In the past year, we’re seen the rise of a new phenomenon in the Bitcoin world: deliberate chain splits.

Since a permanent chain split had never actually occurred before summer 2017, there was an air of fear and uncertainty about what the implications of a split would be. How disastrous would it be if there were two Bitcoins in existence?

Would they cannibalize each other? Would the network’s reputation take an irreparable hit? Would the ecosystem partition into smaller and smaller hostile factions?

Bitcoin Cash Blazes a Trail

Bitcoin regains market share dominance in the cryptocurrency space, after Bcash fork.

Those questions were busted wide open in August when Bitcoin Cash soundly split off to pursue its own vision.

The much-feared event went relatively smoothly, and to the surprise of many observers, the price of both coins proceeded on a steady upward trajectory.

And from the holder’s perspective — this was great! Now you had two coins, the total value of which was considerably larger than what your BTC was worth before the split.

As more and more exchanges listed both coins, the Bitcoin world saw that it was something new, it was profitable, and it had precedent. In late October, Bitcoin Gold followed suit, and the floodgates were thrown open.

Other Coins Join the Party

Since then, we’ve seen half a dozen announcements for upcoming amiable splits to the network. You may have seen references not only to Bitcoin Gold, but Bitcoin Diamond or Bitcoin Platinum. There are even airdrops that haven’t latched on to the Bitcoin name, but are crediting BTC holders with free coin. You may have heard of Stellar Lumens or Byteball.

Getting these free coins are a great trading opportunity. You can add them to your portfolio or start speculating, but there’s an even simpler strategy. They’ve been proven as a safe way to simply increase your Bitcoin stash, so that’s what many traders have been doing.

But what you’re probably wondering now is…how do I get a hold of my free money? Well, that’s what we’re here to help you out with.

Before we begin, there are two things we need to understand. The first is the concept of private keys. In short, if your funds are on your account on an exchange or other online service, then you don’t hold your private keys. This means that you may or may not be able to claim your extra coins, based on whether or not your business supported it.

On the other hand, if your bitcoins are stored on a wallet or hardware device that stores your private key, then you can, at least in theory, claim your coins on both chains.

The other concept we need to understand is a “fork date” or “snapshot”.

Fork Dates and Snapshots

When some developers decide they’re going to fork off of the Bitcoin network, they choose a particular block, and announce that from that block onward, they will be continuing on their old chain. What this means is that if you possessed any Bitcoin at the time of that block, then you may be entitled to the same amount in the forked coin.

The simplest example is a fork date where the new network begins operation more or less immediately at that fork. This is what Bitcoin Cash did.

On August 1st, after block 478558, Bitcoin Cash continued on their own chain. If you owned Bitcoin at that time, you then owned BTC, and BCH. Now, not all exchanges supported the coin split, at least not at first, so you may or may not have been out of luck. But if you had your own wallet, then there’s a good chance you could claim it. Particularly useful are Trezor or Ledger wallets, which quickly built in functionality to let you claim your Bitcoin Cash.

When it comes to individual exchanges, they each had to choose their own policy, and would have made public statements to that effect, so you’ll have to check them out on a case by case basis.

If you’re somewhere in the middle, and think you might still have some Bitcoin Cash lying around in your own wallet, there are several options for you, as outlined in this guide here.

Let’s move on to fork number two: Bitcoin Gold. This fork happened in a slightly different fashion, because even though it split from block 491407 on October 24th, the network didn’t launch until a few weeks later, on November 12th. What this means, is that the Bitcoin Gold fork took a “snapshot” of the blockchain on October 24th, and decided to credit everyone based on the BTC they owned at that date.

So again, if you owned Bitcoin on October 24th, you might have some Bitcoin Gold to claim. If you had it on an exchange or other business, find out if they honored the fork. If you had your bitcoins on your own wallet then, you can go about claiming them much in the same fashion as with Bitcoin Cash. (Again, the hardware giants, Trezor and Ledger, quickly implemented a simple way to divide the coins…it will vary depending on other wallets.)

Beware of Scams!

Both Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin Gold were rather prominent and sizable networks upon creation, but the forks and airdrops following have seen less and less widespread acceptance. The third fork was Bitcoin Diamond, which was far less glamorous. It was only credited by a handful of exchanges, (Korbit, for example), and was exposed as a scam shortly thereafter.

While it’s not going to net you any money at this point, it’s worth pointing out as a reminder that not all that glitters is gold. So be careful about new software claiming to new you some easy dividends.

Upcoming Freebies

That being said, it seems like a good idea to keep your eyes peeled for several upcomers this month. In the works are Bitcoin Platinum on December 12th, Super Bitcoin on December 17th, and Lightning Bitcoin on December 23rd (don’t get this guy confused with the Lightning Network which is entirely different animal).

It seems as though this trend is catching on, too, because there are just many to list all in a piece like this. Luckily, there are a couple of sites and communities trying to keep track, like here and here.

Claiming, Step-by-Step

First, determine if you had any bitcoins at the appropriate fork date.

If your Bitcoin was on an exchange, do a quick search for anything they might have announced about the fork you’re interested in, or contact them about it.

If you’ve been using your own wallet, see if they’ve included splitting tools, and then you can send to a supporting exchange to sell or trade.

If you’ve got your own private keys but there isn’t a native tool supporting the new fork, you’ll have to take things on a case by case basis. There will be information on most of the new forks’ sites explaining how to acquire your coins, but be wary of scams!

And finally: