Bitcoin Forks

[sunil_ad]

I would appreciate some guidance about Forks: what they are, are they safe and how to earn from them.

[jseverson]

What they are:

https://www.coindesk.com/short-guide-bitcoin-forks-explained/

Are they safe:

They don't affect you or your coins in any way. The complications start when you start claiming them. Once a fork is launched, you're likely to find a lot of wallets, in which you will need to import your Bitcoin private key to gain a corresponding amount of the forked coin. Fake wallets are going to take your private key, and steal any Bitcoins within. Make sure you only use the official wallet for the fork and empty the Bitcoin address whose private key you will import beforehand.

How to earn:

Once you claim them, you hold then sell, or you sell immediately. You earn from them just like you earn from any other altcoin, except you got them for free.

[Jet Cash]

The complications start when you start claiming them. Once a fork is launched, you're likely to find a lot of wallets, in which you will need to import your Bitcoin private key to gain a corresponding amount of the forked coin. Fake wallets are going to take your private key, and steal any Bitcoins within. Make sure you only use the official wallet for the fork and empty the Bitcoin address whose private key you will import beforehand.

This is extremely important. The danger comes from a thief replaying the transaction you made on the new chain. If he replays it on the original Bitcoin chain, then he can claim the coins in the transaction from your Bitcoin wallet. If the wallet is empty, then he can't do this.

[Khammurr]

Forks are a good thing in terms of the development of a coin and how it is improved through its development. However it would be helpful for you to study up on claiming your coins after a fork depending on the ratio from the new fork and on things such as the double spending issue that some forked coins have to battle with

Have a browse at an incident involving double spending affecting a forked coin
https://www.ccn.com/bitcoin-gold-hit-by-double-spend-attack-exchanges-lose-millions/

[sunil_ad]

<<and empty the Bitcoin address whose private key you will import beforehand.>>

Does this mean I first import the private key, then empty the bitcoins ?

[mu_enrico]

<<and empty the Bitcoin address whose private key you will import beforehand.>>

Does this mean I first import the private key, then empty the bitcoins ?

After snapshot, you then move your BTC from old address to a new address.
Let's say X to Y.
Then, use X private key to claim the fork in order to give you "replay protection."

If you still don't understand post again, this is really important!

[sunil_ad]

Now I got it. Much thanks

[dothebeats]

Forks usually happen when there's some form of disagreement between two developers/parties and either of the parties think that their version of the coin is somewhat better in terms of feature and development. Once a fork is initiated, the coin's community will then decide which one really is the better coin version by dedicating their hashing power into it. After a consensus is made, the coin who got the most support will continue living up to its coin's name, while the one who lost will be an altcoin. They usually are safe and sometimes you can earn some extra cash on the side off of it. Just remember to transfer your coins to a new address first before using your private keys to claim the forked coin.

[tranthetai]

In only a few short years, bitcoin has already spawned a large number of forks. While no one can say for sure, it's likely that the cryptocurrency will continue to experience both soft and hard forks into the future as well, continually growing the cryptocurrency community while also making it increasingly complicated.

[MintDiceSupport]

Forks are simply just a deviation from the original BTC blockchain. If you want to earn from them, simply know which ones there are no chose which you would like to invest in.

[HabBear]

I would appreciate some guidance about Forks: how to earn from them.

How to earn: Once you claim them, you hold then sell, or you sell immediately. You earn from them just like you earn from any other altcoin, except you got them for free.

Not quite...to earn from a fork you need to first own the coin that's being forked. To earn from a Bitcoin fork you need to own Bitcoin at the time of the fork. This can keep many people from profiting from hard forks because they don't already have real balance. This is not for people to earn Bitcoin from scratch, it's how to earn off of the Bitcoin already owned.

[Elyenlayna]

A Fork creates an alternate version of the blockchain, leaving two blockchains to run simultaneously on different parts of the network. There are two types of Forks which are Hard Forks and Soft Forks. If you're interested in getting a better understanding and detailed definition of the technical details of how these Forks work I've left a link below of a page that might help you.

https://masterthecrypto.com/guide-to-forks-hard-fork-soft-fork/

[TheBeardedBaby]

And here you have a list with all the forks

Total number of Bitcoin forks (except BCH and BTG): 34 (+ 1 Bitcoin Cash fork)

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2777849.0

[mocacinno]

The complications start when you start claiming them. Once a fork is launched, you're likely to find a lot of wallets, in which you will need to import your Bitcoin private key to gain a corresponding amount of the forked coin. Fake wallets are going to take your private key, and steal any Bitcoins within. Make sure you only use the official wallet for the fork and empty the Bitcoin address whose private key you will import beforehand.

This is extremely important. The danger comes from a thief replaying the transaction you made on the new chain. If he replays it on the original Bitcoin chain, then he can claim the coins in the transaction from your Bitcoin wallet. If the wallet is empty, then he can't do this.

Most of the answers in this thread should have been really helpfull for the OP, i didn't see many mistakes being made by other posters. I did, however, wanted to elaborate on this statement.
If, for example, bitcoin forked into replayattackbitcoin (a fork without replay protection) and you have 1 unspent output funding address 1MyoriGinalAddress before the fork, what could happen if you spent this unspent output on the replayattackbitcoin network?
1) You create a transaction using the unspent output to fund 1AddressGeneratedbyAseller
2) you broadcast the transaction on replayattackbitcoin's network
3) the attacker saves this transaction and broadcasts it on bitcoin's network
4) the transaction gets included into a block on both the original and the new network's blockchain

The end result is that address 1AddressGeneratedbyAseller will become funded on BOTH chains. The attacker cannot use your transaction funding 1AddressGeneratedbyAseller to fund a thirth address owned by the attacker.
In other words, the attacker has to convice you to fund his own address on chain A, then replay the transaction on chain B, otherwise he'll gain nothing from the attack (he can still perform the attack to annoy you, but he won't have any financial motivation to do so).

I actually made this diagram a long time ago (copyright: me). It shows a replay attack and a simple way to protect yourself from such an attack.