Hello.
I've installed BTC wallet and it has been synchronizing for more than a week.
Is it normal?
Depends.
Will it finish synchronizing till Christmas?
Depends.
Currently there are blocks of summer 2014 and they are very slow.
The blocksizes grew over time, yes.
Bitcoin core needs a full copy of the blockchain to work. This is currently done by syncing with a single node you are connected to. Usually the first node. This might be a slow connection which will result in slow download speeds. The downloaded data will be locally verified by your machine, which is another reason this might be slow. If your machine is slow, the proccess is slow regardless of the connectionspeed.
There are some tricks to speed up the syncing. They all focus on downloading the data faster, because this usually is the bottleneck. Even old 1Ghz single core machines profit from a fast connection as there will be now downtime while verifiing.
#1 you can download the blockchain (unverified) via a torrent [1]. This will help if you have a fast connection but have not connected to a fast node. If your CPU is old or your machine is slow, this might not help. In your case Id go with #2 as you allready have plenty of the old blockchain data.
#2 you can force bitcoin core to connect to certain fast nodes. I made a list (see code block below) because this question arises often. In order to force the client to connect a specific node and only that node. Run it with -connect=IP
E.g. for Windows hit Win+R to open the "run" window:
enter: c:\Program Files\Bitcoin\bitcoin-qt.exe -connect=1.2.3.4
change the IP to one from the list, edit the path as needed and click ok.
Once you are fully snyced, close bitcoin core and start it like you normally would.
last updated 2014.11.25
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
IP - location - owner[1] - speed - info/stats page[2] - testnet
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
eldinhadzic.org[4] - LA, USA - eldinhadz - 1000 mbit/s - no - no
84.200.34.113 - Freinsheim, DE, EU - Newar - 1000 mbit/s - yes - no
185.45.192.129 - Amsterdam, NL, EU - anon - 1000 mbit/s - /node.php[3] - yes
213.165.91.169 - Germany, EU - shorena - 100 mbit/s - yes - no
50.7.68.180 - New York, USA - Newar - 100 mbit/s - yes - no
5.9.24.81 - Germany, EU - zvs - unknown - no - no
178.79.173.71 - United Kingdom, EU - zvs - unknown - no - no
107.155.104.194 - Dalls, USA - zvs - unknown - no - no
106.185.32.195 - Japan, Asia - zvs - unknown - no - no
94.242.57.173 - Russia, Asia - zvs - unknown - no - no
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[1] refers to a bitcointalk.org username or anon if requested
[2] same IP, port 80 or path/port given
[3] work in progress
[4] IP is 173.236.158.177
[1]
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/ann-bitcoin-blockchain-data-torrent-145386
