Aug 1 summary

[theymos]

Executive summary

Bitcoin is working fine and you can use it as you were before, possibly with slightly more reorg risk for a while.

The BIP91/BIP148 split didn't occur

As had been expected for the last week or so, the big potential split which caused all of the Aug 1 hubbub didn't happen, due to BIP91/BIP148 succeeding. There's a small chance that this split could still happen sometime between now and around Aug 10, but it looks very unlikely at this point.

Bcash split, creating an altcoin

If you had some number of BTC as of approximately 14:00 UTC, and if these bitcoins were secured by private keys controlled by you or in a Bcash-supporting online wallet, it is now possible for you to claim the same number of Bcash coins (BCH/BCC). Bcash is an altcoin based on Bitcoin; since it split, it is now 100% independent from Bitcoin other than the carried-over balances.

Bcash claims to have replay protection, but this is only a Bcash miner policy. Any Bcash miner could still replay transactions. Therefore, you can't safely rely on it.

Instructions for safely splitting your BCH from your BTC

Here are general split instructions. If your wallet software gives different instructions, use those instead.

These are the best instructions I could come up with quickly. Maybe someone will eventually come up with a more convenient way of doing it. Note that while I believe these instructions to be safe and reasonable, you are solely responsible for your safety here.

 1. Decide whether you want to bother splitting your coins at all. Is it actually worthwhile to remove your coins from cold storage (or whatever)? If you take no particular action and continue using Bitcoin as normal, then your BCH is likely (but not guaranteed) to remain associated with the current private keys due to BCH's pseudo-replay-protection; you could therefore maybe claim your BCH later on if you want. If you want to claim your BCH now, continue to the next steps.
 2. Create a totally new logical wallet with a new mnemonic, etc. Just creating new addresses is not sufficient: the new wallet needs to be completely separate from the old one. The new wallet's private keys should be under your personal control just in case your transaction is replayed or something else goes wrong. Make sure you have backups of the new wallet.
 3. Send all of the BTC in your old wallet to your new wallet, and wait until this transaction has 30 confirmations. (If you are really itching to get your BCH, it would not be totally crazy to wait for as few as 3 confirmations, but there is some risk with that.) Note that sending all of your BTC in a single transaction is likely to be harmful to your privacy; if you care about this, you might want to send it in several smaller transactions to several different addresses on the new wallet.
 4. On a separate computer that you wouldn't too much mind being compromised, install a BCash wallet such as one of the ones listed on bitcoincash.org. (Warning: some Bcash wallets are known to overwrite important files belonging to their Bitcoin counterparts.) Or use a Web-based exchange/wallet supporting Bcash. Import the private keys from your old, now-empty Bitcoin wallet into this Bcash wallet. Now you have BCH which you can handle as you wish. Note that BCH transactions may be very slow to confirm for a couple of days.

Continuing risks

Although I am giving a general "all clear" at this point because the risk of serious issues has dropped substantially, some turbulence is still possible due to BIP91/BIP148 and the rollout of SegWit:

 - If you are using a full-node wallet (eg. Bitcoin Core), you should require 30 confirmations for high-value, untrusted incoming transactions until SegWit locks in around Aug 10. Although seemingly quite unlikely at this point, it is possible that miners could fail to enforce BIP91/BIP148, which could cause very long reorgs (ie. confirmations could disappear, allowing double-spending). This seems unlikely enough that I probably wouldn't require extra confirmations for "normal" transactions, but if you absolutely cannot tolerate any particular transaction being reversed, then waiting for 30 confirmations would be most prudent.
 - If you are using a lightweight wallet, you should require 30 confirmations for all untrusted incoming transactions until SegWit locks in around Aug 10, and again for a couple of weeks after SegWit finally activates around Aug 24. Long reorgs or even persistent splits are possible if miners fail to properly enforce the rules of BIP91, BIP148, or SegWit, and lightweight wallets are particularly poor at handling such things because they will blindly accept invalid, probably-soon-to-be-orphaned blocks.
 - I don't recommend putting much BTC on hosted wallets / exchanges generally. Exactly how the above risks would be translated to these services will vary depending on how each service handles deposits, reorgs, and double-spends.

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[warrior333]

How to determine what is bitcoin choose e-wallet if they do not misleading? The price in the purse is worth BTC. Maybe altcoins from BTC-splitting can be used only those who kept their savings offline on the computer?

[poordeveloper]

Thanks a lot for your guidance and information during this while.

I am happy the BTC markets are relatively calm after the fork.

I'd also advice everyone who is considering using Bitcoin Cash to be careful with their private keys. Whoever has your private keys has access to your coins in both chains.

[Bitgenius777]

July 2017 Was a bad month for some of us. Lost 50% of my total net worth. But learned a lot from the trauma. I am glad everything is back to normal.

[Raxitto]

thx for your help/guidance.

really appreciated

[naypalm]

Good to hear, thank you for the update

[Master_dandosha]

it is all clear now thank you for simple updated instruction so that is it BCC\BCH is another alternative coin and has nothing to do with original bitcoin new updated blockchain forked with BIP91/BIP148 , bitcoin price is going up very fast now and on.

[corpsejunior]

The few security steps are really excellent!
Since BCH is still new, no one should take the risk to reuse the same wallet on both BTC and BCH while being both filled with currency.
Emptying and migrating to a new BTC wallet is very crucial before starting using BCH.

Hope everybody reads this notice as the steps are quite simple, yet extremely useful for safety.

[Basmic]

I was expecting this. I didn't sell my bitcoins and am very pleased. It now remains to solve the issue with conditions that will stimulate the development of trade with bitcoin. Sooner or later all the coins will be mined and the income of the miners will only process transactions. I think it's better to do more transactions, but less if it will promote growth of popularity of bitcoin.

[Rising Suns]

2. Create a totally new logical wallet with a new mnemonic, etc. Just creating new addresses is not sufficient: the new wallet needs to be completely separate from the old one. The new wallet's private keys should be under your personal control just in case your transaction is replayed or something else goes wrong. Make sure you have backups of the new wallet.
 3. Send all of the BTC in your old wallet to your new wallet, and wait until this transaction has 30 confirmations. (If you are really itching to get your BCH, it would not be totally crazy to wait for as few as 3 confirmations, but there is some risk with that.) Note that sending all of your BTC in a single transaction is likely to be harmful to your privacy; if you care about this, you might want to send it in several smaller transactions to several different addresses on the new wallet.
 4. On a separate computer that you wouldn't too much mind being compromised, install a BCash wallet such as one of the ones listed on bitcoincash.org. (Warning: some Bcash wallets are known to overwrite important files belonging to their Bitcoin counterparts.) Or use a Web-based exchange/wallet supporting Bcash. Import the private keys from your old, now-empty Bitcoin wallet into this Bcash wallet. Now you have BCH which you can handle as you wish. Note that BCH transactions may be very slow to confirm for a couple of days.

Thanks for the info. Questions:

1. If I import the private keys from my old, now-empty Bitcoin wallet into the new Bcash wallet, does this mean that the my new Bcash wallet will have the old BTC addresses, which are now empty?
2. If someone were to send me BTC to my old BTC address, I could still use my old wallet to retrieve those coins, right?

[poordeveloper]

For all those interested on knowing what BIP91/BIP148 are, here are links to more information:

• BIP91: https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0091.mediawiki
• BIP148: https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0148.mediawiki

[MrDreamerrr]

Thanks for the update!!

[Lionidas]

I had been wondering something.
Does anyone know if certain exchanges had given out the bch/bcc to people yet for any amount they were holding in their wallets at the time between 12:22pmUTC and this time in the OP of 14:00UTC?

I traded my ethereum for btc right at the time of 12:22UTC and the balance in my exchange wallet changed from ETH to BTC at that time.
So I had bitcoin in my at the very time of the scheduled split, not before not after but right at that second, according to the exchange logs.

So my question is; would they honor by giving me bch or bcc which ever they are distributing out to the holders of bitcoin at the time of the split?

Most if not all exchanges stated just as long as you had bitcoin in you wallet, whether it be on a pending order to receive bitcoin for it or it is in your wallet already. They would not discriminate between those two but just aslong as it is being held within the wallet.

[hahay]

I hope miners do not fail to implement segwit rules so that segwit can be locked perfectly.
Thank you very much for giving us explanation to obvious.

[theymos]

How to determine what is bitcoin choose e-wallet if they do not misleading? The price in the purse is worth BTC. Maybe altcoins from BTC-splitting can be used only those who kept their savings offline on the computer?

Some e-wallets (eg. Coinbase) will have just destroyed or taken for themselves the BCH that you should've been entitled to. That's partly why we've been warning people to exit hosted wallets. Some others might still credit you your BCH later.

1. If I import the private keys from my old, now-empty Bitcoin wallet into the new Bcash wallet, does this mean that the my new Bcash wallet will have the old BTC addresses, which are now empty?

They will be the same addresses. On the Bitcoin network and in a Bitcoin wallet, they will be empty. On the Bcash network and for Bcash wallets, they will still have the same balance that they had around 14:00 UTC.

2. If someone were to send me BTC to my old BTC address, I could still use my old wallet to retrieve those coins, right?

Yes, you should in that case open the wallet in Bitcoin wallet software again. A Bcash wallet won't see those transactions.

I recommend phasing out your old addresses, since I don't trust the security of Bcash wallets that you'll be giving your private keys to. If it would be difficult to phase out your old addresses, then I don't particularly recommend using this method of claiming your BCH. Other methods that don't involve giving your private keys to a Bcash wallet will become available in the coming weeks.

So my question is; would they honor by giving me bch or bcc which ever they are distributing out to the holders of bitcoin at the time of the split?

The exact moment of the split was not 12:20 or 14:00, but sometime between those. I haven't figured out yet when the exact split time was, though. I think that 12:22 was probably pre-split.

[Odeoke]

Thanks for this timely response on that issue this is much appreciated. As I understand now it's safe to move bitcoin from one to another address or We have wait for few more time?

[poordeveloper]

Thanks for this timely response on that issue this is much appreciated. As I understand now it's safe to move bitcoin from one to another address or We have wait for few more time?

Yes, the Bitcoin network in now stable and can be used as usual. However the following warnings from theymos must be taken into account:

Although I am giving a general "all clear" at this point because the risk of serious issues has dropped substantially, some turbulence is still possible due to BIP91/BIP148 and the rollout of SegWit:

 - If you are using a full-node wallet (eg. Bitcoin Core), you should require 30 confirmations for high-value, untrusted incoming transactions until SegWit locks in around Aug 10. Although seemingly quite unlikely at this point, it is possible that miners could fail to enforce BIP91/BIP148, which could cause very long reorgs (ie. confirmations could disappear, allowing double-spending). This seems unlikely enough that I probably wouldn't require extra confirmations for "normal" transactions, but if you absolutely cannot tolerate any particular transaction being reversed, then waiting for 30 confirmations would be most prudent.
 - If you are using a lightweight wallet, you should require 30 confirmations for all untrusted incoming transactions until SegWit locks in around Aug 10, and again for a couple of weeks after SegWit finally activates around Aug 24. Long reorgs or even persistent splits are possible if miners fail to properly enforce the rules of BIP91, BIP148, or SegWit, and lightweight wallets are particularly poor at handling such things because they will blindly accept invalid, probably-soon-to-be-orphaned blocks.
 - I don't recommend putting much BTC on hosted wallets / exchanges generally. Exactly how the above risks would be translated to these services will vary depending on how each service handles deposits, reorgs, and double-spends.

[Amevalentine]

Executive summary

Bitcoin is working fine and you can use it as you were before, possibly with slightly more reorg risk for a while.

Continuing risks

Although I am giving a general "all clear" at this point because the risk of serious issues has dropped substantially, some turbulence is still possible due to BIP91/BIP148 and the rollout of SegWit:

 - If you are using a full-node wallet (eg. Bitcoin Core), you should require 30 confirmations for high-value, untrusted incoming transactions until SegWit locks in around Aug 10. Although seemingly quite unlikely at this point, it is possible that miners could fail to enforce BIP91/BIP148, which could cause very long reorgs (ie. confirmations could disappear, allowing double-spending). This seems unlikely enough that I probably wouldn't require extra confirmations for "normal" transactions, but if you absolutely cannot tolerate any particular transaction being reversed, then waiting for 30 confirmations would be most prudent.
 - If you are using a lightweight wallet, you should require 30 confirmations for all untrusted incoming transactions until SegWit locks in around Aug 10, and again for a couple of weeks after SegWit finally activates around Aug 24. Long reorgs or even persistent splits are possible if miners fail to properly enforce the rules of BIP91, BIP148, or SegWit, and lightweight wallets are particularly poor at handling such things because they will blindly accept invalid, probably-soon-to-be-orphaned blocks.
 - I don't recommend putting much BTC on hosted wallets / exchanges generally. Exactly how the above risks would be translated to these services will vary depending on how each service handles deposits, reorgs, and double-spends.

Thanks for the update,
So in fact all is not completely clean until segwit locks finished around August 10th?
If so it would be better to make BCH claim after 10 August.
Which one you prefer suggestion better, Install a BCash wallet on computer or use a Web-based wallet / wallet exchanges?

[Yanisumin]

I've been holding my breath for quite some time and good to hear the news and the information that came out directly to you. I will observe hw BCC will behave in the market and consider it as one of my alts if it has a good performance ( in features and prices ). Thank you.

[mexicantarget]

Thanks for the tut, will forward it on my sites.

Me and everyone else,
thank you,