Bitcoin UAHF - Preparing and protecting your Bitcoins (and Bitcoin Cash)

As many people know, there will be a User Activated Hard Fork in the Bitcoin blockchain, effectively splitting it and creating a new chain, called Bitcoin Cash. Both chains will co-exist. You can read more about it here:

As a result of the split, and due that the existing ledger is preserved, all Bitcoin holders with automatically own the same amount of Bitcoin Cash.

There have been many reactions to this miners-going-rogue situation. Many exchanges have announced that they will not support Bitcoin Cash and are suggesting their clients to move their Bitcoin away, to their own wallet, if they want to get Bitcoin Cash. Some other wallet providers have announced the same.

So how to protect your Bitcoins? How to receive Bitcoin Cash?

The answer is easy. Move your Bitcoins away from exchanges into your own wallet, where you control your private keys. It can be a hardware wallet, a paper wallet, or a desktop wallet such as Electrum.

I can't emphasize this enough: the key is having them in your own wallet, where you control the private keys (and please back up them and store them safely, remember that whoever controls the private keys, has access to your coins).

This way you have your Bitcoins in your control. Then, after the fork, you can import them into BTC and BCC wallets that support importing via private keys.

Since I don't yet have received my Ledger Nano S because it is backordered (I highly recommend you order one here), I am using Electrum.

In Electrum your funds are safe, and after the fork you will be able to split (although Electrum itself, at the moment, cannot handle BCC). However you can import your private keys into a wallet that can.

Prior to do that, it is important for safety reasons to create a new wallet, with a new private key and move all your Bitcoins there, before doing anything. Then, after you have your Bitcoins in this new wallet, you can import your old private keys into a wallet that supports BCC. This will work, because the chain would be split, and because BCC has replay protection.

Please read the detailed statement and instruction issued by Electrum developers here. which will also work for other wallets - provided you control the private keys. As always, before proceeding, you should be sure of what you are doing.

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