Sunday, November 18, 2018

If you want to dump BSV... some tips on splitting safely. Don't lose your BCH!

Many people are interested right now in gathering up their BSV coins and dumping them on exchanges. Bittrex has just opened deposits however there is a big caveat:

If you attempt to dump your BSV coins onto an exchange like Bittrex, and you have not properly split the coins, a replay attack could result in permanent loss of your (much more valuable) BCH!!!

For this reason it is essential that you split your coins and verify that the coins are split.

Step 1 : get your coins into Electron Cash

Electron Cash ( https://electroncash.org/ ) is the de-facto wallet for coin splitting since it allows you to connect to both BCH and BSV chains, simply by selecting a different server in the Network dialog.

Important: do not make a separate wallet in Electron Cash and send your coins from another wallet. This transaction might fail to replay, though this failure to replay could be temporary and leave your coins in a dangerous state where replays could happen at any time. Instead, you need to load another copy of your wallet in Electron Cash.

Mobile wallet / other software wallet

We will start by importing your wallet seed into Electron Cash.

Create new wallet. "I already have a seed". For BIP39 seeds (see below) click Options button to enable BIP39 seed, and then enter the path on the subsequent page.

  • Bitcoin.com wallet. Options: BIP39 seed. Path: 44'/0'/0' .
    • If bitcoin.com wallet backup page says "This recovery phrase was created with a password. To recover this wallet both the recovery phrase and password are needed." then you must also check 'custom words' and enter your original recovery password on the next page (this may be distinct from your wallet password).
  • Others: to be added...

Hardware wallet

Try to set up your hardware wallet in Electron Cash. This lets you transact on both BCH and BSV chains even if the official software for your hardware wallet (such as Trezor's) does not support this.

Step 2 : split your coins

Although there are tools (like my special variant release of Electron Cash) for making split guaranteed split coins from scratch, there are easier ways. In particular if you can get a small 'dust' split coin from someone else, then you can leverage this to rapidly split your whole wallet. I recommend following Calin's guide here.

Calin's guide also has instructions on how to select BCH and BSV servers, so it's a good read regardless.

There are some cases where a BCH transaction fails to replay initially but then later gets replayed. This could mean that your initial 'dust' initially looks like a split coins but is not, and the replay protection is faulty. For this reason, you should also make a conflicting transaction on the BSV chain, by spending at least one of the same transaction inputs back to yourself.

Step 3 : wait a bit, just to be safe.

With threats of block re-organization attacks floating around, you should wait several confirmations to make sure the splitting 'sticks' and is effectively irreversible.

Step 4 : verify the split

Visit these two block explorer sites and enter the transaction IDs of both your BCH splitting transaction, and your BSV conflicting transaction:

BCH explorer: https://blockdozer.com/

BSV explorer: https://bchsvexplorer.com/

On each site enter both transaction ID's. You want to ensure here that transaction A is only on BCH chain, and transaction B is only on BSV chain.

If you have failed to split, then one txid will be on both chains. If this happens, don't worry! You can just go back to step 2 and try again.

Step 5 : send BSV

Now that your BSV is split from BCH, you can send it whereever you want without fear if having your BCH accidentally dragged along with it.

I cannot provide any advice on what you should do, financially, with your BSV coins. Good luck, and stay smart!



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