Anyway you look at it, this fork is a turd. No-one really knows what’s going on, unless you’re on the inner circle of the ABC committee that spreads secret checkpoints, or sitting around a table with Calvin and Craig drinking sour grapes. The rest of us get second hand information, gossip, most of which may as well have been heard through Chinese Whispers.

Let’s get to the point with some fake questions I am staging. This is not financial advice, split or do not split at your own risk.

How safe is it to split my ABC from my Bitcoin SV?

No-one is going to guarantee anything. But as long as the transactions are confirmed, and you don’t — to use colloquial terminology — “fuck it up”, you should be fine.

What about the DSV? Won’t someone steal my Bitcoin SV coins if I get DSV coins (even unintentionally) on the corresponding ABC addresses?

No.

Where coins go, relates to consensus between nodes, and the rules that ensure it. Some nodes can’t just start processing DSV transactions on the ABC network as spends on the Bitcoin SV network, not without changes in those rules. Or logically, they would fork from the rest of the network.

Even if there was some plan for retribution, it’s not possible to identify people who (among many possible situations):

Were sent DSV dust to their ABC unwittingly by others acting with either childish or malicious intent.

Received ABC coins that within their history, had DSV transaction interaction.

Received Bitcoin SV coins that within their history, had DSV transaction interaction on corresponding ABC addresses.

It’d be suicide, and undermine the Bitcoin SV philosophy of being a stable and trustworthy coin, for people to have their coins appropriated as an act of retaliation.

So what is all this about DSV transactions being used as fees by miners?

If Bitcoin SV changes the protocol in an upgrade applied across the network, where all transactions that are invalid, can be mined and the outputs taken as fees by the miners, then DSV transactions on the Bitcoin SV chain would become donations to miners.

This change has not yet been made, nor is there a visible implementation or proposal to do it.

If it happened, then all DSV transactions that were spends from still unspent coins on the Bitcoin SV network, and that were still replayable on the Bitcoin SV network (up to the point of changes by either which would prevent replay), could be mined by miners and taken as fees.

Okay, I am not some unhinged nutjob that posts to /r/btc, and thinking it out that sounds reasonable, so how do I split my coins safely?

You have two options.

Send your coins to an exchange that will detect they are unspent on both ABC and Bitcoin SV, and credit you with balances on both. Split them yourself with Electron Cash.

What do I need to know about the exchanges and splitting?

I wouldn’t do it, but lots of people think it’s easier.

Do not send unsplit coins to an exchange if you are not sure if they support splitting coins for you. If you do this, they could steal the Bitcoin SV side or just ignore it.

These exchanges are claiming to support splitting coins:

Kraken.

CoinEx.

Kraken sounds like it has the most reliable splitting support, as there are reports of problems where people have not received their Bitcoin SV balance on CoinEx, or are dealing with support there and have waited upwards of 24 hours. However, Kraken are so far in the ABC camp, that they published a weird and incomprehensible statement inferring that Bitcoin SV coins would be confiscated, although they likely mean that they see Bitcoin SV as so unlikeable in their opinion, that they think people will lose their investments when it goes away.

CoinEx do not currently allow withdrawals. You’d better hope that they eventually open up withdrawals, and given that Haipo Yang is Jihan’s mate, and that he’s a hardcore ABC and Wormhole supporter, and there are rumours he was arrested, well.. it does not sound like an appealing situation to put yourself in. In fact, it sounds a bit too much like someone’s holding people’s Bitcoin SV hostage in my opinion. Is it likely they will open withdrawals? Perhaps. But what if they don’t.

What do I need to know about splitting with Electron Cash?

If the height of ABC and Bitcoin SV are far enough apart that one is going to take longer than it will take you to get a confirmation, to catch up to the other, then you could avoid the next method by using the nLockTime method.

Otherwise, you can take the easier method and get some free ABC dust, send it and all your coins on ABC to a new address, then wait for that to confirm and then send all your coins on Bitcoin SV to a new address (or sweep to another wallet).

Note that you need to be sure that you are actually getting ABC dust, which means you’d need to verify that it does not appear on your SV wallet, before using it to split. There’s a faucet which was recommended for this, but the recommendation is now withdrawn as it cannot be guaranteed to have only ABC dust.

If people have sent unsplit dust to the faucet, and you get this, then your initial ABC transaction may just be replayed on the Bitcoin SV network, and your coins won’t be split.

What about using that DSV-based version of Electron Cash that splits for me?

Do not use DSV. Do not use this.