Bitcoin Forum

i sent bch to a btc account according to coinbase support. i looked up the address and it is linked to a btc and a bch account. upon further look the bch address has received the funds which should be correct, but it has not showed up in my exchange and coinbase has ststed that it was sent to a bitcoin address. if you look up the address it is associated with btc and bch but blockchain shows bch as the receiver(which should be correct). is there anything i can do besides contact coinbase more?

If you sent BCH to a BTC address on coinbase, well, the keys belong to coinbase. They are the only ones who can help you recover them.

What you're looking for is their "Cross-Chain" recovery policy. I'm not sure, but i believe coinbase does not have one currently? This might change in the future, so your coins are not indefinitely lost (yet)

A bitcoin address is also a valid bitcoin cash address. (well, starting with 1.. at least.)

Have you asked Coinbase if they can help you with this? Did they reply yet?

they have stated that the bch was sent to btc address but the blockchain shows a bch address as the receiver but also the same address is linked to a btc account also but it shows as going through to th bch address. coinbase basically says its unrecoverable because it was sent to a btc address but the blockchain says otherwise.

There is no difference. The address is valid on both chains; however, coinbase has decided to only use the address for the BTC chain (presumably for operational integrity / security.).

i understand that. what would be my options moving forward?

as far as I know: there are none, other than what you've already done; that is to contact Coinbase and ask them to credit your BCH deposit.

I'm sort of out of the loop on this, but I heard (I think years ago) that coinbase was working on resolving this issue in an automated way.. Not sure though.

So yeah, there isn't much you can do. Perhaps if it's an enormous amount you can do some stuff with lawyers, but other than that... Not sure.

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For future references, either don't use custodial exchanges and or double check where you are sending your coins to. :(

Pester their support? They can recover the coins, it's up to them if they want to do so. Ultimately, Coinbase isn't at fault here as it's the user's negligence. No one else has the private key so only they can do something about it.

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There's no such thing as an account. Both BCH and BTC could potentially have addresses that are valid for both chains. If you've generated a BTC address and sent funds using your BCH address, it'll be stuck there unless Coinbase wants to help you to recover it. Given that it's such a large corporation, doing so could be troublesome.

Your only hope is to wait until they send the funds back to your sending address after 30 days if the BCH was sent to an inaccessible address. Even that is not guaranteed and some users online have reported that they were still waiting for their funds to be returned.

whose address is it? did coinbase give it to you?

yes coinbase gave me the address

You might just be confused between BTC and BCH because they use the same name Bitcoin and Bitcoin cash. You don't know that Bitcoin cash is a fork version of Bitcoin.

It seems there's no way to recover it according to this.


You can call them directly through this US number: +1 (888) 908-7930

Next time learn how to use Coinbase and always double-check the address if it correct or not and read this below.
- How do I send and receive crypto through wallet (https://help.coinbase.com/en/more/coinbase-wallet/sending-and-receiving/how-do-i-send-and-receive-crypto-through-wallet)

Inaccessible how, like a non-valid address? If the address isn't valid, his software would most probably have given an error when he tried to send the coins. But OP stated that he sent Bitcoin Cash to a Bitcoin address that he got from his Coinbase account:

This is a simple case of sending BCH to a valid BTC address. It's simple because if he had the private keys of the receiving address, he could easily recover the coins. Unfortunately a centralized exchange does, and they are most probably not going to bother unless it's a significant amount. 

I think I understand this, you're talking about what's being displayed in blockchain.com/some_blockexplorer when exploring an address, no?

To clear things up: Blockchain.com isn't associated with neither BTC and BCH Blockchains.
Two (or more) compatible coins will be displayed when you searched for an address if the address' format is/was supported by those particular coins.
In you case, you've pasted your bitcoin address which format is supported by both BTC and BCH chains, but Coinbase or most exchange doesn't work that way, they usually issue different deposit address(es) per coins.

So, it's what has been said by others.

I used the word invalid to mean a similar scenario to the OP's on reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/CoinBase/comments/9v2cx2/accidentally_purchased_bch_and_sent_to_btc_wallet/, as one of the replies there states: "if nobody's able to claim that balance in their coinbase wallet after 30 days, then coinbase returns the bch/btc/whatever currency the original tx sent back to the original wallet".

But if someone somehow manages to access the sent BCH on Coinbase then they will not return the funds.

That person actually found a solution to get his funds back and wrote about it there, although their problem was that they sent BCH on Coinbase to a BTC wallet, not the other way around (sending bch from a wallet to a btc address on Coinbase, what OP is trying to solve).