Faster way to sync my new Bitcoin wallet?

I'm very new to Bitcoin so I apologize if this question is naive. I just downloaded the Bitcoin, Litecoin, and Dogecoin Qt clients and opened each of these apps. Consistent with their coin's valuation, the Dogecoin client syncing was fastest, taking 3 hours, Litecoin took 20hrs, and Bitcoin is still trying to sync for 3 days now (progress bar shows only 25% synced).

I'm using a 2012 MacBook Pro (10.7.5) and have a good internet connection in a major city. Some questions:

Is there a faster way to sync my Bitcoin wallet than what I described or is the Bitcoin Network just too popular now and one should expect a new wallet to take +10 days to establish?
To begin with, is putting your own wallet on your computer not advised?

tim peterson

Posted 2014-01-13T13:13:01.890

Reputation: 165

Answers

The blockchain is available via Torrent now. You can download bootstrap.dat (14GB) this way and then process it locally, which in my case was much faster than syncing with network using Bitcoin-Qt.

Have a look at the announcement and you can grab torrent file from sourceforge.

Tomasz Błachowicz

Posted 2014-01-13T13:13:01.890

Reputation: 294

hi @Tomasz thank you. Yes I saw this method on bitcoin.org. The thing I couldn't understand was "If you know how to download a torrent file, you can speed up this process by putting bootstrap.dat (a previous copy of the block chain) in the Bitcoin-Qt data directory before starting the software." I have BitTorrent software but couldn't find the Bitcoin-Qt data directory. Is it possible this data directory has another name? Here's an image of the Bitcoin-Qt package contents: http://imgur.com/Y8j8Ssw

– tim peterson – 2014-01-13T16:01:50.677

ok I downloaded the bootstrap.dat file and put it in the "Data" directory which in the case of Mac's is here: ~/Library/Application\ Support/Bitcoin. https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Data_directory

– tim peterson – 2014-01-13T16:52:24.093

...then when I opened Bitcoin-Qt, the progress bar said "Importing blocks from disk" instead of "Syncing with the network". The progress bar still starts where I left off, 25-33% complete. I will update everyone how long this torrent download method takes to complete. Also by the way, bootstrap.dat is supposedly the same thing as blockchain.dat. This information is just for others who come across this thread. – tim peterson – 2014-01-13T16:57:43.447

Since Bitcoin Core 0.10.x, synchronization will employ "headers first" synchronization, improving the speed vastly and obsoleting the bootstrap approach. – Murch – 2015-08-20T11:18:05.307

Using a general purpose machine that's not online 24/7, you'll be much happier using the Multibit client. It does not download the full blockchain.

mirimir

Posted 2014-01-13T13:13:01.890

Reputation: 111