Yesterday, about 18 hours ago, I did a BTC buying transaction of about 3.5 BTC on the chain. That was around the peak of the mempool backup.
The guy selling the 3.5 BTC to me was using Mycelium and I was using the Blockchain.info wallet. I use my local bitcoins advert to establish our agreed to buying price, and the Localbitcoins website gave a warning that "due to an ongoing attack on the network" transactions may take more than 3 hours to go through (even though they will show up immediately as "pending").
Since I had already done several transaction with the guy selling me the 3.5 coins, I felt that the likely delay in confirmation was not a major risk problem for me in terms of the likelihood that he would attempt to pull shenanigans on me, such as attempting a double spend.
He used a fee of about .00015BTC (about $.095 - which is almost 10 cents), and the transaction took 83 minutes for the first confirmation. I did not watch the transaction, so I am not sure how long it took for the next 2 confirmations and for the coins to become available for my usage. Usually the first confirmation takes the longest, and the second two confirmations will usually go through within less than 30 minutes from the time of the first confirmation.
The guy selling the 3.5 BTC to me was using Mycelium and I was using the Blockchain.info wallet. I use my local bitcoins advert to establish our agreed to buying price, and the Localbitcoins website gave a warning that "due to an ongoing attack on the network" transactions may take more than 3 hours to go through (even though they will show up immediately as "pending").
Since I had already done several transaction with the guy selling me the 3.5 coins, I felt that the likely delay in confirmation was not a major risk problem for me in terms of the likelihood that he would attempt to pull shenanigans on me, such as attempting a double spend.
He used a fee of about .00015BTC (about $.095 - which is almost 10 cents), and the transaction took 83 minutes for the first confirmation. I did not watch the transaction, so I am not sure how long it took for the next 2 confirmations and for the coins to become available for my usage. Usually the first confirmation takes the longest, and the second two confirmations will usually go through within less than 30 minutes from the time of the first confirmation.
Is that an off-site transaction to avoid fees? Normally the seller has to have funds in his escrow wallet before he can place an ad. The transfer would then be internally on LBC's side, and it would be the withdrawal to your own personal wallet that would be delayed.
When I buy or sell BTC on LocalBitcoins, I usually use it for one or two transactions with people that I have just met (through my ad). After I establish a relationship with them, then I will start to transfer directly (especially because I am doing it in person and in cash). We use the local bitcoin rates for guidance for what the rate of our direct transaction will be.... which currently mine is pegged at around 4% in each direction - whether buying or selling.