I always recommend controlling your own private keys because if you don't own and control the private key, you don't own the cryptocurrency. Centralized exchanges create risk because you have to trust them to not only secure the cryptocurrency you give them but also to give it back when you ask for it.
My bitcoin was tucked safely away in my paper wallets during the Bitcoin Cash hard fork. That means I wasn't able to sell the BCC/BCH once trading opened because most exchanges weren't initially accepting deposits. I also had some trouble getting it out of my paper wallets.
Since my phone died, I couldn't access Blockchain.info since 2FA (two-factor authentication) needs to be disabled on my account. That may take a couple weeks, unfortunately.
All attempts to install and run Electron Cash failed miserably. I'll spare you the details, but I spent over 5 hours one night (and three glasses of wine) but kept running into issues. It would crash on start up and suggestions to fix it only partially worked and later created corruption issues validating the blockchain headers.
It turns out, I just needed to upgrade the OS on my Mac to the latest version, so that's what I did.
Once I had that working, I had both Electron Cash and Electrum running (be careful, the first tries to be helpful by importing wallets from the second).
How I Got My Bitcoin Cash from my Paper Wallets
This post will give you step by step instructions on how I got my Bitcoin Cash (it's a detailed explanation of what I outlined in this post last week Safely Claiming Bitcoin Fork Coins Like Bitcoin Cash).
Please though, don't do anything until you've watched Episode 003 of Understanding Blockchain Freedom: Safety and Security. If you don't manage things correctly, you could lose all your cryptocurrency to hackers and thieves. You are responsible for your security. The video is less than 4 minutes long.
First, use Electrum and create a new wallet.
(Please note, all of the addresses and keys used in these images are throw-aways for demonstration and not to be used by anyone. I covered them over just to make sure people don't even bother trying.)
From the file menu:
Give it a name with meaning. If you have multiple paper wallets, I recommend doing each one separately, just to keep things clean.
This is where you need to put in your private key. If you have your keys stored in a password manager, this is a simple copy and paste. Otherwise you have to type it manually or use the QR reader approach (which may not be supported on all builds).
If you have private keys from other addresses, this process will work for them as well. If you have a Blockchain.info wallet, as an example, you can view your addresses under settings and get the private key for each one here:
Encrypt your wallet with a strong password you generated from your password manager and saved their securely.
Verify the address and make sure the amount is what you expect:
If it's not, don't freak out! One of the private addresses I imported showed me a different public key than I expected and it had a zero balance! I turns out, there's a difference between a Private Key WIF and a Private Key WIF Compressed.
If the Private Key starts with a 5 and is 51 characters, it's in the WIF format. If it starts with a K or L and has 52 characters, it's in the WIF Compressed format. Googling around, I happened to find this Reddit comment which explains how you can use bitaddress.org to get the other private key if the one you have doesn't give you the address you're looking for.
Once I imported the correct key to Electrum, I got the public address (and balance) I expected.
So, as I explained in my previous post, you'll want to move all the bitcoin off of these addresses completely. Send them to a new paper wallet if you want or to something fancy like the Ledger Nano S I recently got.
Once that's done, the private keys you have now are completely free of bitcoin and ready to be imported again into Electron Cash. You basically repeat the whole process again using Electron Cash instead of Electrum to access your Bitcoin Cash. Once you get it imported, you can send it directly to exchanges that now accept deposits like Bittrex and Bitfinex.
You can download Electron Cash here electroncash.org.
There have been some concerns raised about how new the Electron Cash wallet is and how it hasn't gone through the normal vetting of cryptocurrency open source wallet software like many other projects do (and how the creator of the binary files is anonymous), so please use with caution. It's one of the reasons I suggest taking the approach I outlined to ensure your bitcoin is never at risk. So far, I haven't heard any reports of Electron Cash stealing any bitcoin or Bitcoin Cash. It worked perfectly for me as well, once I had the latest operating system updates on my computer.
I should also mention another approach I took was to download the Bitcoin Classic full client for BCC. That... took forever. Days later I had only managed to download about 25 gigs of the blockchain with much more to go. This reminded me how difficult it's going to be for normal people to run full nodes in the bitcoin ecosystem. Neither Bitcoin nor Bitcoin Cash make this any easier. Will this lead to centralization and existential risk? We'll leave that to a future post.
Thanks for reading and I hope you found this useful. Please be careful to keep your BTC addresses separate from your BCC/BCH addresses. I'm not sure what will happen on the exchanges when people start accidentally sending one to the deposit address of the other. It could get messy. Most likely, you'll just lose your funds.
If you have any questions, please let me know. Before you ask, I don't know what the future price of Bitcoin Cash will be. I sold mine as soon as I got it to an exchange which was around $200. It's since gone up quite a bit from there, so maybe I sold at the bottom. I don't know what this Twitter reply from John McAfee means, but I think he's long Bitcoin Cash:
My hunch is the price will go down as more people get access to their BCH/BCC and figure out how to sell it. There may also be an influx to the market early next year as Coinbase distributes it to their users starting January 1st.
Then again, this could be the all time low and it may only go up from here.
Happy trading and good luck.
Just figured out how to do it for my case. I was holding BTC in Bitcoin Core.
I opened up Bitcoin Core -> Help -> Debug Window
In that window in the command line type: dumpprivkey YOURADDRESS
But swap the word YOURADDRESS with your bitcoin wallet address and then hit enter.
Next you will be presented with your private key. Save this some where very secure.
Next download and install http://www.electroncash.org/
When you are installing it will give you the option to restore your wallet using a private key. You simply copy the private key we got in the previous step and paste it in the box.
You finish the install and your balance should show the correct number of BCH coins in Electron Cash Wallet and you should still have your bitcoins BTC in your Bitcoin Core Wallet.
Nicely done! Thanks for sharing.
What would be the best btc wallet for a newbie like me (like most of us.. xD).
I'm just starting up here in the crypto world, any tips or advice would be really appreciated. ^u^
Well, there are all kinds, but one of the easiest may be https://www.exodus.io/ It's got a really clean interface and is easy to use.
Please watch my videos at https://understandingblockchainfreedom.com if you're just getting started. I think they will help you a lot, before you get a wallet installed.
Oh thank you for the speedy reply!
I do really need to have a lot of information about crypto, blockchain and other tech stuff. We lack information here in the Philippines, i'm grateful for the information and will check out your videos. Thank you so much Sir @lukestokes... :)
tip!
Neato! Thanks for the tip.
But my BTC was in paper wallet, I tried claiming free BCC using exodus, i couldn't. It says only 0 BCC can be transferred. My BTC was not in exodus wallet before the fork, is it because of that I can't claim free BCC?
Thanks :) @lukestokes
Oh, cool. Last I heard, Exodus did not support BCC. It seems they've updated their code as described here. Have you tried that? If it didn't work, I suggest contacting Exodus support.
You have to make sure you download the new exodus update that deals with claiming your bitcoin cash, but much better to just follow the instructions here.
I used coinomi to sweep wallet and it worked perfectly.
thanks :)
I think Exodus is rather nice, but I'd be a LOT happier if it was a HD wallet that didn't reuse addresses. Most coins you only get 1 address to use over and over or in the case of Bitcoin, you get 5 addresses to reuse. I also seem to recall that it isn't open source, but they are working towards that as a goal within contraints of their biz plan.
@tipU - send tips by writing tip! in the comment and get share in service profit :)
By upvoting this comment you support the service - thanks!
Hey Great Article!!
It was really useful and Informative!!
Thanks for posting such an impressive article...it totally inspired me..
I write articles on bitcoins and other stuffs would really appreciate if you would check them out and give your views on it..
Thanks and i already upvoted and followed you :)
Hope to get followed back.
Keep posting such great articles!!
Cheers!!
Great post but Im holding and I will wait for Jaxx or another big wallet to integrate BCH.
yep,
is the best!
Um, your private keys aren't crossed out completely. By looking at the top and bottom of the characters you can tell what they are...
I knew someone would post a comment like this. Sigh.
I'm sorry. I read too fast and I didn't see the disclaimer above.
No worries, I'm just bustin' you a bit. ;-)
Wow finally someone has explained this in detail. Well i just completed getting all of my btc off of my paper wallets and on to another btc wallet and also was able to get my bitcoin cash off of those private addresses and transfer the bitcoin cash into a new bitcoin cash wallet. Wow what a process but you exlained it very well it just takes time, and i almost lost one of my passwords and files in the process but everything came out find whewwwww almost messed it up big time. Thank you so much for taking the time to make these instructions for getting our bitcoin cash off of bitcoin paper wallets. I have not seen one other article dealing with this.
I'm really glad to hear it helped you out. :)
If you almost lost a password, it sounds like it's time to get a solid password manager in place. You can find out more in my videos at @ubf.
Great post Luke, but fyi theres a typo/autocorrect issue at the beginning "control the privacy key" ..
I still haven't touched my bcc , I wasn't fast enough to dump while it was higher so I think I'll hodl just in case it randomly moons in the future.
Ah, thank you so much! Will fix right now.
You may be making the right choice to HODL. I just got so frustrated watching the price come down from $700+, that once I got it all working, I dumped out of spite. Heheh. I hope to buy some back again in the future at a lower price.
Honestly I'm not going to hold my breath on it mooning anytime soon with the amount of sell pressure from people dumping their "free" tokens.. But this is crypto, stranger things have happened and its always nice to be given random lottery tickets like this :D
Indeed!
Insert 300 THIS IS CRYPTO! image here...
So tru @ausbitbank. Holding my Bitcoin Cash too... My Bitcoin is a long term investment anyways, so why not just keep the Bitcoin Cash stored on the original paper wallet anyways...
Maybe we'll see which direction they both take in the future. Playing it safe(er) ;)
I think that's a good plan. Maybe I'll get back into Bitcoin Cash, but for now I'm enjoying playing the market with some extra BTC spending money.
Make the extra bit work for you man ;)
I trade a little here and there - I use Luno in South Africa because there are no fees for market makers - worked amazing so far :)
Good topic. Wallets can be confusing and I remember a night of panicking. I have made a good amount of money because once I have money safely on a paper wallet I do not want to move it again. Kept me from selling where I thought there was a top (example: move from 600s to 1,000).
Nice. I did sell some at this recent all time high and it's only been going high, so I may regret that, but I didn't cash out, I just moved to "digital" USD and now I'm playing around with some other altcoins I've been thinking about getting for a while. It's a fun space to play. :)
A big Thank YOU for sharing this completely step by step guide how to safely get your Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash out of a paper wallet! I was just wondering: isn't it better to wait till segwit is active on the Bitcoin chain to do this? (To avoid a high fee to import your BTC?)... Great post!
You're welcome! If you're concerned about some small fees here or there while Bitcoin Cash is swinging hundreds of dollars, you may be penny wise and pound foolish. That said, waiting may make sense anyway, depending on which way the market swings.
That's true ;-) but the thing is I have multiple paperwallets, some of them are filled with only a small amount, and in that cases, the fees are just a to high % of the money on it... Besides that, it's just a personal issue I have with paying fees for this kind of "transactions". I've made some money with trading Bitcoin Cash the first day it came out (on Bittrex, bought 1 BCC +- 400 USD, sold it at around 1100USD) so the BCC I own because of the Bitcoin I owned at the moment of the fork is just for holding ;-)
Nice trade!
I think BCC will lead to saturation of the BITCOIN ij market place.
why?
Nowadays, people were upset with hardfork and recently the hero behind the WannaCry, ransomware was detained. Their actual ransom went through their multiple crypto wallets and thus it negatively impacted upon other civilians to get a threat from their Govt. This may lead to sharing of hands 👐 between 2
Maybe. It will be interesting to watch and see for sure.
Great step by step instructions would help out a lot to people who want to get their BCH.
That was my goal here.
Awesome write up man!! I knew someone would eventually explain how to get out Bit Coin Cash off paper wallets.
Currently ALL my Bitcoin is stored on paper wallets (pre-fork). Think I might just keep it there... Till we really know what's happening with Bitcoin Cash anyways ;)
Thanks! Yeah, that might be a good plan. Who knows where it will go. I'm always happy to hear people using paper wallets and other secure methods of storing bitcoin. :)
Haha - I'm maybe a little "too" security conscious!! ;)
I have paper wallets with BIP48 encrypted private keys (you know, in case someone gets hold of the paper wallets).
They are then stored in multiple safes in various locations - you know, in case my house breaks down :O
And all these paper wallets were created in a clean, offline environment...
I think it will continue to go down, but who knows. There are so many options out there.
LOL, wrong! :) I am here because it skyrocketed recently! Was hoping a trusted web wallet would allow importing of bch private keys but no such luck :(
Always be careful with the keys.
Haha you got a reply from that guy using BTC as a marketing stunt for his own. Many would like to see him pay for what he has claimed.
Good detailed post by the way.
Thanks. "That guy" is a pretty intelligent person. He may also be completely crazy, but he's not stupid. At least, that's my current perception. $500k per BCH is quite a claim though. For it to happen, I'd imagine we'd have to see some serious collapse of value in the USD.
It worked! I want to make a donation!!! trying for weeks doing that!
Excellent! I'm glad it worked for you. I will happily receive your donations. :)
SBD/STEEM: @lukestokes Bitcoin: https://onename.com/lukestokes BitShares: luke-stokes Ethereum: lukestokes.ethThanks for this post so much! That tip about WIFC private keys is pure gold!
I tried pulling my pre-fork private key out of Electrum into Electron, but both the WIF and WIFC private keys don't add the right address.. Any ideas? Thanks again!
Hmmm. Have you tried all the addresses in Electrum? It's possible your funds are on a change address and it the address you thought. Check each public address on the blockexplorers to see what's up.
Thanks for the tip! I checked every address it lists and there's only one with BCH and it has the exact amount on it. https://blockchair.com/bitcoin-cash/address/39mrXLiKz81FnH8hw4Fcv9fUa8Ro1yrLBH
Is there some other thing that could be wrong with my private key?
As long as you have the right private key for the right public address, you should be all set. The only other thing to check is if you Electrum is fully synced and on the correct chain, not a broken sidechain. I had some issues with the early version of Electrum.
I've done a bit more digging and found that the address is a P2SH 2FA multi-sig address. This would mean that no simple private key would pull in the balance. Instead, I think I need to figure out how to use multiple keys to sign a manual transaction? Does any of this ring any bells? Thanks for your continued help!
Hmm. Not sure how bitcoin splits work for a multisig address. I recommend connecting with that community to find out more. Not sure which platform they use, but you can probably get help you need there (IRC, Slack, Telegram, etc).
Wow thats a long process you had to go through sorry to hear that i have my btc on my trezor and still have not bothered to see about getting my B CASH im gonna just hold ....great post ty
Interesting to see how BCC does now that noones worried about BC. Did u buy Bitcoin when your sold your BCC?
Yeah, I sold it for BTC as that's the most common trading pair. I'm now playing around with various altcoins and waiting for buying opportunities.
I think every country has their own bitcoin websites where they can withdraw their bitcoin money to their local bank. By the way good article.
Thank you very much for giving very helpful information. For me this is very useful because I myself have experienced the misfortune of "my bittrex account was hacked
very useful Luke -thanks i use bitaddress.org and haven't transferred out yet
I'm about to go through this process to grab my BCC, very timely post. It's good to hear that you were able to get through it with Electron Cash, I was debating between that and the core wallet but was leaning the Electron Cash way, now I'll be going that route for sure.
Thanks!
Excellent! Glad to hear the timing worked out for you.
You did a great job breaking this down step by step!
great step. thanks, :)
Upvoted and RESTEEMED :]
thanks for info
Wow Nice Article Upvote & Follow You
Get Back
@johnsmit
buen post
Great information, keep up the good work...
Hi, I have made guide for the same, I would appreciate if you can check it out.
Good info. Thank you for sharing @lukestokes
Very useful info, thanks! I had no time to figure this out yet and now I don't have to. I am keeping my Bitcoin Cash for now but I can separate them now whenever I want.
Very helpful to many. Great work, Luke!
Nice guide, Luke! Very detailed. I'm sure a lot of people will fill find this of use. Oh, and a McAfee cameo! Haha! I did not expect that. I think you're right, and he's making a power play with that.
This helped me redeem my BCH, thanks! Why are there more confirmations needed? (Assuming it's the block sizes)
It's a number of reasons, but yes, that and it's still experimental so they aren't really sure there's enough mining power to have a secure chain yet. If you send a bunch of BCH to an exchange and then there's a fork, they might be out that money. 20 confirmations assures they have a nice long chain before they credit your account.
Hi friend pleas upvot my link https://steemit.com/@abdulmajid9
Don't spam people with links to your blog. That's now how this place works.
Thanks for the run down. I'm going to do this process myself on 8/8.
I upvote you and you upvote me back
No.
That's not how I do things. I upvote quality content I find, not follow for follow or upvote for upvote. If everyone did that, regardless of quality, we'd have a site rewarding crap content and feeds full of good authors, bad authors, and everything in between. Don't beg for votes. Instead, provide so much value people will want you to be rewarded and follow you for more.
Also, stop spamming people with the same comment or you will be flagged.
can any of this be done without using a cell phone ? I just have a computer for internet and communication that's why I ask and I've been seeing a request for phone numbers :/
Where are you seeing a request for phone numbers?
I checked out bittrex dot come and bitconnect dot com and each will not continues with sign up without a number :( now I know they are not part of steemit but still how does one learn to reinvest or after a while cash some out ? this is all new to me and I would hate to mess up.
Ah, I see. You're talking about exchanges where you want to sell your cryptocurrency for local currency. Unfortunately, this isn't easy to do because of government KYC (Know Your Customer) laws. See governments have a monopoly on currency creation within their region and they don't like giving up monopolies. They want to know what ever dollar is spent on to ensure they can squash any threats to their power (of course, they say it's about fighting terrorism and evil money laundering). So they don't allow money to transfer from one form to another unless they can track it. It's like a mafia group who wants to ensure they get their cut of the action (i.e. taxes). Pretty messed up, right?
You can try localbitcoins.com, but that's mostly just for bitcoin. I'm not sure of any exchanges which you can use which don't require some form of identity verification.
Good luck.
When you say paper wallet does that include blockchain.info, sorry its jargon for me.
A paper wallet is actually a piece of printed paper with a private key on it. If done right, it's never been on the internet at all so it's the most secure way to own your own private key. You can find out more here: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Paper_wallet
Blockchain.info is a web wallet which is a little different. It's a good site though and I've used it for years.
Now I am enlightened, thanks a bunch.
NIce post, upvoted and followed
Interesting one @lukestokes - glad I am on vacation, still no idea how to get bitcoin cash from my ledger nano, do you know that by chance?
Do you have the Ledger Nano S? Is that where the BTC was before the fork? If so, this may help.
Yes - i transferred them some days before August 1 - thanks for the link, checking!
hello, is there any way that is easier? i don't understand
i just took my btc out of my paper wallet. but i don't know how to take out bitcoin cash. instructions are too hard and i don't want to make a mistake
If you just completed the instructions, how is it too hard? You did it! You made it! It worked! Hurray! Now the only thing you need to do is repeat the process using Electron Cash instead of Electrum. Make sense? Don't let fear of the unfamiliar hold you back from learning and experiencing something new. :)
Super helpful post! I'm clearly not understanding it completely however. I just sent my BTC from a paper wallet to Bittrex using Electrum. When I input the same paper wallet key into Electron Cash it doesn't seem to acknowledge the existence of BCC. What am I missing here? Should I have not sent my BTC to Bittrex? Is there a resolve here to not lose my BCC? Please advise
If you followed the steps correctly and the bitcoin cash was on that address at the time of the fork, it should be there. You can search for your address here and see what it says about it: https://blockchair.com/
Is there any other wallet that supports BCH? Is it safe to start searching if there's another paper wallet for BCH I wonder.
I have all my BTC in paper wallet safely tucked. Is there supposed to be another Segwit fork for BTC later in the month? I heard about it somewhere from a Youtube link before (I cannot remember where I heard it).
Is it safe to only port after August?
A scholar and gentleman sir, I thank you
Extremely useful post. Most useful was your link to Blockchair.com. I was able to go there and check all my BCC balances are safe. I was pleased to see that also my Cassascius fully loaded coin is now loaded with 1 BCC on top of the 1 BTC. I guess I can't get the 1 BCC unless I destroy the numismatic value of the Cassascius coin.
I had no trouble checking my paper wallet balances. However I had a lot of trouble to check my BCC balance on my Bitcoin wallet located on Blockchain.info. It was really hard to find the public key. It seems that it is not the same one you show you when you click to receive funds. It's also not your wallet ID. In the end I had to click through the history and see what address the blockchain credited.
Luke! I missed this article when you posted it, but just now when I googled "get bitcoin cash off a paper wallet", this was the first result! I was like, "hey, I know that guy!"
Just thought you'd want to know that. ;-)
Great post sir.Thank you so much for providing the way to claim my BCH.I tried to check my BTC balance in the blockchain.info but it failed saying invalid address.Thank you for providing the link blockchair.com where i could check my BTC & BCH balance.
I have one more question,
How about claiming BCH from BCH supporting android wallet Coinomi and BTC from BTC supporting android wallet Copay/Mycelium?Is it safe for those who own android phones and do not have PC/laptop?
Kudos@lukestokes
Sorry, I'm not familiar with those systems. You'll have to contact them directly and/or do some googling around to see what options you have. If you can get the private WIF key, you should be good to go.
Thank you