Bitcoin Forum

Hi all,

I have all my BTC on Electrum since 2013.
Now this hardfork is coming and I'm not sure what to do.

Please can you tell me if I should quickly download BTC core wallet and transfer all BTC there or should I just leave all BTC on Electrum ?

Thank you very much for help

This explains most things that you need to know: http://docs.electrum.org/en/latest/hardfork.html

Thank you very much for your help.

I have stumbled across that article and my head exploded that's why I went on here to ask.

I have zero clue what is that guy talking about. Splitting coins ?
I'm not confident enough to start splitting anything. I can cut apple in two half's but not bitcoin :)

He is talking about command lines but I'm using Windows 7 :(

Who the fuck fell on his head and came up with idea to split bitcoin ? WTF ?

Would it be best if I change all BTC into cash ?
(unfortunately I'm not verified on any exchange so I will not be able to take money out)

The best advice would be to leave your coins untouched until everything has settled down and the dev updates the wallets to include easy chain splitting. I use Electrum too and this is my plan.

if are not trading just create a paper wallet and move all ur BTC into it. and wait to see what's gonna happen.

Thank you very much

That's one of the best options :)
I didn't touch it since 2013 but now Bitcoin is gone from August 1 I'm not sure.

It's sad to see bitcoin going as it was interesting ride for couple of years but I guess nothing lasts forever.

Never traded BTC I'm just hoarder holder :)

What is paper wallet(heard about it before but never investigated further) ?

Thank you

No need to do anything. Just make sure your coins are safe in your Electrum wallet and offline if possible. There s no proof there will be BTC fork at all, we can only wait ATM.

that guy, Thomas Voegtlin, is the developer of Electrum :D
and splitting coins means only in case two chains coexist. but in case in the future any fork regarding scaling happens and only one chain exists in the end, you don't have to do anything at all.

you can always run a live linux quickly and do these steps.

and i believe they have added new features in the newer versions and also the 2.9 is coming which will have additional features. and won't need command line.
i really haven't checked this much. read here: https://github.com/spesmilo/electrum/blob/master/RELEASE-NOTES#L1-L6
2.9 is NOT released yet.


you have 2 options:
1. wait it out. just do nothing. don't touch the coins, don't try to sell or anything and wait to see what happens and after a while when things became clear start again.
2. sell from a small portion to all your coins until you are left with a more comfortable number. for example if you have 10,000BTC and you are nervous then sell 6,000BTC and hold 4,000BTC to feel more comfortable ;)

whether selling is better or not, i can not tell you. sorry!

It's a piece of paper that holds your private and public key.

Electrum wallet - I just have icon on my desktop.
I have copied electrum.dat to USB but I'm not sure if that is what you mean.?

Offline ?

I don't want to be pain but sadly I'm a bit clueless :(

10,000 Bitcoins lol.

I don't have that many :)

I'm still on Electrum 1.6.1 should I update it to newer version or old one is good enough ?

Thank you very much for your help

Just don't open the wallet.

Where can I find it in Electrum ?

Electrum displays only History - Send-Receive-Contacts-Wall

There is no option to print/download any private/public keys. 

Yes, just dont touch it. The best option would be to have it on a separate offline machine, but this is more related to safety then to actual potential fork. There s really no need for you to worry, business as usual, let s wait and see what happens.

offline aka cold storage: http://docs.electrum.org/en/latest/coldstorage.html

two things you need to back uo
1. seed: http://docs.electrum.org/en/latest/faq.html#what-is-the-seed
2. wallet file: http://docs.electrum.org/en/latest/faq.html#where-is-my-wallet-file-located

you can and should write down the seed on piece of paper.

wow, that is OLD :D
be careful when upgrading. make sure to back up your wallet file and seed first and also read this link: http://docs.electrum.org/en/latest/faq.html#how-to-upgrade-electrum
then upgrade. the wallet has changed since version 1.x and you may encounter some troubles. so it is best to have these 2 backups just in case.


SEED is the only thing you need.
private keys can also be found if you right click on each address in address tab (which is visible by default in version 1.6) and click private keys. or from the menu use export pivate keys under the wallet link.

Just create the paper wallet elsewhere print out the private and public key then transfer your bitcoins into the paper wallet. Honestly I think that you are best just to wait until all the dust settles.

I bought BTC in 2013 and guy said to me to use Electrum to store them.
So I downloaded Electrum and didn't fidle with it since.

I'm mining ALT coins and all that stuff but I have stopped doing anything BTC related since Habannero boards stopped being profitable.

I have seed (random words) stored on USB drive.
I have Electrum.dat on the same USB drive.
Is this good enough backup before updating ?

What issues can I encounter ?

I'm going to read that article about upgrading.

I really appreciate your help :)

I have right clicked on address and it gave me 4 options

Copy to clip board
View QR
Edit Label
Sign message

Which one is private key ? :(

There is a new version of Electrum releasing this week.

https://twitter.com/electrumwallet?lang=en

Maybe wait for that one?

Than you are in same dilemma like i am. I have some small part of my bitcoins on some other wallet. I was also thinking what is going to happen with my money on that other wallet, and therefor i have come to an conclusion that either i will transfer that money to blockchain, or i will take and change to fiat.

I will do that then :)

Would you recommend any website for them paper wallets ?

I have feck all coins in comparison to early adopters but would not like to lose that little I have :(

https://www.bitaddress.org/

Thank you :)

Had a look and it created QR code.

So the QR codes in Electrum are private keys I should print on paper to be safe ?

Thank you

I'm also holding the majority of my coins in my electrum wallet as well. Normally there shouldn't be anything to worry about really. However it isn't certain that bitcoin will split. Bitcoin will only split if there isn't a majority for segwit2x, but I have confidence that won't happen.

Nothing do last forever and bitcoin could possibly be gone but you cant be sure if there would be a split or not on this upcoming August 1, Storing them on electrum is just fine as long you know its secure and if your quiet hesitated then paper wallet or hardware wallet would be the best choice.If you dont actively touching this coins then its the best option.

when you right click on address in electrum it gives you option to see QR code.

Is that a private key I need ?

Electrum is able to display QR code.
Is that QR code the private key I have to print with printer to be safe ?

I'm not willing to transfer anything anywhere (lost couple BTC thanks to scammer before)

QR code is just a bunch of dots on a square, it is not necessarily your private key. think of QR as barcode but instead of 1 dimension it has 2.

make sure you are using the QR code of your "private key" not QR code of your public key, or bitcoin address or anything else if you want to back up. for example in bitaddress.org the QR code on the left is your bitcoin address in base58 and the QR on the right is the private key.

p.s. private key starts with 5 or L or K

Thank you so much :)

QR in electrum starts with 1 so that is only public key.?

Would you know how to get private key from electrum ?
I'm worried to send BTC to some random generator :/

I don't know what you are looking at. To be 100% certain you would be best to try spending some Bitcoin using what you think is the private key.

if it starts with 1 then it most probably is your bitcoin address like the one you see in my profile for example.

and i've read the previous comments and it seems like your wallet is old so that must be the reason you don't see the private key option when you right click on an address like this:
https://i.imgur.com/uOiA289.jpg

you can also do this:
https://i.imgur.com/emRWWlB.jpg

but and as someone else already mentioned, you just need the seed. your seed is your private keys.
IF you have not imported any keys in your current wallet then all the private keys that you are seeing right now can be easily derived from that seed. that is how deterministic (or HD) wallets work.

good luck.

Yes exactly, I don't know what many people are 100% convinced that there will be a hard fork on 1st August. I am hoping for hard fork not to happen. Well as far as where the coins are safer then it doesn't really matter electrum or core both are probably equal safe, electrum has its policy of handling and fork and even if it's not electrum but some other wallet, some way or other the dev of the wallet will make the process simpler after the fork, if fork happens.

Do not panic and just move all your coins to some sort of cold storage where you have full control over your private keys. This is necessary for you

to be able to choose what coins you will be using in the future. { You should have coins on both forks, if it splits } There will also be exchanges

that will be supporting coins from both chains. { Like after Ethereum DAO split }  ;)

Welll you are not alone to have this kind of fear, going forward to August 1st many shall have this question, personally I have been using coinbase.com without any issues for so long, but now due to August 1st I decided to movie out of it to electrum. As far the wallet it's absolutely secured until you don't give away your seed or private keys. Just keep it lock and forget about it, that's the best idea, prior to fears of a hard folk, currently it's feels like there won't be any hard folk as of such.

If you are really having a hard to time to decide then maybe the best option would be to sell.
Although I dont recommend but it is hard to find answers for a person who is in too much doubt.
I also use electrum and I would prefer just letting it be for myself decision.

You can generate paper wallets here - https://www.bitaddress.org. Clean your computer and make sure it is not compromised by a key logger and its like. Create your new wallet, send the coins to your paper wallet address, print it out, delete the file and close the browser. Keep the paper safe. I advice making an extra copy and storing them in different locations.

What is it with you people and this imaginary 1st of Aug fork?

When will any of you learn?

It's not a hard fork, it's an user activated soft fork, those little eyes pricks are bluffing for this same reason> make you panic and when people panic they

Will do stupid things such as selling their old stash, you just save address with it's key and go to another star system and come back, you'll find your coins

In the same condition as before you left this planet.

I don't know but I think that the original poster needs to calm down a bit.

I have read that there will be 2 bitcoins and 2 blockchains from 1st of August.

As I wasn't involved in BTC for long time it creates uncertainty in me.
BTC is BTC and that BTC has one blockchain.

Someone missed the train and didn't adopt at the start is now trying to make up for it by splitting BTC so he can get rich as quickly as possibly.
Not my problem he didn't adopt = go and create another coin and leave BTC alone.

1st August  = 2 different BTC coins and 2 different blockchains.

Now which of these two blockchains and coins would our original BTCs belong to ?
Divide and conquer.
 

the accurate statement is:
there might be 2 blockchains after 1st of August.

the one that can gain the support from majority.
or we will have 2 half ass blockchains with the price of both crashing hard!

So I should have my bitcoin core client closed for a few days after August 1st ? Or opened ?

I think implementing Segwitx2 is not forking and it is not related to any dual blockchain. but it will start to accept high block size so that transactions get fast confirmed on low fees also.

So it is much better that if you are a long term holder then dont do anything to your wallet , just keep the backup of your wallet and do other things what you were doing from past , after August 1 just see how the things are going and then try to do some things after some weeks as if they implemented segwit then they will face some problem in the starting and when everything sorted out you can do other things.

Where did you hear perhaps from an infamous little eyes Wu? now hear it from me, he knows that he has a large mining company and his words

Could have great impacts on people's mindset and could change their decisions, that is why he is abusing that power and since he wants more money

He has orders filled already down to $1000 even if people were selling millions of coins that's his plans because he already has invested millions

Of dollars so what would be the next thing? having as many Bitcoins as possible. and usually others will divide you to conquer like what they're

Doing with Shia and Sunny Muslims. Wu is an insider he wouldn't divide himself, unless, unless of course someone has a gun to his head forcing

Him to do a hard fork that is a whole different story.

Now where is that news that we have two Bitcoins and two blockchains. Nothing has been finalized as yet and nothing is gonna crash. Do not try to create unnecessary Panic among the holder of bitcoins.
Bitcoin will never crash !!!

AFAIK, it doesn't matters if your wallet is closed or opened.

I'm not so sure about that, there will be only one bitcoin in case of a fork, other one(fork) will be labeled as altcoin. anyways you don't have to worry about fork as long as you keep your coins in a wallet with full control(electrum,core,mycelium).

Thanks everyone for your help :)

Not trying to create any panic but that's how I understood what is going to happen on 1st of August.
I might be wrong and understood it all wrong and all will be same as before.

I'm going to leave everything as is and was for 4 years and see what happens.

Thank you for explanation/correction :)

So today's BTC will belong to (for example) blockchain A or B ?
How would I know to which blockchain it will belong to ?
(I'm not adopting anything and would like to stick to the same blockchain we had so far)

Thank you

A Bitcoin Beginner’s Guide to Surviving a Coin-Split

There is a chance Bitcoin will experience a coin-split soon. If a majority of miners (by hash power) switch to Bitcoin Unlimited and decide to mine blocks bigger than one megabyte, while at least some users stick to the current Bitcoin protocol, the network and blockchain can split in two. In that case, there may be two different types of Bitcoin tokens: "BTC," which follows the current Bitcoin protocol, and "BTU," which follows the new Bitcoin Unlimited protocol.

http://www.nasdaq.com/article/a-beginners-guide-to-surviving-a-coin-split-cm764421

If the chain splits you will have BTC on both chains A and B. If it happens just leave your wallet alone but monitor the situation closely until the dust settles and devs update their wallet software to allow you to spend on both chains. The worst thing you could do is panic and lose your BTC on one of the split chains from a replay attack. Read about how it happened last year during Ethereums hard fork. It might help you understand. Right now there is nothing to be panicking about.

How about blockchain wallet and August 1st? Everyone who use that wallet shouldn't do anything but just export private key too?
Before all of that, is there anyone here who confident of blockchain will  split into two different chain?
Whether segwit2x will reach enough approval from majority of miners and be activated?

Your words contradict each other, both chain will die or one chain will survive?  :D
Don't you see most news stated bitcoin will going through hard fork? It means the chain will split but miners support segwit and all blocks must signal for it. The split maybe negligible and we don't have to do anything but secure our bitcoin, get your private keys. So, withdraw all your coins out of exchanges or wallet platform that you can't export the private key, try electrum wallet. And be prepared for big rally that will come after segwit activated and block size increased  ;D

Electrum is a safe wallet for you to store bitcoin for 1/8. It is a convenient wallet for all bitcoin users; anyone using a personal computer should use electrum.

Hey everyone :)

I wasn't quite sure where to post, so I'm justing using this thread. I already have read others threads like this one:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2024830.0

However, some of my questions I couldn't resolve. I'm using Electrum to store my BTC. I'm keeping Electrum updated, to make sure I always have the latest version (2.8.3 as of now).

1) Will there be any notification from Electrum telling me what to do?

2) If I do absolutely nothing (i.e. no transactions) on August 1st and some days after, will my BTC be safe? Can I open my wallet in this time in order to check the status?

3) The scenario is outlined in this figure here: http://www.bitcoinisle.com/2017/07/18/what-could-happen-to-bitcoin-a-visual-guide-to-scaling-outcomes/
Where would Electrum be in this figure?

I see my BTC as digital gold and just want to keep them. I don't plan on selling any, the only transaction I do is buying BTC if at all. Of course not on the beginning of August. My favorite way would be to just sit there and wait how things work out, not having to split my bitcoins, just them being safe in my Electrum wallet and everything goes the right way automatically. On the other hand I don't want to lose my BTC just because I haven't been informed before. That would really be a dumb mistake.

Cheers,
DLK

Electrum v.2.9? I guess that will provide you with the tools needed for a split.
Scheduled for release this week: https://twitter.com/ElectrumWallet

Hi guys, I appreciate all of the responses here.  

A quick rundown for safety leading into a potential fork:  As long as I have my . . .

BTC in my Electrum wallet I'll be good.  I'm keeping it offline during this.

SEED words saved to a flash drive for backup purposes.

If I have the SEED words saved, I DO NOT need to export the private key.

In the event of a split, I would receive the 1:1 ratio of coins.

Is this all correct?  Thanks in advance guys.

Is there any validity to the claim that I needed to have my private keys for at least a month to be eligible?  That doesn't seem right.

EDIT:  Shoot, I just saw that there is a new release scheduled for this week.

Who said this and/or where did you see this claim? In any case, it is rubbish...

If a fork occurs, as long as there are transactions that assign value to your private keys recorded on the blockchain in any of the blocks prior to the fork, you are good to go...

Thank you HCP. 

One more question for you guys, and hopefully it should be helpful to other too:

With the current Electrum wallet I will still receive the 1:1 ration of coins?  Then follow the directions to get the BCC tokens out of my wallet?  Or do I need to have the unofficial release that supports BCC? 

This stuff gets confusing sometimes.

Hey all question on this.  I have bitcoin in electrum wallet.  Currently im using electrum 2.8.3 version.  I found out electrum 2.9 came out recently.  I usually am not up to date with electrum updates so usually i am using the old version for a bit since i dont check electrum website to see if theres been any upgrade to the client.


Is there anything i need to do now before the bitcoin fork?  Such as do i need to download electrum 2.9 first?  Or i could just keep it like it is right now and its fine.  I assume most ppl are still using this electrum 2.8.3 version right since most ppl do not update their electrum to newest version since they dont check all the time via website?

Intelligent questions, I'd like to see hem answered rather than dismissed.

Updating to latest version is required during hardfork or current version 2.8.3 is enough ?

Depends on whether or not you care about Bitcoin Cash...

As per Theymos' post: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2012799.0 (Read the "What should I do to secure my bitcoins?" section)

If you have no interest in it... and believe it will "die" and BTC will continue as the longest chain with max hashing power... you pretty much don't need to do anything... 2.8.3 should continue to operate as normal...

If you would like to fork your coins, you can do it with 2.8.3 (it requires some work)... or you can download 2.9.0 and try the nifty features that ThomasV added in to allow you to specify what blockchain you want to use in the Network settings window.

If you want to use Bitcoin Cash instead of BTC... you may need to manually configure Electrum to connect to BCC servers if any exist... or go use another BCC specific wallet.

Okay so what are most people with bitcoin in electrum doing?  Are they downloading the new version 2.9 or using the old version?  The other thing is how often are you guys with electrum even checking to see if theres a new update?  The thing is when you start up electrum, there isn't a message that says new version... do you want to download it?

so, if i download 2.9 and holds BTC in it then will i get free BCC?

So are we suppose to download electrum 2.9 or not?  Im still not sure what the answer is.  Because if u dont, that means you dont get any bitcoin cash?

It really isn't that hard... If you have access to your private keys... you will be able to access BTC and BCC.

How you go about doing that is entirely up to you. You will be able to access your BCC at any point in time AFTER the fork if you have access to the private keys which have coins when the fork occurs.

Given that BCC has implemented Replay Protection, and that BTC transactions will not be valid on BCC network... and given ThomasV's stance on BCC (https://electrum.org/bcc.txt), you will need to export your private keys and import them into a BCC specific wallet to be able to broadcast BCC transactions as the transactions that Electrum generates will not be compatible with the BCC network.

i just realize my electrum portable wallet version is 2.8.2. i put all my BTC in there. targeting to get bitcoin cash (BCH) 1:1 BTC.
just now i downloaded version 2.9 then i moved version 2.8.2 electrum_data folder to version 2.9.
is it enough or anything i have to do?

Yes, you'll need to get a BCC compatible wallet... and then after the fork happens, you'll need to export your seed (or private keys) from Electrum and then import your seed (or private keys) into that BCC Wallet.

Electrum IS NOT compatible with BCC... You cannot create/send or receive BCC transactions with Electrum.

Refer: https://electrum.org/bcc.txt and https://electrum.org/bcc2.txt

ah...thanks for your respond.
how about electroncash.org wallet? or do you have any advice?
thank you

I have done everything as mentioned in tutorial but still BCC not showing in electrum cash
what shall i do now?

You may need to do the following to get ElectronCash working properly: https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/6qyn18/electroncash_notice_how_to_select_bitcoincash/

The ElectronDevs messed up... so it may be that ElectronCash is not using the correct chain.

Here is my problem:

I just caught onto the fact that MUtibit HD is really outdated and doesn't have support anymore. I ran into a nice tutorial they made 5 days ago about transitioning to an Electrum wallet, Now, I am wondering how to transition safely to make sure I don't lose my Bitcoin cash (BCC). I just bought more BTC before the fork. I have my seed words.

Here is what I was thinking trying:

Upload my Multibit HD seeds to my new electrum wallet.

Transfer the Bitcoins (BTC) to a different Electrum wallet ( on another computer)

Then use my MULtibit HD seeds ( same as my new electrum right?) to  upload my BCC on the Bitcoin cash wallet- or Electron cash wallet.

Im freaked out of my mind that I might have missed out on BCC because I had my BTC in a multibit HD wallet.

Thanks a million for any help, tips or inputs.

QUESTION: Should I even bother uploading my seeds from Multibit to Electrum or I could just transfer directly my BTC to a different Electrum wallet ?

You better send all your Bitcoins to your new Electrum wallet with a single transaction. Easier, cheaper and faster.

You can skip a step... the whole point of sending BTC to a new wallet is so that when you use your seed in a BCC wallet, that if that wallet is "bad"™, only your BCC is at risk, as your BTC has already been moved to a new wallet :)

So in your situation, I'd do the following:

Step 1. Create a new Electrum Wallet
Step 2. Send BTC from MultiBitHD to new Electrum Wallet
Step 3. Create a new BCC Wallet (I assume you're going to use ElectronCash so you can just direct import MBHD Seed)
Step 4. Import MBHD seed into BCC Wallet

You now have BTC in an Electrum wallet (with newSeed)... and BCC in ElectronCash (with oldSeed)

NOTES: you'll only need to import MultiBitHD Seed to Electrum (and create a temp Electrum wallet) if MultiBitHD has stopped functioning properly for you ("Password can't unlock the wallet" etc)
Be careful with Electron Cash... there are fake websites distributing bad versions... the correct website is: http://www.electroncash.org/ The true website has a link to the "signatures and hashes" at the bottom, the fakes one don't. Also, there can be issues running ElectronCash on the right chain... refer here: https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/6qyn18/electroncash_notice_how_to_select_bitcoincash/


ps. you won't "miss out" on BCC... that BCC will be there until someone moves it using the private keys for your MultiBitHD wallet... it isn't a race, there isn't a time limit... I'm guessing your real concern is that BCC might dump before you get a chance to sell it ;)

if i install electron cash and electrum wallet in same pc and do not use electrum wallet anymore, is it safe?

Am I right that the Electron Cash developer is not the same like the Electrum developer?

Yes, you're right. It's really two different projects.