PSA: Sweeping +Snagging Forks from Physicals via a Ballet Card A+++

[iBitcoinHongKong8]

Hi All,
Please disregard if you know what you're doing and are comfortable with your way. Many of you know much more than I do here. So a while back around a year ago I recall messaging and reaching out to over a dozen members here and asked a simple question. I basically came to the realization that I had acquired quite a bit of a physical collection of Casascius and BTCC coins and yet I had never swept/peeled/redeemed any of them. Now I'm tech savvy but I'm not very blockchain savvy. So I reached out to a decent group of people who I thought could help. My question was simply if I ever needed to say "break glass incase of emergency" how do I most effectively and efficiently peel a physical coin or chip? etc....Not mad at a single soul here because...

A) the huge majority have never done it and I believed them all when they said woahhh good question brother I've never peeled any of my coins. I LOL'd at that because I hadn't either!

B) they simply had life going on and had to deal with that and if we met up or meet up sometime they'd be so more than willing to help me and show me how to do it as everyone I've ever met in person so far has been incredible!

So out of the dozen or so people I messaged I happened to hit up Coblee(Charlie Lee) because he always seemed accessible and he had sold me some nice coins prior. He said and I'll never forget this. Just use a Ballet wallet as it will sweep it all for you and they considered that when designing the Ballet wallets so you'll be fine. I have to be honest I kinda thought mehhh maybe he's just promoting his brother's company like I would my own brother. So I said thanks and continued asking around. The more I asked the more I got blown off but just because people were busy and they didn't have time to walk a blockchain idiot like me through all this lol. I didn't take it personally at all. I understood most has never peeled a coin before and they were just avid collectors with NO PLANS whatsoever to ever peel a coin. I LOVED that in many ways. Anyway a few days go by and I had acquired a few pre and post fork Satori chips to run my experiment! This went on for a few days. Then one night it hit me wait a minute I think Charlie is right here. I sprang up out of bed in the middle of the night and grabbed a pre-forked Satori chip. I had bought several first edition Ballet wallets and some regular ones as they came out. Anyway for this story I hadn't yet received my non first generation Ballet wallets but I was so interested in knowing how do I peel a very valuable Casascius or BTCC coin or chip it was an easy decision to use/sacrifice a first edition Ballet wallet just to see what would happen. Worst case scenario Id be out a pre-forked Satori and a first edition silver Ballet wallet. Well what happened next was absolutely MAGICAL. I scanned the QR code of the pre forked Satori and it with it being the Ballet wallet prompted me if I'd like to grab/snag all the forks some of which I had heard about and some I hadn't but since it was on an app for my iPhone I tapped on sure gimme all of them. So to make a long story short here I was blown away with how magical, easy and convenient it was to not only snag the main BTC off my Satori but it made getting all the forks, BCH, BSV, BTG, BCD, and arranged it all for me nice and neat. I then thought to myself okay well what if I wished to protect myself further by grabbing the BTC off by using Electrum paired with a HW wallet then do it and it worked the same with the added protection if you wanted to say peel a 5BTC 10BTC or 25BTC coin and the trusting the Ballet wallet to just snag the forks. I personally was so pleased Id just sweep it all with the Ballet wallet but I wanted to run the test for both. And you should as well, but my point is I was acquiring all these expensive physical coins and I wanted to understand and fully know how to sweep them if I ever wanted to or worse if I ever needed to in the event of a break glass in case of emergency.

So that's my story. I haven't been compensated for this write up and just simply wanted to share what I learned as I continued and still plan to continue to acquire physical collectibles. It would be foolish to not know how to extract maximum value as securely as you feel possible if you ever were in this situation! I appreciate you all reading. Thanks for your time and I hope this is helpful to and for many as I am happy to be here in this community!


iBHK8

[selassiesoildier]

Thanks for sharing. I look forward to my first sweep

[krogoth]

Thanks for your review! Loved it and yes Ballet does a great job in separating automatically all the other shit coins from the beloved BTC.

I cant say from experience on sweeping any physcial coins, as as of today I have never wanted or needed to do it, but if the need arises, I would definitely use Ballet to do all that for me.

I have generated many paper wallets and usually I experiment prior to actually sweeping any highly loaded paper wallet by loading a small amount as a test.

So it makes sense to use a Satori chip as a test prior to going after the larger loaded coins such as Cas coins.

Thanks again.

[MoparMiningLLC]

Thank you for sharing! And yes, the ballet wallets make it very simple. I have swept some minor coins and used a ballet as well. One was a pre-fork satori and it did work like a charm.

[wheelz1200]

Appreciate the write up.  I know for some sweeping coins and getting all the forks might be difficult so this might help.  I've only ever tested on a lealana litecoin coin just to see what was involved with sweeping but never had to deal with any forks. 

[chronicsky]

Great write up man! Wasn't aware that Ballet provided Sweeping facility for Forks as well

Time to find that Lealana tenth i peeled, and left the forks on it because it was too much trouble lol

[Hookzup1]

Awesome, thank you, i have always been curious of the process also and will now use ballet for redeeming the coins if (glass needs broken)

[anonymousminer]

The only older airdrop/fork coin that I have found that does not get swept is CLAMS.

Glad you were able to perform a successful sweep

There are rumblings that clams(CLAM) is being added by Ballet .....so all worthwhile forks will be swept in one place.

[iBitcoinHongKong8]

To all! Thanks for the kind words and I'm happy to help. I plan to do this again soon as my plan is to do it once every 6 months or so just incase software updates come to our world or if Ballet performs updates and just mainly to remind myself how to do it securely and swiftly enough without sacrificing any security, etc....I'll come by here as I perform these just to let everyone know if anything changed eg...improved or I had to perform an additional step etc....So again happy to help and of course the plan is to NEVER peel ! Cheers everyone!

iBHK8

[Room101]

Yeah this is super helpful. When I claimed my shitCash (BCH), I actually setup a full BCH node because it was impossible to know what software wouldn't rob me, moved bitcoin to an interim address just in case the BCH core software was compromised, and then claimed. It was a massive multiple day long operation, and not one I would want to do again.

At least some silly people out there then were willing to give me 0.15BTC for each shitCash

 

[iBitcoinHongKong8]

To anyone interested or this may help. I am still a very satisfied Ballet customer. I bought a roll of Satori pre-forked chips to continuously play around with sweeping the BTC + forks just so I know how to do it and be very comfortable with it in the event I ever needed to understand it etc....Anyhow I've done this now atleast a half a dozen times with the most recent test coming 30 minutes ago and as of now the fees are just too high to sweep your BTC with Ballet. Using Coinomi not only do they allow you to select the priority on fees(low, medium, high and custom) all depending on what type of urgency you require but everytime I've selected low it's been ridiculously cheap and very fast to get atleast 1 confirmation. So as of now I'd highly recommend using Coinomi to sweep the BTC or pairing it with Electrum if it's a larger amount if you need/want that added security and then for the forks scan the same QR code with Ballet and it will grab everything in a split second. However grabbing/sweeping your BTC using Ballet will result in very large mining fees as there is no prompt to select which mining fee level you desire based on your special circumstances or situation. I'm posting this in the hopes that Ballet adds this feature in an upcoming software update as it'd just be that much nicer to use Ballet to sweep them all. Not only is it more secure in my opinion but it's just nicer to only have to use one app. However at this very moment you're giving up way too much to sweep your BTC with Ballet. I set the fees on the lowest it allowed on Coinomi and it got 1 confirmation in ~4 minutes. So hopefully Ballet will allow the users who are sweeping or importing collectibles to select which fees we'd like to pay to import/sweep keys! Thanks for listening and I hope this is helpful to others. Please feel free to reach out if you have questions or any additional feedback!


I've attached a link to show the difference. The first image is Ballet(the bottom line is the BTC sweep) and the rest of the images is all from Coinomi and the different miner fees....

https://imgur.com/a/2gpnEG8


iBHK8

[MoparMiningLLC]

I have never swept anything with ballet but I have used one for sending/receiving and there was an option for setting the fee - does that not exist for sweeping? I can ask just asked in the Ballet affiliates channel on telegram about implementing the fee option for sweeping.

[iBitcoinHongKong8]

Great! To my knowledge it definitely doesn't offer this on the sweeping and I just ran a test for sending BTC like a normal sending tx would go and I was offered many options so this just appears to be on the importing/sweeping function. If they could implement this feature to offer us as many options as we want with a low/economy/fast type offering for ease of use and a possible set your own custom fees I believe this would make this product even better!


iBHK8

[MoparMiningLLC]

Great! To my knowledge it definitely doesn't offer this on the sweeping and I just ran a test for sending BTC like a normal sending tx would go and I was offered many options so this just appears to be on the importing/sweeping function. If they could implement this feature to offer us as many options as we want with a low/economy/fast type offering for ease of use and a possible set your own custom fees I believe this would make this product even better!


iBHK8

I posed the idea/question in ballet affiliate group - will let you know if i get any type of answer.

[shadallion]

Just tried this with a Dogecoin wallet, no option to sweep the funds displayed when I scanned the private key

[blue_label]

thank you for sharing this and those chipping in their experiance

[iBitcoinHongKong8]

Hi All,
Thanks for the comments and positive feedback. I just wanted to update this thread because I have learned alot more about this whole process since my OP. Perhaps the way I had listed sweeping the BTC separately wasn't quite as secure as I originally thought(meaning just by attaching a HW to Electrum). So if you needed to sweep a coin I would highly recommend using this method here that krogothmanhattan has so beautifully drawn up step by step here...

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5303860.0

I have personally swept some items using this method for the BTC portion and it's much more secure since you're signing the transaction offline. This isn't to say that using Ballet or Coinomi isn't fine but with the prices of BTC where they are you might want to take the extra steps located above. It really all just depends on your needs I suppose. I'm glad all the options are available since everyone's needs are different etc...

Then once this is completed and safe you may want to wait for several confirmations then use Ballet for the sweeping of all relevant forks. Both Ballet and Coinomi work great for me, but I just personally just found Ballet to be a bit easier and more secure since there is more layers to the security with Ballet and because it snags all the forks at once very quickly. They also listened to the feedback and updated their software to use the lowest miner fees so it's a win win situation for anyone in need of help with sweeping a pre-forked item. I genuinely hope this helps more people as this community has been terrific to me.

I wish you all the best and let's hope BTC blasts off and I hope to see you all on the moon!


iBHK8

[MoparMiningLLC]

So hopefully Ballet will allow the users who are sweeping or importing collectibles to select which fees we'd like to pay to import/sweep keys!

iBHK8

I think you just got your wish.

https://twitter.com/BalletCrypto/status/1373869690921971717?s=20

[sunnybwoy]

Good to know & Nice feature to have seems ballet is getting better over time.

[iBitcoinHongKong8]

Indeed! I'm definitely impressed with the continous updates they make to the app. They definitely seem to be taking all feedback seriously and doing their best to implement as much as they can! Great for all users!

iBHK8