New Bitcoin: BCH Is Here – How To Get Your Bitcoin Cash Coins

So, it’s happened.

We have two bitcoins: Legacy bitcoin (BTC) and bitcoin cash (BCH or BCC). For uniformity, let’s abbreviate the latter with BCH.

The 1st of August 2017, 2:14 p.m. ET will forever be remembered as the day when bitcoin hardforked into two separate chains as of block number 478559.

ViaBTC mined the first bitcoin cash 1MB block making it official. BCH is currently trending at ¥2,700 which is approximately $400.00. The original bitcoin (BTC) is going strong at $2,762.

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.

It’s the same private key because the chain was “duplicated”, thus your private key was also “duplicated”.

You then use your private key to access/add your coins to the wallet you’ve just created.

This method might vary depending on the wallet or exchange that supports bitcoin cash.

For example, Kraken adds bitcoin cash to your wallet automatically and there’s no need to do anything.

In other wallets, however, you have to add or sweep private keys manually in order to “add” your free coins. It’s always best to double-check with any third-party the correct procedure of adding your BCH to your wallet.

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.

UPDATE as of 2nd of August:

Almost all exchange platforms have now resumed bitcoin trading including Coinbase. However, before you carry out any transactions, please confirm this with your exchange or wallet. Kraken, for example, supports bitcoin cash but suspended deposits and withdrawals of BCH for the time being.

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.

UPDATE as of 2nd of August:

This is clearly not the case. Bitcoin cash (BCH) was trending around ¥1,600 ($235) right after the fork yesterday, and today it rose to as much as ¥2,900 ($440).

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 client (Bitcoin ABC) 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 add bitcoin cash with a click of a button. If it doesn’t, then you won’t be able to get free coins.

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

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.

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 an average of 0.037 BTC @ $2,700 x 20,000 = 740 BTC

740 BCH @ $440 = $325,000 that Coinbase can keep.

The above estimation is a very conservative guess and I’m almost certain this figure is much higher in reality.

Sadly, all these people will get big fat zero in bitcoin cash, and Coinbase claims that they won’t touch it either because they don’t want to interact with bitcoin cash in any way.

However, because they control private keys of all their customers, practically speaking, they have access to their clients’ bitcoin cash. Why would they pass on at least a third of a million dollars?

It’s puzzling and economically infeasible to say the least, but kudos for sticking to their guns.

GET $10 free bonus when you sign-up with Coinbase through this link.

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!

If you want to read more about bitcoin cash and see the statistics of market cap, volume and hash rate after 2 days of BCH existence, please head over here to have a read of your brand new article.