Can you send and receive before the blockchain has downloaded?

[jefferson7]

I think that is a stupid question, but hey, if you don;t ask you don't know without just trying it and risking it!

Also, is there a way to speed up the download? mine has taken over a week already and is just over half way! It really slows down my machine too with constant high disk use and going into "Not responding" mode several times a minute. PITA!

Thanks

[1715085160]

1715085160

[jeroenn13]

You can use a different wallet if it is really bugging you. Consider Electrum, you won't need to download everything... servers do that for you.

[HI-TEC99]

You can send coins if your wallet has downloaded enough of the blockchain to see they were deposited in one of its addresses. You don't have to wait until the whole blockchain is fully downloaded.

If you want faster access to your coins you can use the instructions in the quote to switch to using an electrum wallet.

If you don't want to wait you can use these instructions for switching to using an electrum wallet. Electrum syncs almost immediately and lets you spend your coins almost immediately. Bitcoin core can take days to sync.

Click file, then receiving addresses. Find the address you sent coins to in the window that opens, right click it, and select copy address. Close the addresses window.

Click help, then debug window.

In the debug window that opens click console.

In the text box at the bottom of the window type

dumpprivkey yourAddress

where yourAddress is the address you sent coins to and copied earlier.

Press your enter key.

The private key for that address should appear in the console window. Copy it.

This is an example private key.

L48toSntMVhC2az4KAQCWscrQGfPbT55yCgzM5cmx9Ao69pTdwrq

Download and install electrum.

https://electrum.org/#download

Import your private key into it using these instructions.

http://docs.electrum.org/en/latest/faq.html#can-i-import-private-keys-from-other-bitcoin-clients

Afterwards your coins should be spendable.

[jefferson7]

Thanks thats an interesting idea.

Any ideas on the other problem I'm having: How to speed up the download and processing of it? Its using up all my disk and most of the time is not downloading anything.

[HI-TEC99]

Thanks thats an interesting idea.

Any ideas on the other problem I'm having: How to speed up the download and processing of it? Its using up all my disk and most of the time is not downloading anything.

I don't have much experience of using core so others can give you better advice. Ranochigo advised another user to increase the dbcache, but I don't know if that's applicable to your wallet. Achow101 who is the moderator of this board knows as much about core as anyone. If you read through his posts I'm sure you can find an answer.

*snip*

If you were to increase the dbcache, the client can use a lot more ram and the process will be sped up drastically.

Go to File>Option and go to the dbcache field and key in (its in MB) however much ram you want to use. Take note that for whatever you keyed in, the number should not exceed the amount of ram that is free in MB. Next, just restart the client.

[netox]

I think that is a stupid question, but hey, if you don;t ask you don't know without just trying it and risking it!

Also, is there a way to speed up the download? mine has taken over a week already and is just over half way! It really slows down my machine too with constant high disk use and going into "Not responding" mode several times a minute. PITA!

Thanks

If you really want to speed up the client  download the blockchain data from here https://bitcoin.org/bin/block-chain/ (not so safe like doing the whole process by your client) but at least you will have the entire blockchain much more faster.

Take a look on the wallets available https://bitcoin.org/en/choose-your-wallet and chose for yourself.

[ranochigo]

If you really want to speed up the client  download the blockchain data from here https://bitcoin.org/bin/block-chain/ (not so safe like doing the whole process by your client) but at least you will have the entire blockchain much more faster.

Take a look on the wallets available https://bitcoin.org/en/choose-your-wallet and chose for yourself.

Downloading the bootstrap.dat now and verifying will take more time than downloading it using your client. Your client can now download blocks from all the nodes you are connected to and verify simultaneously. Bootstrap.dat will not speedup the verification, it will only speed up the download. And no, it is equally safe since the client is still verifying each block.
Can you go to task manager and tell us your ram usage? By the looks of it, your computer might have limited ram space and is hence freezing up quite often. You have to clear some ram before trying out my dbcache trick. I would advise you to just shift to a SPV client anyway.

[jefferson7]

Thanks for the tips, worked great. I increased the size of the cache from 450 to 750 and it stopped all the disk usage and "Not responding" messages. Running much fast now. Looks like its downloading ok so Ill stay with the wallet download for now too.

My machine has 4gb ram for your info

Thanks guys

[Casy]

Thanks thats an interesting idea.

Any ideas on the other problem I'm having: How to speed up the download and processing of it? Its using up all my disk and most of the time is not downloading anything.

You could enable pruning mode, this would reduce the required disk space.
The main point if it is not downloading anything is that it is probably already busy with processing the downloaded parts of the blockchain. The client will always check if the received parts are valid. This is CPU intensive.