Hi,
In the few months I’ve been learning this crypto space, as a new comer, I heard so many times about forks and their meanings (to do and not to do list).
From bitcoincash to the segwit2X to the bitcoingold, and also with ether’s last two forks.
I’m wondering, as a non technical guy but a truly long term believer, if I should be always on my toes, should I want to invest in that space?
What if I miss a split or do something wrong with my old fashion wallet that doesn’t support something new…
Do you also find that the need to have instructions on a replay protection or so on, is intimidating on new comers, or can you tell me that if I have a bitcoin somewhere and I forget about it for five years, no matter what happens, It will be waiting for me, even if I don’t follow every new post from Ivan or others…
good question. same here… i am trying to stay updated but it is a lot to learn ande know and I’m sure that people who want to just keep their coins for long term should be able to do so without fearing to miss out any news and then loose their money. but i guess the progreammers consider this? At least thats what i hope hehe…
I believe that your originals BTC and ETH will be safe long term and will be there when you come back, no one can take your coins away or something like that.
The forked coins im not so sure because depending on where your coins are stored it can be difficult to retrieve then after some time (i had a lot of problems trying to retrieve my Bcash because i made the mistake of having my coins in an exchange at the time of the fork).
I know the concern about new comers is a real problem in the ecosystem, since many crypto tools are still not user friendly and a great number of scams that target misinformed users are still happening. however i don’t think you can actually lose your coins if you protect your private keys and store then in a safe wallet.
That being said is really hard to predict if something fundamental is going to change in the future.
Hi,
I think it doesn’t really matter. It is just important to keep the coins safe. I do know there is a problem with the replay protection, not totally sure yet what it means. But if you have your coins on a ledger, you can send them to a segwit adress, so the coins are stored on a different blockchain. It means that they have implemented the upgrades and I think it is worth it for Bitcoin, as the transactions might be faster and cheaper. But do you get the forked coin if you have them on a cold storage wallet like the ledger or a desktop wallet like exodus?
If you control the private key to the address where your coins are stored before the fork happens, you will receive your forked coins because the fork will copy the transaction history of the original chain. You now will have the same amount of coins in two different blockchains, but in both of them your public and private keys (and by consequence your signature) will be the same, this is what opens up the possibility of a so called “replay attack”
Ivan has made a video on the subject: https://youtu.be/oxCWcGHqh20
One thing to note is that you only endanger your coins if you move then, so waiting to see if segwit2x implements strong replay protection could be valid.
I also saw this video in the TenX youtube channel that teaches a simple trick to ‘split’ your coins in both chains: https://youtu.be/CAhgvzNEhCM
The problem you may have in retrieving your forked coins is if you use a wallet service that holds the private keys to your coins (an exchange for example), since they will hold the private keys to the forked coins as well.
I do not have experience with hardware wallets but i do believe that you hold your private keys, so even if the company doesn’t support the fork you should be able to retrieve your forked coins.
Hope this helped.
Hi
thanks a lot. Very nice informaitons. I watched ivans video just before and it explained it very well. So if I have them on a ledger nano s or on EXODUS, i should acutally get the forked coins too. The only question might be, which wallet they put it in, as for example EXODUS does not have a Segwit 2x BTC wallet.
Do you know if you could track down where the forked coins would go in case you don’t know which wallet they went through?
So I guess the best would probably keep them in a safe spot, wait for the fork to happen and maybe until there is a safe replay protection. Because after the fork, when people have their segwit coins too, they could implement “strong” protection, as it doesn’t matter anymore, cause the coins are split and should be in a wallet. i could see that happen in a bit after the fork.
thanks again for the answer
Thanks a lot,
Both links were very helpful,