nning a “full node” can easily take more than a week to sync on a quad-core computer with fast Internet connection and SSD.If you have a very old computer, it may never sync because the files seem to get corrupted often after a week or two of trying.Therefore I highly recommend to not use Bitcoin Core as a wallet until after you know what you are doing.Bitcoin Core offers better privacy and security at a very high cost (in terms of syncing).Users who simply want to try out bitcoin should not use Bitcoin Core, but rather start with a fast, lightweight client like:Or just use it on a mobile device, eg:You can explore Cold Storage options if you really need strong security, but do that after using a lightweight option with small amounts and learning about how Bitcoin works.For cold storage, here are some good options: - The first Open, secure, crowdsourced hardware wallet.- The has some elegant and unique features (eg: on-device PIN input, FIDO support) and is less expensive than the Trezor.

- Expensive, but seems about as good as Trezor, a few novel improvements made via large screen.- BIP38 Paper wallet.See "Going offline" instructions here: Print Offline Tamper-Resistant Addresses.Offline-created cold-storage, encrypted paper wallets are good (if done right) and can be made for free.They work great for savings, but are more difficult to spend from and should never be reused after being spent once.You can even create a cold-storage key for ultimate security._ Here's how it works: Anybody can ask a question Anybody can answer The best answers are voted up and rise to the top up vote 3 down vote favorite I've had Bitcoin-QT running for about six total hours, and the rate at which it's catching up is glacial at best.litecoin on asicIt takes about an hour to advance a week, which would make the process take about 4 days to complete.bitcoin mining on i7

It didn't take nearly this long on my PC; I started and finished the process while my Mac was still running.I'm running Bitcoin-Qt v.0.10.1 64-bit on a 2011 MBP, 8 GB of RAM, on 10.10.4.Is this normal, or is there something wrong?blockchain bitcoin-core mac up vote 1 down vote Sadly Bitcoin-Qt's (and bitcoind's) default DB cache size is very small for systems like yours.You should definitively add -dbcache=4000 (use 4GB of RAM for UTXO-set-database [etc.] cache).xapo bitcoin accountThis should speedup your sync significant.bitcoin hot cold walletup vote 0 down vote By the sounds of things and your fix, I would say that you had a blockchain created by an earlier version of Bitcoin-QT and something in the migration process in making that work with newer versions is causing it to take longer than to download the whole blockchain fresh with the latest versions.ato on bitcoin

It's always advisable to keep a backup of wallet.dat (so you don't lose access to your wallet) but you can dump the rest of the application support directory which is mostly blockchain.Browse other questions tagged blockchain bitcoin-core mac or ask your own question.Today marks the official release of Bitcoin Core 0.14.0, the fourteenth generation of Bitcoin’s original software client launched by Satoshi Nakamoto eight years ago.Overseen by Bitcoin Core lead maintainer Wladimir van der Laan, this latest major release was developed by nearly 100 contributors over a six-month period.Bitcoin Core 0.14.0 features a significant list of improvements.bitcoin dbsCompared to some previous releases, however, most of these concern “internals” of the software: performance improvements that take place under the hood but may not be very noticeable for everyday users.That said, here are some of the more notable changes.Whenever a new node bootstraps on the network, it syncs the entire blockchain.bitcoin sean spicer

It downloads and verifies all blocks that were ever mined, and verifies all transactions in all of these blocks.Unfortunately, this can take quite some time.Even new, high-end laptops often require more than a full day to catch up.For older or lower-grade machines, it takes even longer.“Assumevalid” significantly speeds up this process.In essence, Bitcoin Core 0.14.0 nodes assume that all transactions up to a certain block are valid.While a syncing node still verifies the proof of work for all blocks, and records the entire transaction history, it no longer checks signatures and similar data for each individual transaction.The assumption as to which block is valid is configurable.20 mh/s bitcoinBy default, it’s block 453354 for Bitcoin Core 0.14.0.ethereum leverageBut users who do want to fully verify every single transaction, even those dating years back, still can.It’s also worth noting that, as opposed to a checkpointing system that establishes that a specific block must be part of the blockchain, the assumed valid block is not necessarily binding.

A Bitcoin Core 0.14.0 node will readily switch to an alternative blockchain without the assumed valid block, if that alternative blockchain is longer.As Bitcoin blocks have been filling up, particularly over the last year, not all transactions sent over the network fit into the very next block.As a result, miners usually prioritize transactions that include the most fees.Transactions that include more fees have a higher chance of being included in the very next block or shortly thereafter.Transactions that include lower fees are outbid and take longer to confirm.Of course, not everyone needs their transactions to confirm as quickly.Users who send bitcoins to an exchange because of rapid price movements may be in a rush to have their transactions confirmed.Meanwhile, users who move bitcoins between their own wallets may be more patient.Since Bitcoin Core 0.10.0, users have been able to adjust their fees accordingly.They can manually include higher fees if they are in more of a rush, and lower fees if they are not.

Bitcoin Core 0.11.0 and 0.12.0 both refined the fee estimation software, and Bitcoin 0.14.0 now includes another set of improvements, which in particular makes the algorithm more robust in edge case situations.Additionally, the default confirmation target was decreased from 25 blocks to 6 blocks; most transactions made from Bitcoin Core should confirm within an hour even if the user doesn’t touch the fee settings.In addition to the improved fee estimation, Bitcoin Core 0.14.0 users have another option to speed up their transactions.First introduced a year ago with the release of Bitcoin Core 0.12.0, Bitcoin transactions can be marked with a “replace-by-fee” flag.Senders of a transaction can replace their initial transaction with a newer transaction that includes a higher fee.This allows them to “skip the line” and have their transaction confirmed faster.Up until this point, Bitcoin Core only included opt-in replace-by-fee in the node behavior: it accepted and forwarded transactions with replace-by-fee flags (instead of rejecting them as double-spends).

But Bitcoin Core users could not utilize opt-in replace-by-fee to bump their own fees; so far only users of wallets like Electrum or GreenAddress could.Now, opt-in replace-by-fee has been added as a remote procedure call (RPC) option in Bitcoin Core 0.14.0.This means that users working from the command line, or on applications built on Bitcoin Core, can utilize replace-by-fee, too.Bitcoin’s blockchain is over 100 gigabytes in size and at its current rate is growing about 50 gigabytes each year.All that data needs to be stored, which can present a significant burden for users running a full node.That’s why Bitcoin Core 0.11.0 introduced blockchain pruning.Users can get rid of older blocks once they are verified, so running a full node doesn’t require as much disk space.But up till now, users could only prune starting from a fixed number of blocks.With pruning set at 1000 blocks, for example, Bitcoin Core kept exactly the latest 1000 blocks.Whenever a new block was added, the oldest block was discarded, to keep the total at 1000.Unfortunately, this meant that certain applications relying on Bitcoin Core couldn’t really utilize pruning.

For example, a payment processing application — for merchants that want to accept bitcoin but prefer not to rely on external services like BitPay or Coinbase — may in some cases need to figure out whether a valid payment was made in an older block.If that block is already pruned, the application can’t do its job.Bitcoin Core 0.14.0 therefore allows for more specific pruning.bined with another new feature called “importmulti,” Bitcoin Core 0.14.0 can import and timestamp addresses, for example, from the aforementioned payment processing application.Using the timestamps to establish when a specific address was created, Bitcoin Core knows from which point in time blocks are relevant for the application and won’t prune these blocks.Whenever a new block is mined, it is transmitted over Bitcoin’s peer-to-peer network, until each node received it.Unfortunately, latency on this network can benefit pooled mining as well as geographic clusters of miners, incentivizing a more centralized mining topology.