Using Armory on the BCH chain

[goatpig]

Just read the news about BCH chain introducing new type of address:
https://news.bitcoin.com/bitcoin-cash-community-prepares-for-change-the-address-day/
Is Armory supporting it (or planning to support it in any upcoming release)?

nothx

[alomar]

Just read the news about BCH chain introducing new type of address:
https://news.bitcoin.com/bitcoin-cash-community-prepares-for-change-the-address-day/
Is Armory supporting it (or planning to support it in any upcoming release)?

nothx

if i'm understanding this right, at this time, we cannot access BTG b/c Armory isn't supporting it.  if Bitcoin Cash converts to Bech32 addresses and Armory doesn't support that, are we risking not being able to access our BCH in the future by continuing to use Armory?

[goatpig]

Armory is not for altcoins. I provided a BCH signer so that people can get their coins out. I will provide a BTG signer to the same end. I made it pretty clear back in August that if BCH (or any other Bitcoin fork for that matter) was to introduce changes that made it incompatible with Armory, I would not support that stuff.

[alomar]

Armory is not for altcoins. I provided a BCH signer so that people can get their coins out. I will provide a BTG signer to the same end. I made it pretty clear back in August that if BCH (or any other Bitcoin fork for that matter) was to introduce changes that made it incompatible with Armory, I would not support that stuff.

ok, i have to ask, b/c i think it's a distinct possibility; in the offchance that BTC fails and BCH is declared the real Bitcoin, what would be your position then?

[goatpig]

Armory is not for altcoins. I provided a BCH signer so that people can get their coins out. I will provide a BTG signer to the same end. I made it pretty clear back in August that if BCH (or any other Bitcoin fork for that matter) was to introduce changes that made it incompatible with Armory, I would not support that stuff.

ok, i have to ask, b/c i think it's a distinct possibility; in the offchance that BTC fails and BCH is declared the real Bitcoin, what would be your position then?

Leave the cryptocurrency space probably.

[bitminerinthecloud]

I understand you want an Armory that works good. I was using a HDD and it was real bad. I bought a SSD and it works fine, with it. But hey, if you don't want to update Armory to support altcoins, ok, but it has got to have some support, so people can spend it. Or do you think people will even have bitcoins in Armory, if it means losing money?

[goatpig]

I understand you want an Armory that works good. I was using a HDD and it was real bad. I bought a SSD and it works fine, with it. But hey, if you don't want to update Armory to support altcoins, ok, but it has got to have some support, so people can spend it.

You can always take the risk to import your private keys in software that supports the alt. Or you can pay someone to fork Armory and implement support for the alt for your choice. I've put in the effort to allow Armory users to withdraw their bcash. I'll let them withdraw their btg too, but they need to know there is no plan to support altcoins beyond withdrawal.

Do not be mistaken, this is only a courtesy, not a commitment of any sort. A lot of users do not know how to handle their private keys safely, and these airdrop alts are scammy by nature, therefor their software is untrustworthy.

I won't put the effort to support complicated changes in alts, therefor I won't bother with he simple ones either. I have a personal commitment to Bitcoin, the rest is irrelevant to me. Again, you are free to pay someone to implement support for the alts of your choice.

Or do you think people will even have bitcoins in Armory, if it means losing money?

Only people with a narrow understanding of cryptocurrency would assume loss of wealth when they are in control of the private keys.

[alomar]

I understand you want an Armory that works good. I was using a HDD and it was real bad. I bought a SSD and it works fine, with it. But hey, if you don't want to update Armory to support altcoins, ok, but it has got to have some support, so people can spend it.

You can always take the risk to import your private keys in software that supports the alt. Or you can pay someone to fork Armory and implement support for the alt for your choice. I've put in the effort to allow Armory users to withdraw their bcash. I'll let them withdraw their btg too, but they need to know there is no plan to support altcoins beyond withdrawal.

Do not be mistaken, this is only a courtesy, not a commitment of any sort. A lot of users do not know how to handle their private keys safely, and these airdrop alts are scammy by nature, therefor their software is untrustworthy.

I won't put the effort to support complicated changes in alts, therefor I won't bother with he simple ones either. I have a personal commitment to Bitcoin, the rest is irrelevant to me. Again, you are free to pay someone to implement support for the alts of your choice.

Or do you think people will even have bitcoins in Armory, if it means losing money?

Only people with a narrow understanding of cryptocurrency would assume loss of wealth when they are in control of the private keys.

i don't think anyone's suggesting that you support other altcoins.  but being able to access the airdrop coins would be helpful in allowing us to sell them off in support of BTC, as another way to look at this.  i for one, really appreciate being able to get at my BCH.  i also look forward to doing this with BTG.

[goatpig]

i don't think anyone's suggesting that you support other altcoins.  but being able to access the airdrop coins would be helpful in allowing us to sell them off in support of BTC, as another way to look at this.  i for one, really appreciate being able to get at my BCH.  i also look forward to doing this with BTG.

Your question was specifically about changes to BCH addresses. I do not want to pollute the GUI with that stuff. I don't mind adding a signer, but when the changes required to support the airdrop introduce complexities in the GUI, at that point the cost to support outweighs the benefit.

Bcash has been around since August. I think people had plenty of time to move their coins since. I consider I have fulfilled my responsibility to Armory users on that matter.

[ConnyH]

Hi!

So I made a thread called ”ELI5, how do I claim my BCH if I had BTC during the hard fork?” and got some help in that thread, but I don’t feel fully confident yet.

So this is my situation:
I’ve had BTC in my armory wallet for a couple of years.
I sold some BTC post fork but didn’t even know about the fork until recently.
I’m a complete newbie and only know how to send BTC using Armory, I don’t know anything about signers etc.

If I understand it correctly I have some BCH that I can claim (the same amount of BCH that I had BTC during the fork). I’ve read the entire thread (keep in mind that I’m a noob and probably only understood about 5% of what was written) and it looks like I can install Armory on an external HDD (don’t have enough space on my laptop to have another approx 150 GB for the blockchain) and delete some blocks (until about the date at the fork?) and somehow I will see the amount of BTC i had during that time? (which is exactly the same amount of BCH I had at that time). I can then send those BCH to another wallet by checking the box ”BCH signer”?

If I do something wrong (like forgetting to check the ”BCH signer”) I might lose my regular BTC? Do you recommend me making another wallet and send all my BTC to that wallet first? Can I somehow make a mistake and ”leak” my private keys and therefore basically lose my BTC? (someone commented ”Do not expose your private keys.” and I have no idea what I can or can’t do to expose them)

All I want to do is to move some of my BCH to a safe place and some of my BCH to an exchange and trade in for BTC and some altcoins.

Is there any possibility at all that if I wait to much, I might lose my BCH (If BCH converts to other addresses or something like that). Keep in mind that I’m a complete noob 😊
I guess I first also have to update my Armory version since I right now have 0.95.1? Where can I update armory? Do I need to uninstall the version I have now before updating?

[alomar]

Is there any possibility at all that if I wait to much, I might lose my BCH (If BCH converts to other addresses or something like that).

no. even when BCH converts to bech32, old BCH addresses will be functional.

[hornby]

So this is my situation:
I’ve had BTC in my armory wallet for a couple of years.
I sold some BTC post fork but didn’t even know about the fork until recently.

If I understand it correctly I have some BCH that I can claim (the same amount of BCH that I had BTC during the fork). I’ve read the entire thread (keep in mind that I’m a noob and probably only understood about 5% of what was written) and it looks like I can install Armory on an external HDD (don’t have enough space on my laptop to have another approx 150 GB for the blockchain) and delete some blocks (until about the date at the fork?) and somehow I will see the amount of BTC i had during that time? (which is exactly the same amount of BCH I had at that time). I can then send those BCH to another wallet by checking the box ”BCH signer”?

If I do something wrong (like forgetting to check the ”BCH signer”) I might lose my regular BTC? Do you recommend me making another wallet and send all my BTC to that wallet first? Can I somehow make a mistake and ”leak” my private keys and therefore basically lose my BTC? (someone commented ”Do not expose your private keys.” and I have no idea what I can or can’t do to expose them)

All I want to do is to move some of my BCH to a safe place and some of my BCH to an exchange and trade in for BTC and some altcoins.

Is there any possibility at all that if I wait to much, I might lose my BCH (If BCH converts to other addresses or something like that). Keep in mind that I’m a complete noob 😊
I guess I first also have to update my Armory version since I right now have 0.95.1? Where can I update armory? Do I need to uninstall the version I have now before updating?

Hello ConnyH,
from what I understand it's like this: Consider the blockchain as a path you walk down. At the moment of the fork the path splits in two paths and you can walk down BOTH paths and have the history of the original path on each path up to the moment of the fork. So deleting the blockchain part after the fork for synchronizing the BCH blockchain is one necessary measure.
The second measure you need to take is use a client, that can follow the chain down the new path. That is either Bitcoin Unlimited or Bitcoin ABC (for simplicity, take that one). You need to install one of those instead of Bitcoin Core and make Armory use that as the backend. Then the client will synchronize with the BCH chain and you will see your wallet from before the fork with your BCH coins in it.

You can't do anything wrong. BCH has a replay protection, so with the wrong signer in the transaction the transaction will not be accepted by the BCH network and vice versa. What you could do wrong: Send BCH coins to someone's BTC address or vice versa. Usually people create separate wallets for both coins in order not to confuse the addresses and the reason I will describe next. So take care, which coins the recipient expects on which address.

Possibility of losing your BCH if you wait for too long? Yes, there is a faint possibility: If the public key cryptography linking the private to the public key turns out to have a weakness or progress in quantum computing is made in the near future (likely within the next decade), so someone is able to derive your private key for an address from your public key of that address. Since you already spent coins post fork the public key for that address can be found with the spending transaction on the bitcoin blockchain. If someone were able to derive the private key from that at reasonable cost, you run the chance of losing the BCH coins in that address.

[ConnyH]

Hello ConnyH,
from what I understand it's like this: Consider the blockchain as a path you walk down. At the moment of the fork the path splits in two paths and you can walk down BOTH paths and have the history of the original path on each path up to the moment of the fork. So deleting the blockchain part after the fork for synchronizing the BCH blockchain is one necessary measure.
The second measure you need to take is use a client, that can follow the chain down the new path. That is either Bitcoin Unlimited or Bitcoin ABC (for simplicity, take that one). You need to install one of those instead of Bitcoin Core and make Armory use that as the backend. Then the client will synchronize with the BCH chain and you will see your wallet from before the fork with your BCH coins in it.

You can't do anything wrong. BCH has a replay protection, so with the wrong signer in the transaction the transaction will not be accepted by the BCH network and vice versa. What you could do wrong: Send BCH coins to someone's BTC address or vice versa. Usually people create separate wallets for both coins in order not to confuse the addresses and the reason I will describe next. So take care, which coins the recipient expects on which address.

Possibility of losing your BCH if you wait for too long? Yes, there is a faint possibility: If the public key cryptography linking the private to the public key turns out to have a weakness or progress in quantum computing is made in the near future (likely within the next decade), so someone is able to derive your private key for an address from your public key of that address. Since you already spent coins post fork the public key for that address can be found with the spending transaction on the bitcoin blockchain. If someone were able to derive the private key from that at reasonable cost, you run the chance of losing the BCH coins in that address.

Hi!
I'm really confused now. So if I install Bitcoin ABC and let Armory run against that I will be able to see my BCH balance? Is there any risk of leaking my private keys or something if I don't use Bitcoin Core?
I initially thought I only needed bitcoin core and Armory and then needed to delete some blocks and voila I would see my BCH balance and could send them to another BCH wallet using the BCH signer, but now I'm just super confused. Thanks for your reply!

[zurswierding]

I am having difficulty running Armory against the BCH node.  I think the node stopped syncing from the fork date.  Armory says it is connected but it does not show a BCH balance.

Would it perhaps be easier for me to attempt to export my private keys to a different wallet that has built in support for BCH?

Any help/input is very much appreciated.

Zurs

[droark]

I'm really confused now. So if I install Bitcoin ABC and let Armory run against that I will be able to see my BCH balance? Is there any risk of leaking my private keys or something if I don't use Bitcoin Core?
I initially thought I only needed bitcoin core and Armory and then needed to delete some blocks and voila I would see my BCH balance and could send them to another BCH wallet using the BCH signer, but now I'm just super confused. Thanks for your reply!

Yes, you'll see your balance once ABC has finished syncing. Core has nothing to do whatsoever with ABC/Bcash now. Use pathing for both ABC and Armory to generate a separate blockchain and Armory DB so that nothing from Core gets overwritten by accident.

I am having difficulty running Armory against the BCH node.  I think the node stopped syncing from the fork date.  Armory says it is connected but it does not show a BCH balance.

Would it perhaps be easier for me to attempt to export my private keys to a different wallet that has built in support for BCH?

Any help/input is very much appreciated.

Did you follow goatpig's guide? How are you invoking everything? Which version of Armory and ABC or Unlimited are you running?

[Holliday]

I am having difficulty running Armory against the BCH node.  I think the node stopped syncing from the fork date.  Armory says it is connected but it does not show a BCH balance.

Would it perhaps be easier for me to attempt to export my private keys to a different wallet that has built in support for BCH?

Armory works just fine with a BCH node. Are you saying your BCH node has stopped syncing? If so, you need to get that working before worrying about Armory.

[zurswierding]

Can I import/sweep my keys to a different BCH friendly wallet using my Armory paper backup?

[HCP]

No... you would need to restore to an Armory Wallet first... then use the "Export Keys List" functionality at: Wallet Properties -> Backup this wallet -> see other options -> export keys list -> click "export keys list"

Then you want to tick:
- Show addresses
- Private Keys (Plain Base58)
- Include Unused (Address Pool)
- Omit spaces in key Data

This will give you a list of all addresses and WIF format private keys in your wallet.

You DO NOT need to have Bitcoin Core installed, or for it to be synced etc to do this.

[ConnyH]

Yes, you'll see your balance once ABC has finished syncing. Core has nothing to do whatsoever with ABC/Bcash now. Use pathing for both ABC and Armory to generate a separate blockchain and Armory DB so that nothing from Core gets overwritten by accident.

Hi again!
I managed to sync Bitcoin ABC and now I can see my BCH amount in the wallet. (I know it's my BCH because it's the same amount I had at the time of the fork).
I now want to send them to an exchange and sell them for BTC, if I understand it correctly right now with BCH almost no transaction fees are required? So I can set 1 satoshi/byte and it will still go through in a reasonable amount of time? Should I enable RBF or will that somehow fuck some things up?

Thank you so much Droark for helping me!

[droark]

I now want to send them to an exchange and sell them for BTC, if I understand it correctly right now with BCH almost no transaction fees are required? So I can set 1 satoshi/byte and it will still go through in a reasonable amount of time? Should I enable RBF or will that somehow fuck some things up?

I don't know what would be an acceptable fee, to be honest. In theory, 1 sat/byte (or maybe even 0!) would work, although I've seen signs that at least some miners might be setting their max block sizes to 2MB for now in order to squeeze some extra fees out of people. Anyway, I'm pretty sure Bcash can handle RBF. You could always start at 1 sat/byte and bump it up if it fails to confirm in a reasonable length of time.

Thank you so much Droark for helping me!

You're welcome.