Bitcoin Cash 'BCH' Is Here – Here is How To Get Your Bitcoin Cash Coins

So, it’s happened.
We have two bitcoins: Legacy bitcoin (BTC) and bitcoin cash (BCH).
The 1st of August 2017 will forever be remembered as the day when bitcoin hardforked into two separate blockchains.
If you read our previous article on BCH and how to take advantage of the split, I’m sure you want to get some free money now.
But how do you do it? How do you take out BCH securely? You’re in the right place as we guide you step by step on how to do it and what exchange platforms accept bitcoin cash.
If you didn’t take advantage of the split, you can also use this guide to find out where to buy the new coin.

Why Did You End Up With Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash?

Before we dive into how you withdraw the new bitcoin, let’s make it less confusing for those who don’t understand how it’s possible.
The easiest way to think of it is this: when a blockchain splinters into two, the new chain is identical.
Because you have coins on the original blockchain, you will end up with the same amount on the new one.
Now, the new chain is bitcoin cash so you’re getting the same amount of BCH (or BCC).
Since the new blockchain is a “duplicate” of the original one, this means the private key is also the same. You use the same private key on the new chain to access your new BCH.
Why are there two symbols for bitcoin cash?
There are two reasons for this.
Reason 1: bitcoin cash exists under BCH on the largest exchange Bitfinex. It also trades under BCC on some other exchanges. But..
Reason 2: BCC already exists and it’s reserved for BitConnectCoin.
At this moment in time, I’m unsure which version of bitcoin cash will be preferred, but it looks like BCH will be the one to stick.

How To Get Your Bitcoin Cash?

Before you do anything to obtain your bitcoin cash, make sure you do your due diligence and research as your funds might be at risk. Also, give it some time before the blocks are actually mined.

Step 1: Get your private key ready
First, make sure that you have a private key to access your bitcoin wallet. You can forget about accessing BCH if you don’t have it.

Step 2: Don’t trust anyone
Scammers are everywhere. Last week, I received a message on Reddit offering to split my coins for me. Under any circumstances should you trust similar messages.

Step 3: Create a BCH wallet
You will need to create a wallet that accepts bitcoin cash. That’s where you use your private key to access your new coins.
Find the full list of places where you can do so below.

Now, a few words of caution.
It’s probably best not to retrieve your bitcoin cash right after the 1st of August. Wait until full integration takes place and you’re notified about it.
Why?
Most third-party services suspended crypto-trading during the fork. These are various exchange platforms such as Coinbase and the majority of crypto-wallets. This is to ensure that everything runs according to plan.
You also want to make sure that you get the best price for your BCH. It might be the case that BCH will be on the raise and you don’t want to sell-off too soon.
The rumor has it that the bigger chunk of the community will dump BCH ASAP and convert it into BTC or fiat. This, in return, will cause a significant price drop.
There’s always a trade-off, but I’ll hold on to it for a few days to see how the market reacts to the newcomer.
Also, make sure that under any circumstances you do not install the bitcoin cash wallet on your desktop whilst having the bitcoin core wallet already installed. These two wallets are extremely similar and might overwrite the registry and files that could lead to loss of both of your coins.

Get Educated
If you’re keeping your bitcoins on a wallet that does accept BCH, wait until you’re told how to do it.
Perhaps there’s a software update that’s going to come out shortly that will allow you to do it with a click of a button.
Even though the theory is explained to you in 3 simple steps above, you don’t want to take unnecessary risks. Especially if you store a large amount of coins.

How To Get BCH via Hardware Wallet

There’s some good news.
Hardware wallets are not only the easiest and most secure way of storing your coins, but also altcoin friendly.
All three major crypto hardware wallets accept the forked version of bitcoin.
Ledger Nano S and Trezor allow to add BCH to your hardware wallet by selecting it before adding your key.

List of Popular Exchanges & Wallets That Do Accept BCH

Here’s a full list of popular exchange platforms & wallets that have recently announced that they in fact support the new bitcoin. You can use them to get your bitcoin cash or to purchase BCH through them:

• Bitfinex
• Bitflyer
• Bithumb
• Bittrex
• Blockchain.info
• BTC.com
• BTCC
• CoinFloor
• Cryptopia
• HitBTC
• Huobi
• Jaxx
• Korbit
• Kraken
• OKCoin
• OKEx
• Quoinex
• ViaBTC
• Yobit

Why Don’t Everyone Accept Bitcoin Cash?

That’s a good question. But I do have an answer for you that seems to be the most accurate one: greed.
There is no other reason why an exchange platform or a wallet service didn’t accept BCH. There could be some political beliefs involved in the fork, but it’s a rather convenient excuse.
Here’s what up.
Any third-party that doesn’t accept bitcoin cash will still get bitcoin cash.
Let’s have a look at Coinbase exchange which doesn’t support BCH.
Their website has been often down for the past 2 months due to rapidly-increasing amount of new users.
Coinbase receives about 7,000 new support tickets every day and their ticket backlog is approximately 2 months long.
Just to compare, Kraken is being stuffed with 4,000 tickets every single day. They’re also clearing out their ticket backlog as we speak.
That’s to illustrate to you how many people signed-up with Coinbase.
Now, let’s assume that half of them purchased some bitcoins and that half of half didn’t bother transferring it out before the 1st of August.
We’re going to end up with double digits of users who gave away their free bitcoin cash. Roughly speaking, that’s about 15,000-25,000 users.
Let’s go deeper with our estimation.
Presume that an average paying Coinbase user holds $100 worth of bitcoins.
Now, let’s take the mean from 15-25k users which is 20,000 users with at least $100 worth of BTC in their Coinbase account.
That’s $2 million worth of free BCH.
All these people will get big fat zero in bitcoin cash and Coinbase gets to enjoy BCH for them.

Conclusion

So we’ve ended up with two bitcoins.
Remember to be cautious when you’re splitting your bitcoins into two and read every possible manual related to your wallet.
I hope you took advantage of the split and you’re now enjoying your free coins. Let us know how it turned out for you below!

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Bitcoin has split, and there are now two versions namely 'Bitcoin Cash' and 'Bitcoin'

Bitcoin has just undergone a contentious “hard fork” that cleaved it into two separate entities for the first time in the cryptocurrency’s nearly nine-year history.
In addition to the first version of Bitcoin, there is now a new cryptocurrency called “Bitcoin Cash (BCH)” that offers an eight-fold(8MB) increase in transaction capacity.
For the last several years, the bitcoin infrastructure has been struggling to handle a growing number of transactions, and technical experts have said a new implementation of the currency will solve its back-logging issues.
That is what bitcoin cash promises. Like the original bitcoin, it uses the currency’s principal innovation: the blockchain, an immutable ledger of all the transactions ever performed with the cryptocurrency. Now that there are two versions of the ledger, however, there could be some practical problems, like vanishing coins, and philosophical ones, like a communal agreement on which blockchain represents the one, true, bitcoin.

The first bitcoin cash block on its own blockchain was successfully created at exactly 2:12 p.m. ET, and the new currency is already trading at $461 USD per coin.

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What is Bitcoin Cash, How Will It Affect Everyone and How you can take Advantage

Two days.
That’s how long I had been happy for BIP91 until Bitcoin Cash (BCC) was announced on Saturday the 22nd of July. Is this good news? Let’s find out.

More than 90% of the Bitcoin miners expressed their happiness toward SegWit as well. That, unfortunately, wasn’t enough for the “other camp” to come up with their own stuff.
Folks, who opposed the SegWit technology, had announced that Bitcoin would be hard forking anyway. And it will be happening quite soon.

When is Bitcoin Splitting Up?

Well, do you remember getting excited for the 1st of August? That’s right, it’s the same date.
In under a week, we will have two separate Bitcoins: the original Bitcoin as you know it today (BTC) and Bitcoin Cash (BCH).

What is Bitcoin Cash and What’s New?

Bitcoin Cash is a peer-to-peer electronic cash. In short, anyways.
Its sole purpose is to focus on transaction capacity due to its 8MB block size.
BCC comes with replay and wipeout protection. This ensures two Bitcoin chains won’t get into each other’s way to disrupt user experience.
It also eliminates the quadratic hashing problem as well as improves hardware wallet security.
In addition to that, the Cash version allows for adjusting the PoW difficulty (proof-of-work) in a more efficient manner. This means that the 2016 block difficulty could be adjusted as required.

Why is Bitcoin Splitting Into Two (again)?

As mentioned above, some people weren’t happy with the SegWit way.
But that’s understandable. There are a lot of different wants, needs, beliefs and wishes. It’s hard to please everyone.
It’s not developers’ fault either. Okay, they’ve been extremely vocal and political for the past three years (and very ineffective at finding the middle ground) . But the fact is, they just write code and it’s up to people (and miners) whether to run it or not.
Which brings us to this very difference:
If a chain is updated with a soft fork, the software is backward compatible. However, its users are left with no choice but to automatically accept new rules. Whether they like it or not.
However, if a hard fork is implemented on a blockchain, there’s not going back. Although, it’s not as dreadful as many portray it to be. The code can be buggy and hacky but hard forks give you a choice: you can accept it or stick with the old software.
Since the whole cryptocurrency concept is based on a decentralized network and you’re put in total control of your personal/financial affairs, it seems obvious that you would also want to make a decision whether to accept a new proposal or not.
And that is why Bitcoin is splitting into two – too many people want too many outcomes from one coin that can’t accommodate everyone’s needs and hence the split.
As you can see, there’s a merit to both. Which side are you on?

Prepare Yourself for Bitcoin (extra) Cash

There’s good news also. You can’t double up, but you can seize this opportunity to make a quick buck.
How?
Get control of your private keys.
When Bitcoin splits into two, you will end up with both versions of the coin.
If you store your Bitcoins on an exchange, move them off of it as soon as you can before it’s too late. Otherwise, you won’t be able to benefit.
Do you keep your coins on a hot wallet or any other third-party client?
Transfer it out to a hardware or paper wallet asap.
The crucial thing to do is to control your wallet private key. That’s the only way you can end up with two versions.
Want more good news? 
Bitcoin Cash (BCH) futures is currently trading at $450 a piece on ViaBTC as of today (26th of July 2017). As you can see, it’s worth a good deal so you should definitely consider getting your hands on them private keys!

How Will Bitcoin Cash Affect The Original Bitcoin?

Good question.
As of today, nobody knows and that’s the honest answer.
It might take off or it might destroy both. One thing is certain, though. Whatever happens, somebody had gone into great lengths to pull this off.
There may be several issues with this approach:
– who’s gonna mine what
– at what hash rate
– and how will this affect
– the price of both coins

We should get a glimpse into the new reality soon after the 1st of August. What is your prediction?

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Bitcoin Chain Split & Hard Fork Not Likely, Miners Agree on Segwit

BIP 91 has officially locked in.

At press time, bitcoin's miners, the network of computer operators that secure the blockchain, have now been signaling that they will upgrade the code for 269 blocks in the same signaling period, a move that takes the software one step closer to changing its structure to accommodate more transactions.
Stepping back, the move finds miners agreeing to cement the first part of a larger effort to upgrade bitcoin, called Segwit2x.
The controversial proposal seeks to change the transaction structure of the network via Segregated Witness, and increase a cap on the amount of data that can be stored in transaction blocks, a move tentatively scheduled for later this fall.
With the signaling, mining pools nearly unanimously rallied behind the proposal, and BIP 91, designed partly to avoid a potential bitcoin split in the network, emerged as the first major step in following the roadmap.
In response, bitcoin saw a sharp price increase on Thursday due to the perceived forward progress, with some calling the BIP 91 lock-in a victory marking a "new dawn" for bitcoin.
But, the lock-in is just the first step to activating SegWit on the network, and other steps come with a bit more complexity.
Specifically, the following things need to happen for it to activate:

• There will be a 336-block "grace period," taking about two and a half days, during which miners have time to prepare for activation.
• BIP 91 will activate at block 477,120. Theoretically, mining pools will start rejecting blocks that do not signal support for SegWit (BIP 141). In this way, BIP 91 is a "coordination mechanism" that gets other mining pools to follow along or lose out on mining rewards.
• SegWit could lock-in during the next difficulty adjustment period of 2016 blocks, which takes about two weeks.

The latter is when Segwit activation is "all in the clear," as BIP 91 creator James Hilliard put it.
That's when bitcoin's SegWit upgrade will be official, and an upcoming user-activated soft fork (UASF) proposal, BIP 148, superseded.

Possible hiccups

But some community members, including respected bitcoin developers and mining pool operators are raising concerns about possible missteps between the time BIP 91 is activated and SegWit locks in.
These concerns boil down to:

• Thinking miners might not be running the software they signal. If enough mining pools – over 50% – are not running the software, it could impact whether SegWit goes through or not.
• Speculating that mining pools might run the correct software for a while, then stop before SegWit locks in.

In simpler terms, some bitcoin users don’t trust others to keep their word.

Bitcoin Core contributor Bryan Bishop seems like one of those, suggesting via Twitter that one potential outcome is SegWit not activating at all this time around, even though a few scaling proposals are coming to a head soon.


Source: CoinDesk

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Potential Bitcoin Schism and How it might Affect You (1st August)

Many of you have already enjoyed the benefits of working with Bitcoin. It's a decentralized, automated, easy and secure way to transfer funds around the world. However, alas, like all advanced technology, its foundations are not firmly fixed as its fluid nature begins to take on a life of its own. 
In the Bitcoin community, change is in the air, and we believe it is our duty to give you the proper advanced warning.

We are of course talking about the potential schism of Bitcoin due to the activation of Protocol BIP148 (about which you can read more here http://www.uasf.co). 
According to this Protocol, on 1^st August, the Bitcoin network will split into two; the consequences of which are impossible to predict.

What should I do?
The only way to avoid the potential negative consequences of a Bitcoin fork is to not hold bitcoin.

What if I want to keep holding Bitcoin?
Your best option is to send your bitcoin to an exchange or wallet that will support multiple forks of Bitcoin. You can do this by generating a Bitcoin address on such exchange or wallet.

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Proof of Work vs Proof of Stake: Basic Mining Guide

Recently you might have heard about the idea to move from an Ethereum consensus based on the Proof of Work (PoW) system to one based on the so-called Proof of Stake.

In this article, I will explain to you the main differences between Proof of Work vs Proof of Stake and I will provide you a definition of mining, or the process new digital currencies are released through the network.

Also, what will change regarding mining techniques if the Ethereum community decides to do the transition from “work” to “stake”?

This article wants to be a basic guide to understanding the problem above.

What is the Proof of work?

First of all, let’s start with basic definitions.

Proof of work is a protocol that has the main goal of deterring cyber-attacks such as a distributed denial-of-service attack (DDoS) which has the purpose of exhausting the resources of a computer system by sending multiple fake requests.

The Proof of work concept existed even before bitcoin, but Satoshi Nakamoto applied this technique to his/her (we still don’t know who Nakamoto really is) digital currency revolutionizing the way traditional transactions are set.

In fact, PoW idea was originally published by Cynthia Dwork and Moni Naor back in 1993, but the term “proof of work” was coined by Markus Jakobsson and Ari Juels in a document published in 1999.

But, returning to date, Proof of work is maybe the biggest idea behind the Nakamoto’s bitcoin white paper – published back in 2008 – because it allows trustless and distributed consensus.

What’s trustless and distributed consensus?

A trustless and distributed consensus system means that if you want to send and/or receive money from someone you don’t need to trust in third-party services.

When you use traditional methods of payment, you need to trust in a third party to set your transaction (e.g. Visa, Mastercard, PayPal, banks). They keep their own private register which stores transactions history and balances of each account.

The common example to better explain this behavior is the following: if Alice sent Bob $100, the trusted third-party service would debit Alice’s account and credit Bob’s one, so they both have to trust this third-party is to going do the right thing.

With bitcoin and a few other digital currencies, everyone has a copy of the ledger (blockchain), so no one has to trust in third parties, because anyone can directly verify the information written.

Proof of work and mining

Going deeper, proof of work is a requirement to define an expensive computer calculation, also called mining, that needs to be performed in order to create a new group of trustless transactions (the so-called block) on a distributed ledger called blockchain.

Mining serves as two purposes:

1. To verify the legitimacy of a transaction, or avoiding the so-called double-spending;
2. To create new digital currencies by rewarding miners for performing the previous task.

When you want to set a transaction this is what happens behind the scenes:

• Transactions are bundled together into what we call a block;
• Miners verify that transactions within each block are legitimate;
• To do so, miners should solve a mathematical puzzle known as proof-of-work problem;
• A reward is given to the first miner who solves each blocks problem;
• Verified transactions are stored in the public blockchain

This “mathematical puzzle” has a key feature: asymmetry. The work, in fact, must be moderately hard on the requester side but easy to check for the network. This idea is also known as a CPU cost function, client puzzle, computational puzzle or CPU pricing function.

All the network miners compete to be the first to find a solution for the mathematical problem that concerns the candidate block, a problem that cannot be solved in other ways than through brute force so that essentially requires a huge number of attempts.

When a miner finally finds the right solution, he/she announces it to the whole network at the same time, receiving a cryptocurrency prize (the reward) provided by the protocol.

From a technical point of view, mining process is an operation of inverse hashing: it determines a number (nonce), so the cryptographic hash algorithm of block data results in less than a given threshold.

This threshold, called difficulty, is what determines the competitive nature of mining: more computing power is added to the network, the higher this parameter increases, increasing also the average number of calculations needed to create a new block. This method also increases the cost of the block creation, pushing miners to improve the efficiency of their mining systems to maintain a positive economic balance. This parameter update should occur approximately every 14 days, and a new block is generated every 10 minutes.

Proof of work is not only used by the bitcoin blockchain but also by ethereum and many other blockchains.

Some functions of the proof of work system are different because created specifically for each blockchain, but now I don’t want to confuse your ideas with too technical data.

The important thing you need to understand is that now Ethereum developers want to turn the tables, using a new consensus system called proof of stake.

What is a proof of stake?

Proof of stake is a different way to validate transactions based and achieve the distributed consensus.

It is still an algorithm, and the purpose is the same of the proof of work, but the process to reach the goal is quite different.

Proof of stake first idea was suggested on the bitcointalk forum back in 2011, but the first digital currency to use this method was Peercoin in 2012, together with ShadowCash, Nxt, BlackCoin, NuShares/NuBits, Qora and Nav Coin.

Unlike the proof-of-Work, where the algorithm rewards miners who solve mathematical problems with the goal of validating transactions and creating new blocks, with the proof of stake, the creator of a new block is chosen in a deterministic way, depending on its wealth, also defined as stake.

No block reward

Also, all the digital currencies are previously created in the beginning, and their number never changes.

This means that in the PoS system there is no block reward, so, the miners take the transaction fees.

This is why, in fact, in this PoS system miners are called forgers, instead.

Why Ethereum wants to use PoS?

The Ethereum community and its creator, Vitalik Buterin, are planning to do a hard fork to make a transition from proof of work to proof of stake.

But why they want to switch from one to the other?

In a distributed consensus-based on the proof of Work, miners need a lot of energy. One Bitcoin transaction required the same amount of electricity as powering 1.57 American households for one day (data from 2015).

And these energy costs are paid with fiat currencies, leading to a constant downward pressure on the digital currency value.

In a recent research, experts argued that bitcoin transactions may consume as much electricity as Denmark by 2020.

Developers are pretty worried about this problem, and the Ethereum community wants to exploit the proof of stake method for a more greener and cheaper distributed form of consensus.

Also, rewards for the creation of a new block are different: with Proof-of-Work, the miner may potentially own none of the digital currency he/she is mining.

In Proof-of-Stake, forgers are always those who own the coins minted.

How are forgers selected?

If Casper (the new proof of stake consensus protocol) will be implemented, there will exist a validator pool. Users can join this pool to be selected as the forger. This process will be available through a function of calling the Casper contract and sending Ether – or the coin who powers the Ethereum network – together with it.

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“You automatically get inducted after some time,” explained Vitalik Buterin himself on a post shared on Reddit.

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“There is no priority scheme for getting inducted into the validator pool itself; anyone can join in any round they want, irrespective of the number of other joiners,” he continued.

The reward of each validator will be “somewhere around 2-15%, ” but he is not sure yet.

Also, Buterin argued that there will be no imposed limit on the number of active validators (or forgers), but it will be regulated economically by cutting the interest rate if there are too many validators and increasing the reward if there are too few.

A safer system?

Any computer system wants to be free from the possibility of hacker attacks, especially if the service is related to money.

So, the main problem is: proof of stake is safer than proof of work?

Experts are worried about it, and there are several skeptics in the community.

Using a Proof-of-Work system, bad actors are cut out thanks to technological and economic disincentives.

In fact, programming an attack to a PoW network is very expensive, and you would need more money than you can be able to steal.

Instead, the underlying PoS algorithm must be as bulletproof as possible because, without specially penalties, a proof of stake-based network could be cheaper to attack.

To solve this issue, Buterin created the Casper protocol, designing an algorithm that can use the set some circumstances under which a bad validator might lose their deposit.

He explained: “Economic finality is accomplished in Casper by requiring validators to submit deposits to participate, and taking away their deposits if the protocol determines that they acted in some way that violates some set of rules (‘slashing conditions’).”

Slashing conditions refer to the circumstances above, or laws that a user is not supposed to break.

Conclusion

Thanks to a PoS system validators do not have to use their computing power because the only factors that influence their chances are the total number of their own coins and current complexity of the network.

So this possible future switch from PoW to PoS may provide the following benefits:

1. Energy savings;
2. A safer network as attacks become more expensive: if a hacker would like to buy 51% of the total number of coins, the market reacts by fast price appreciation.

This way, CASPER will be a security deposit protocol that relies on an economic consensus system. Nodes (or the validators) must pay a security deposit in order to be part of the consensus thanks to the new blocks creation. Casper protocol will determine the specific amount of rewards received by the validators thanks to its control over security deposits.

If one validator creates an “invalid” block, his security deposit will be deleted, as well as his privilege to be part of the network consensus.

In other words, the Casper security system is based on something like bets. In a PoS-based system, bets are the transactions that, according to the consensus rules, will reward their validator with a money prize together with each chain that the validator has bet on.

So, Casper is based on the idea that validators will bet according to the others’ bets and leave positive feedbacks that are able accelerates consensus.

Source: BlockGeeks

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Ethereum Chamber Wallet is a Scam, Do Not Use them.

MyEtherWallet has tweeted a warning to users not to use the Ethereum Chamber under allegations of stolen wallet keys.
The Ethereum Chamber is allegedly copying private wallet keys from users to its database and after been caught, they no longer provides wallet services, but instead displays the Juicy J “Blue Bentley” rap video.

⚠ CONFIRMED: Ethereum Chamber is stealing your private keys. ⚠
DO NOT USE.
😡 #F*ckingCointelegraph  @Cointelegraph pic.twitter.com/JJf5EzhtT2

— MyEtherWallet.com (@myetherwallet) June 5, 2017

The Ethereum Chamber paid to have press releases pushed through various news organizations advertising its Ethereum compatible wallet. However, sources tell ETHNews that after analyzing the code, they have determined the site where users can generate wallets is stealing the keys that safeguard wallets from unwanted malicious activity. Users who open wallets on the site may unwittingly be turning over their assets to scammers.
Users are warned to refrain from creating wallets on the purportedly fraudulent site or any website that isn't confirmed fully to be legitimate.

Taylor from MyEtherWallet told ETHNews:

“No one should trust a website with their private keys, ever. We have worked hard for almost two years to gain the trust of the community, and will continue to be an open-source and trustworthy site. However, we urge you to get a Ledger Nano S or TREZOR hardware wallet (both are now less than 0.5 ETH & compatible with http://MyEtherWallet.com ), or learn how to use MyEtherWallet in an offline environment (https://myetherwallet.groovehq.com/knowledge_base/topics/how-do-i-run-myetherwallet-dot-com-offline-slash-locally …).
This ensures your private keys are never on an internet-connected device. As the price rises, more and more lazy scammers will attempt to take your funds. Phishers, untrustworthy sites, malware, remote access software — the list goes on and on. Please be cautious, aware, and take steps to secure your private keys.”

Source: ETHNews

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