How long does it actually take to sync a full Bitcoin node from scratch? I put it to the test using the official Bitcoin Core, version 31.0, running on a 2024 Mac Mini with the M4 Pro chip and 24 GB of RAM. That's a genuinely fast machine.
Setup
The process is straightforward:
- Download Bitcoin Core from the official website, bitcoincore.org.
- Unpack the archive.
- Launch the node.
Right away, head into the settings and set the database cache size to 16 GB. This speeds up the sync as much as possible. Close the app, open it again, and double-check that the setting was applied correctly.
After that, there's nothing left to do but wait.
The result
In the end, syncing the Bitcoin node took 11 hours and 31 minutes 🤯. If that works for you, great. Personally, I think it's way too long, even on hardware this fast.
There's a faster way
Instead of downloading and verifying the entire blockchain block by block, you can start from a pre-synced snapshot and be up and running in a few dozen minutes instead of half a day.
That's exactly what chainstate.io provides: pruned Bitcoin Core snapshots you can download and drop straight into your node's data directory. In the next video I'll show how to use one to cut sync time from over 11 hours down to minutes.