Swap Crypto from Bitcoin — No Account, No KYC

What is the Bitcoin network?

The Bitcoin network is the oldest blockchain in continuous operation — a global system of nodes and miners that has settled transactions around the clock since 2009, with no operator, headquarters or maintenance window. Miners order transactions by expending real energy on proof-of-work; thousands of independent nodes check every block against the same rules.

It is also the most deliberately minimal network we route. No token standards, no smart-contract ecosystem in the everyday sense, no gas market for computation — one asset, one job, done with the strongest settlement assurances in the industry.

Confirmations: how Bitcoin does finality

Bitcoin never declares a transaction absolutely final — it makes reversing one progressively absurd. Each block mined on top of yours adds work an attacker would have to redo, so recipients count confirmations: a small payment may be treated as settled after one, a large one after several.

Blocks arrive roughly every ten minutes on average, though the spacing is random — two blocks can land a minute apart, or none for half an hour. Practically, expect the Bitcoin leg of any swap to take tens of minutes rather than seconds, and to be the pace-setter of whichever swap it appears in. Deposits here may require multiple confirmations before processing.

The fee market and the mempool

Bitcoin transactions wait in a public queue — the mempool — and miners take the best-paying ones first. Fees are therefore a bid, not a price list: the same transfer costs little on a quiet day and more during a rush. When you send a deposit for a swap, your own wallet sets that bid; a competitive fee keeps your swap on schedule, a lowball one leaves it waiting in the queue.

The payout side is handled for you — network costs on both legs are already included in the quote shown before you confirm.

Bitcoin addresses: 1, 3 and bc1

Three address families circulate today: legacy addresses starting with “1”, script addresses starting with “3”, and bech32 addresses starting with “bc1” — the modern SegWit format most wallets now generate. All three are valid destinations for a swap payout, and the widget validates the format before anything moves.

Bitcoin uses no memos, tags or extra fields; the address is the whole destination. One thing the network cannot do is receive tokens from elsewhere: only native BTC travels on these rails, and “BTC” balances on other chains are wrapped stand-ins with their own custodial risks — a distinction the BTC hub covers in depth.

What CryptoRoute routes on Bitcoin

One asset: BTC, natively, on its own network. There is nothing else to route here — no stablecoins, no token layer — and that simplicity is the network’s character rather than a limitation of ours. The widget confirms the live list, brief as it is.

For the asset side of the story — what BTC is, why wrapped versions differ — see the BTC hub. This page is about the machine underneath: blocks, fees, addresses, and how value gets on and off.

On and off Bitcoin in one step

Because Bitcoin hosts no tokens, every move between BTC and another ecosystem is by definition cross-chain — historically the job of custodial exchanges or wrap-and-bridge pipelines. NEAR Intents does it as one operation: declare the outcome, and solvers exchange real BTC for the real destination asset, atomically, with both legs verifiable in public explorers.

No exchange account, no platform balance, payout straight to the wallet you choose; a swap that cannot fill refunds to the address set at creation. One sentence of small print: no-KYC swapping does not exempt you from the tax and reporting rules of your own jurisdiction.

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