiting on, the wait stops feeling like a problem.
What the status timeline actually means
Every MoinCash order page shows a live timeline. The stages are not decorative; each one is a different kind of waiting.
- Waiting for deposit. Nothing has been received yet. The clock here is entirely yours, and on a fixed rate it is the countdown you need to beat.
- Confirming. Your deposit transaction has been seen on the network and is accumulating confirmations. This is usually the longest stage, and it is controlled by the blockchain, not by the exchange.
- Exchanging. The deposit is confirmed and the conversion into your target asset is being performed.
- Sending. The payout transaction to your receiving address is being broadcast. On the destination network it now needs its own confirmations.
- Completed. The payout has settled and the transaction hash is available with a block explorer link.
Why confirmations differ so much by network
A confirmation means a block containing your transaction has been added to the chain. How long that takes, and how many are needed before the funds are treated as final, varies enormously.
- Bitcoin produces a block roughly every ten minutes on average, and blocks arrive irregularly. A deposit needing a handful of confirmations can therefore take anywhere from ten minutes to an hour or more. This is normal Bitcoin behaviour and not a sign of a problem.
- Ethereum settles in seconds per block, so confirmations accumulate quickly, though a low gas price can leave your transaction sitting in the mempool before it is included at all.
- TRON, BNB Smart Chain, Solana, Polygon and Arbitrum are all fast, typically confirming within seconds to a couple of minutes.
An exchange has to wait for both ends. If you send Bitcoin and receive USDT TRC20, the Bitcoin confirmation dominates the total time and the TRON payout is close to instant. Swap the direction and the whole thing usually finishes in a few minutes.
What slows things down
- Network congestion. When a chain is busy, the fee you attached determines how quickly your transaction is picked up. Underpaying gas is the single most common reason a deposit sits unconfirmed.
- A deposit sent from a centralised exchange. Some platforms batch withdrawals and hold them for internal review, so the transaction may not hit the network for a while after you request it. The order cannot see anything until the transaction exists on-chain.
- Replaced or accelerated transactions. If you use replace-by-fee, the original hash may be dropped, and the confirmation count restarts on the new one.
How to use your transaction hashes
This is the most useful habit to build. The order page shows the deposit transaction hash as soon as your payment is seen, and the payout hash once the target asset is sent, each with a block explorer link.
Open the explorer link and you can verify three things yourself, without asking anyone:
- Whether the transaction exists on the network at all.
- How many confirmations it currently has.
- Whether the amount and the destination address match what the order expected.
If the explorer shows your payout hash as confirmed and the funds are not visible in your wallet, the issue is almost always on the wallet side: an unlisted token that needs to be added manually, a wallet showing a different network by default, or a view that has not refreshed.
What a normal slow exchange looks like
A Bitcoin deposit sent with a modest fee during a busy period, confirming over forty minutes, then paying out to Ethereum within a minute or two, is a completely ordinary order that took roughly forty-five minutes. Nothing went wrong. The chain was simply doing what it does.
When to contact support
Write to support@moin.cash when one of these is true:
- Your deposit hash shows as confirmed on the explorer, the order still says waiting for deposit, and more than a reasonable number of confirmations have passed.
- The order sits in exchanging or sending far longer than the typical window for those networks.
- Your deposit was late, short, or sent on the wrong network, and you want to know how the handling rules and the refund to your refund address will apply. Those rules are shown on the order page, so reading them first will usually answer the question immediately.
Include the order reference and the deposit transaction hash. With those two pieces of information, an order can be traced on-chain straight away. Without them, the first reply will only be a request for them.
How to make your next exchange faster
- Choose the faster network when you have the option, particularly for stablecoins.
- Do not underpay gas to save a few cents; a stuck transaction costs far more in waiting.
- Send directly from your own wallet rather than through a centralised exchange withdrawal queue.
- On a fixed rate, have the wallet open and funded before you create the order, so the countdown is never tight.