How to claim Bitcoin Cash?

Bitcoin Cash – The Beginning

Bitcoin Cash (aka Bcash, BCH or BCC) forked off from Bitcoin on the 1st of August and its launch has proven rather rocky. Three days later, only 2 exchanges are supporting Bcash deposits – and its price has crashed on both.

It still takes relatively a lot of time to get Bcash transactions into the blockchain and that’s due to the high difficulty of mining. Bcash forked with the same mining difficulty as Bitcoin but only a small fraction (around 5%) of its hashrate. Bcash’s first (or genesis block) took around 7 hours to be found.

The difficulty adjustment process was meant to compensate for this, reducing difficulty to a level more appropriate for Bcash’s low hashrate within a few blocks. However, miners from “Genesis Block,” an aptly named, high-tech hostel in Hong Kong, apparently began mining Bcash for fun and marketing purposes.

The hostel’s additional, unexpected hashpower greatly delayed Bcash’s difficulty adjustment process. As a result, Bcash blocks remain slow, although difficulty has since adjusted to about ¼ of Bitcoin’s. You can use this Bitcoin Cash block explorer to see the status of the current blocks (take a look at the bottom).

Free Bitcoin Cash for Bitcoiners

If you held any bitcoin in a personal wallet (or on certain exchange wallets listed here) then congrats, you own an equal amount of Bcash too!
If you wish to sell your Bcash, there are 2 things you need to do, in the following order:

1. Split you Bitcoin into Bitcoin Cash

If your BTC was held on one of the exchanges listed, the exchange will have taken care of this process for you. When you log in, you should see a BCH (or possibly, “BCC”) balance in a new exchange wallet, in addition to your regular BTC wallet. The amounts in both wallets should match, assuming you haven’t made any recent trades or transactions.

If your bitcoins were held in a personal wallet, you’ll have to split them yourself. We cover splitting for Ledger, TREZOR and for the Electrum software wallet. Note that the general procedure used for Electrum is applicable to other software wallets, although the precise steps will vary.

1. Sell your Bitcoin Cash on an exchange

For those whose bitcoins were held on an exchange which split BCH from BTC and offers a market in BCH trading, you’re already done – sell your BCH whenever you feel like it.

Everyone else will have to decide between the three exchanges currently accepting BCH deposits; HitBTC, ViaBTC and Bittrex. I used HitBTC for two good reasons:

HitBTC requires only 2 confirmations before deposited BCH are credited to your account and made available for trading purposes. As Bcash blocks are still very slow (up to 8 hours delay), this could be a real time saver. By contrast, it appears other exchanges requires 20 confirmations before approving any withdrawals.
HitBTC offers a quick and easy registration, which requires only an email address to complete.
Keep in mind that because HitBTC is one of the only exchanges allowing to actually deposit BCH many people are selling it on the platform which causes the exchange rate to be lower than on other platforms.

How to Use or Sell your BCH

So you’ve claimed your BCH and it’s sitting in your wallet. What should you do now?

You can use your BCH just like you would use any altcoin. You can trade it on an exchange that supports BCH trading, spend it, or move it between wallets.

There are some risks with exchanging BCH. First, since your addresses for BTC and BCH are identical, you’re revealing your BCH and BTC addresses by sending your BCH to an exchange. This can divulge sensitive information about your wallet – like your current holdings and your past/future transactions. It can also show whom you’ve transacted with. Right now, you can’t sell BCH without giving up your data. You’re exposing your keys no matter what you do.

Spending from a BCH or BTC address doesn’t reveal your private key. But it does reveal your public key. This isn’t that big of a deal. However, it strips away one layer of security from your bitcoin account, and may be a concern.

One final issue is that when you’re moving BCH to or from an exchange, you’ll need to use BCH software, and there’s no BCH software right now that’s been confirmed as stable or safe.

All of these issues can enhance the threat of replay attacks, where someone can essentially steal your money.