Hello everyone,
I have scoured the internet to try to understand the process of claiming bitcoin cash. It seems everyone wants to tell you to use their system instead of actually teaching you the process.
You obviously didn't scour much of the internet... there are about 543805123458216 threads on here about claiming BCH
The coins were in a Jaxx wallet and I have the address/private key
That's a good start.
My first question is, Can I transfer my bitcoins to a new address in order to keep them safe during the process?
Of course you can, why wouldn't you be able to transfer the BTC?
I'd recommend a completely new wallet (if it is currently in a wallet secured with a 12 word seed backup), rather than just a new address tho.
The next step would be importing my private keys into a bitcoin cash wallet?
Any suggestions on the easiest way to accomplish this?
Just go and get ElectronCash...
https://www.electroncash.org/It's a fork of Electrum, it's a lightweight "SPV" wallet, so you don't need to download the full blockchain, and it "syncs" in a matter of seconds. Create a new "Standard" wallet, and select the "Use public or private keys" option when asked... then paste in the private key(s) for the address(es) you're trying to claim your BCH from. It'll generate a wallet with the appropriate addresses and you should see your BCH balance. You can then do whatever you want with your BCH... hodl, dump at an exchange etc etc...
As far as I'm aware... since 1 Aug, there has been no loss of coins involving (the legit version) of Electron Cash... the application seems relatively trustworthy. Usual disclaimers apply, check the file checksums/signatures etc.
Any help would be appreciated as I want to learn the process with this upcoming fork.
If you're talking about BTG fork, apparently, they also plan on releasing a forked version of Electrum for BTG, so you can follow pretty much the same process... get BTGElectrum, import private keys, send BTG to exchange, dump for free $$$
If you're talking about the S2X fork later in November... that is going to be a completely different kettle of fish (unless they implement replay protection for S2X, which seems unlikely)... So, chances are you will NOT be able to use this method for getting S2X coins.