Hi,
I am looking into trading bitcoins and have a couple of questions. How do you trade on the market if it takes such a long time for the order to be processed. Lets say I sell BTC on an exchange for USD when the price is x. Now the price is y. Do I get x or y?
That's really a noob question and I guess you wouldn't have tried it either. The confirmation time you are talking about is the time taken to transfer the BTC from one wallet to another. It doesn't take time to buy or sell BTC for any currency since it is done on an exchange. The buy and sell takes place instantaneously and thus the amount is credited to your wallet. It is after the buy and sell that the transaction is done and for which we need to wait for a while so that the confirmations are done.