I know a pruned Bitcoin Core node would also be an option, but the problem isn't so much the 500 MB-few GB of storage of this option, but the time until I'd have synced the blockchain. I'm looking for a solution which would be there instantly, to be used flexibly, like a SPV wallet.
It's actually doable but it's not recommended since your client wont be verifying the downloaded blocks, so you'll need to trust the integrity of your pruned blockchain.
That's basically defeating the purpose of using a Bitcoin Node.
Download at your own risk:
There's a user in GitHub who is hosting pruned blockchain which you can directly load in your newly installed Bitcoin Core.
Here's the link:
https://github.com/Blockchains-Download/Bitcoin/releases (
file names have the wrong year in the name)
Just follow the provided instructions by the owner, specifically those for "
local Bitcoin client".
The data seem legit since it starts without errors and continue to sync up to the tip but as mentioned, it's not verified by my Bitcoin Core client.