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!
0 comments:
Post a Comment