Bitcoin Forum

I've sent BCH to my Electrum BTC wallet. The transaction is sent and complete. However, the funds are not showing in my electrum wallet, as electrum only store BTC as opposed to BCH. Will I be able to retrieve this money? If so, how? Hope someone can please help?

Locate the address you sent the funds to (from the addresses tab), write click it and choose "private key". You can then import/sweep that key on Electron or any other BCH wallet.

Follow the above instructions. Note that they apply only to legacy (1...) and multisig (3...) wallets. If you have a nested SegWit (3...) or native SegWit (bc1...) wallet then you won't be able to recover your funds without the help of a BCH miner.

If you sent the bch to a legacy btc address starting with 1, then you should be fine, just extract the private key for that address and import into a bch compactible wallet.

If you sent the bch to a segwit btc address starting with a 3, then you'd have a big problem recovering it. You just have to contact a miner to help you out, there are a few that can help you if I am not mistaken. Also, what ever you do, do not spend from the address if it is a segwit address.

I think for you this is the topic worth looking at: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5239716.new#new https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5239511.0
What I see there, that user has the similar problem. He sent BCH to Electrum BTC address but later I guess he was able to recover the funds. There are some information you can read from the above topic to find solutions for you too.

Edit: Credit - o_e_L_e_o

That link is for this topic. :P

Did you mean this topic by any chance? https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5236471.0

The guide linked to by BitCryptex in that topic (in this post: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5236471.msg54124941#msg54124941) is useful if OP has accidentally sent his BCH to a legacy multi-sig BTC Wallet, such as the TrustedCoin 2FA wallet that Electrum sets up. If he has sent BCH to a standard legacy BTC wallet, it should be a simple as exporting his private key and importing it in to a BCH wallet. If he has sent BCH to a segwit BTC wallet, things become much more complicated. In this case, OP would need to find a trustworthy BCH miner and provide them with the details of the incorrect transaction and the public key for the BCH address.

Such an embarrassment for me :-P
I wanted to link this topic : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5239511.0

What I understood is that the guy bought BCH from bitcoin.com and sent them to a BTC address. It was an Electrum wallet. And in the discussion there were some users who explained some steps to recover the funds using Electrum Bitcoin Cash wallet.

Thanks for the heads up buddy.

This something similar like claim BCH after forked. If you had used Legacy address during sent BCH then it would be very easy to recover for you. You might follow below articles there is explanation from Electrum themselves during last fork. So this way you may recover your BCH as well.
Here is article; Recommendation on how to redeem Bitcoin Cash (https://electrum.org/bcc2.txt)
Download wallet from here: https://www.bitcoincash.org/wallets.html   (https://www.bitcoincash.org/wallets.html)

Important note, if you are using Legacy address then move your all funds (BTC) from Electrum to new Electrum wallet or any other wallet which is controlled by you (including private keys) before import your Electrum seed or private keys to any other wallet. Otherwise there is risk to compromise your seed or private keys. Sent all btc to new wallet doesn't effect your BCH since they are both on different blockchain. Don't use old Electrum wallet after recover your BCH, just create new Electrum wallet from original source.

Edited;
Your point is valid, the instructions above is based on Legacy address, however have added that point (edited).

Nope. Don't do this yet until you let us know what type of address you have accidentally sent your BCH to.

If you have sent your BCH to a segwit address, then all that is needed to move those BCH is the public key of that address, and not the private key. If you spend the BTC on the corresponding address on the BTC chain, you expose the public key of that address, meaning anyone can then steal your BCH.

The best option here is to not try to do anything with your coins on either chain until you tell us exactly what kind of address your BCH is at. Only then can we provide more accurate steps as to how to safely recover your coins.

Can you please explain how it is possible to move BCH sent to BTC segwit address only with public key?

Sure. So to get a bit more technical, it's not actually the public key you need, it's the redeem script for the address in question, but the principle is the same.

So a couple of things to note first. The SegWit upgrade takes the data needed to validate a transaction and moves it to a new "witness" structure at the end of the transaction. Secondly, P2SH (pay-to-script-hash) addresses, as the name suggests, are hashes of a script. The script is only revealed whenever it is used as an input in a transaction. This is also why you can't know if a 3... address is SegWit or not if it has never made a transaction, because you only know the script hash, and not the script itself. These address exist on both BTC and BCH. The script could be multi-sig, time-lock, a number of other things, or importantly on BTC only (and not on BCH) it could also be SegWit.

When a transaction is made from a SegWit address on BTC, the script used in SegWit transactions directs nodes to verify the transaction using the witness data. However, BCH never implemented SegWit. As such, the script cannot direct nodes to the witness data (because it doesn't exist on BCH). The script therefore doesn't require a signature, and so SegWit outputs on BCH become AnyoneCanSpend. All that you need to provide is the script in question.

Now, as we've said above, the script is revealed when you make a transaction. If you have accidentally sent BCH to a 3... BTC address, and that BTC address has ever sent BTC out of it, then the script will have been revealed and is publicly viewable. A miner can then use that script to spend the BCH at the same address.

The reason it has to be miner is because such transactions on the BCH chain while valid, are non-standard, and therefore won't be relayed by nodes and so can't be broadcast in the normal way. Instead you need to have a miner directly include it in a block.

as far as i can tell BCH implements most of SegWit soft fork. the only things this altcoin skips are the new script interpretation rules (native SegWit: OP_Num+<datapush> and nested SegWit: P2SH+redeem=witness program) and the witness part of the transaction. otherwise it implements the main reason for SegWit for (malleability fix) the signature generation for version 0 witness program (ie. bip-143) and the bech32 address encoding for native v0-16 witness outputs (ie. bip-173).

I believe the BCH was sent to a legacy address. The address began with '1'. My sincere apologies for the delay in responding to you guys. I've logged-in tonight and I'm very pleasantly surprised by the number of responses, thank you! I'd be very grateful to receive simple easy to follow instructions on how I can claim/access this BCH? Hoping someone can please help? Thank you 

Since you sent your coins to a legacy address, you only need to export the private key corresponding to the address you sent your coins to in Electrum (Wallet -> Private keys-> Export) and recover your wallet in Electron Cash (https://electroncash.org/). You should be able to use your recovery phrase there if you still have it so try using it first.

Alternatively... if you don't want to expose any private keys, simply install Electron Cash, and then copy your wallet file from:


to


Then run Electrum Cash and click on the "choose..." button and open the wallet file you just copied.


NOTE: If you can't see 'AppData' directory: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/14201/windows-show-hidden-files

Just press "WindowsKey+R" to open 'Run', then type %appdata%, Enter. You'll be able to browse inside even if it's hidden.

BTW, last time I tried copying Electrum 3.3.8 wallet with legacy bitcoin address to Electron 4.0.12 datadir (about 4 months ago),
it didn't worked due to wallet version compatibility issue, newest version 4.0.14 wont work either.
However, a copy to ElectrumSV's datadir, worked.