Stored bitcoins on bitcoin core wallet - what happens if there is a fork?

[Fredsor]

Hello,

I was wondering if I f.ex bought 5 bitcoins and then stored them in a wallet and forgot about them. Five years in the future there has been f. ex 10 forks and splits of bitcoin. How would i know with type of bitcoin i would own?

I ask because i'm a little confused regarding how bitcoin cash came to be?


Hope someone understand my question and can help me.

[kahc]

Hello,

I was wondering if I f.ex bought 5 bitcoins and then stored them in a wallet and forgot about them. Five years in the future there has been f. ex 10 forks and splits of bitcoin. How would i know with type of bitcoin i would own?

I ask because i'm a little confused regarding how bitcoin cash came to be?


Hope someone understand my question and can help me.

If you hold the private key to that specific address, then you would have access to 5 of each forked coins after 5 years. They always split in 1:1 ratio.

[ranochigo]

Think of fork being basically a long highway which diverges at a certain point. Up till that point, the roads are the exact same right?

If Bitcoin has 3 forks,
Fork A, forked at block height 50

Fork B, forked at block height 53

Fork C, forked at block height 56.

Up till their respective point of forks, their chain has the exact same history of transactions. Hence, up till their point of fork, any address will have the same balance as per their balance before the fork. Hence, assuming you had 1 Bitcoin at block height 49 and you didn't touch it, you'll have 1 coin on all of the versions(fork) of Bitcoins.

You can use your BTC private key to spend your Bitcoins on all of the fork.

[aleksej996]

You own all of the coins from forks that happened after you acquired those coins. Whatever your balance of BTC is during the fork, you get the same amount in the fork coins.

There are no scheduled popular forks now and other the Bitcoin Cash, there were no serious forks in the past. Bitcoin Gold was a very unpopular fork, but it was at least well known.