I read in several articles that you WILL have Bitcoin cash regardless of whether you put them on your wallet before or after the split.
Those articles are wrong... you will only have BCH if you had the BTC on an address
at the moment of the split. That is to say, at Block Height: 478558... whatever address had your BTC, will then have had BCH as well.
- If you moved BTC to an address BEFORE that block... and then left it there... it would have BCH
- If you moved BTC to an address BEFORE that block... and then moved it BEFORE that block... it would have no BCH
- If you moved BTC to an address AFTER that block... it would have no BCH
I spoke to Coinbase and they're saying that I should have kept those bitcoins until after the split to be able to get the Bitcoin cash.
They seem to think you've sent the coins to someone else, instead of sending it to another wallet that you control...
I saw a couple of articles where they say you can recover them. I tried to no avail. I'm sure I'm doing something wrong since I'm no expert. my question is: what do I do??
Yes, if you had BTC on an address you control (ie. have private keys/seed for) then you should be able to easily find your BCH. You just need to establish exactly what wallet you had them in at the time of the fork...
If they were on your Ledger Nano S, you should be able to find them relatively easily... Firstly, make sure you have installed the "Bitcoin Cash" wallet app on the Ledger Nano S device (You do this with the Ledger Manager chrome webapp from here (
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ledger-manager/beimhnaefocolcplfimocfiaiefpkgbf)...
Once the wallet app is installed on the device, you should be able to see this:
Now, open the Ledger Wallet Bitcoin Chrome webapp (install from here:
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ledger-wallet-bitcoin/kkdpmhnladdopljabkgpacgpliggeeaf)... and then "open" the wallet app on the device by clicking both buttons to select "Bitcoin Cash"...
The Ledger Wallet Bitcoin Chrome webapp should come up with:
Select "Bitcoin Cash" and it will ask if you want the "Main" wallet or "Split" wallet... select the MAIN wallet (as this is the one your BTC should have been on):
It should open up and sync the wallet and you should be able to see the BCH. If you still don't see them, then perhaps you did NOT have BTC on your ledger at the time of the split... maybe check your BTC addresses on a BCH blockexplorer here:
www.blockdozer.com and see if your BTC addresses have any BCH on them.