Another day, another fork.

As you well know there is fork coming on October 25th which will create Bitcoin Gold (BTG). As of now, the details from the developers of BTG are not very clear and they have provided virtually no information, so information may change as we get closer. But as of this writing on 10/20, this is what I understand regarding claiming and holding your BTG.

Exchanges

If you are holding your BTC on an exchange, you may not receive BTG after the fork. You will need to receive written verification either directly from the exchange or directly on their site saying they will support BTG and allow you to claim your BTG if you have BTC on their exchange. Do not count on rumors or internet posts, make sure you see it in writing on the exchanges official website or social media accounts.

Wallets

This one is a bit tricky. Depending on which wallet you use, it may take a different amount of time to be able to access your BTG on each one. Generally, hardware wallets are faster at supporting the new fork due to the fact that they are paid and for profit wallets. Other free and open source wallets like Electrum depend on others to update and set up servers for free. So this may take some time and there is no way to know how long. I suggest visiting the official website of the wallet you use and look for their support page to get more information.

But Bitcoin Cash, the previous fork, had a very good developer team behind it which put out plenty of information about the fork, so wallets were quick to update and accept it. BTG has been very silent and not offering much information, so there is no way to know how long the wallets will take to support BTG this time around.

Transactions

This is important. Do not make any transactions around the time of the fork. You could lose your BTC or BTG. Also, do not receive any BTC during this time either unless it is from a very trusted source or person. It is possible that before the wallets are updated, someone could send you BTG instead of BTC even though it would show in your wallet as BTC. So beware of scammers looking to send BTC when they only really send BTG. I would suggest waiting several days to do any BTC transactions unless you absolutely have to. There is also the threat of a replay attack, which the BTG founders have said they have protection against, but they have offered no proof of how it is implemented.

Finally, as always never enter your private keys on any site. There may be a rush of scammers when BTG hits, so be aware. Also, double check any site you are visiting such as a wallet’s site or exchange site to make sure you are not accessing a phishing site. Many of these phishing sites are buying ads on Google, so they may appear on top of the results and look “official” when you search, so be very careful.

I will be posting new articles as new information becomes available.

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