When you pay a cheque from another bank into your bank, the bank will often hold that money for several days, because it can’t trust that the funds are really available. Similarly, international wire transfers can take a relatively long time. Bitcoin transactions, however, are generally far faster.
Transactions can be instantaneous if they are “zero-confirmation” transactions, meaning that the merchant takes on the risk of accepting a transaction that hasn’t yet been confirmed by the bitcoin blockchain. Or, they can take around 10 minutes if a merchant requires the transaction to be confirmed. That is far faster than any inter-bank transfer.
Www.bitcoin.com
HOw CAN I BUY BITCOIN?
You can buy bitcoins from either exchanges, or directly from other people via marketplaces.
You can pay for them in a variety of ways, ranging from hard cash to credit and debit cards to wire transfers, or even with other cryptocurrencies, depending on who you are buying them from and where you live.
Surprisingly, it's still not easy to buy bitcoins with your credit card or PayPal, depending on your jurisdiction.
This is because such transactions can easily be reversed with a phone call to the card company (ie 'chargebacks'). Since it's hard to prove any goods changed hands in a transfer of bitcoins, exchanges avoid this payment method and so do most private sellers.