I've been reading about the imminent hard fork between BTC and the new Segwit2X (B2X). My question is, if I have 1BTC in my wallet before the hard fork, then after the hard fork I will have 1BTC + 1B2X. However, using a wallet such as Exodus (software) or Ledger (hardware), how would I access the forked coins? Do I have to wait until the developers release updates that recognize the new forked coins?
Am I looking at this wrong? I've heard that the safest way to ensure you retain your funds during a fork is keep control of your own private keys (which I do). But, has anyone experienced a prior hard fork, and how do you "access" the new forked coins using their private keys?
Thanks guy
Since there is no replay protection, you need to be very careful trying to access the forked coins. If you try to send on one of the chains, the transaction will be broadcast on both chains. It's prudent to wait for a good tutorial on how to split coins after the fork, or to wait for a reliable service that can split coins for you. Ledger seems to be ahead of the others in working to provide easy access to the B2X coins, but it's too early to say if the release will be done in time for the fork.
In other hard forks, this isn't such a big issue because they added replay protection. With Bitcoin Cash, for example, you could send legacy coins, then import the old (empty) private key into a BCH wallet to access the BCH. You can't do that here.