Topic: help splitting coins in preparation for possible fork (Read 1094 times)

If you really want to export private keys, you should do this under a safe, isolated operating system. If you are using windows, you have to assume that you are compromised by default because it's closed source, even tho you are most likely OK, when it comes to money, you better be extra paranoid.

This is why Tails is a good idea. Tails isolates everything, you boot with the DVD, download the ISO with torrent for automatic checksum verification so you know you are not getting main the middle attacked.

Use Tails, which has in-built Electrum btw, so get the seed loaded, get the private keys, and export to BCC or whatever you want. That is think the safest way.

You don't need to know how to do anything else. I never used Tails, other than creating a paperwallet, and if i had coins in Electrum, that is what I would do.

Will do !
They can keep their FUDcoin; I'm not risking my BTC fooling around to try and gain a few easy bucks.

No, the only reason to create a new wallet/seed/private keys and send your coins, is so you can safely use your old seed/private keys on a BCC wallet without fear that you're exposing the keys that your BTC's are stored on.

It is just a safety measure. So, even if the BCC wallet you choose is "bad" and it leaks your seed/keys, your BTC will still be safely stored elsewhere.

If you don't care about BCC and don't want to use it... you can continue to use your old wallet and just ignore the bitcoin world as it goes a bit crazy for a couple of days sorting out all this hardfork mess

Is sending BTC to a NEW wallet absolutely necessary? If one doesn't intend yo run any risk at all, even at the expense of not using BCC at all (and the possible reward of selling the BCC), does one really need to risk doing transactions (sending) from old wallet to a new wallet after the fork ?

Just make a new wallet with a new seed... The idea is to have a new seed (and therefore new private keys) and move all your BTC coins to it (AFTER the fork of course) before you use that seed (private keys) in a BCC wallet. This is so any BCC wallet you choose to use with your old seed has no knowledge of this new seed (and new private keys).

It is just an extra layer of protection should the BCC turn out to be rouge/malware... ie. You import your old seed (private keys) to "BadBCCWallet"™, and it sends your old seed/private keys off to a thief, but they can't steal your BTC as they are all now safely in a wallet with a different seed (private keys).

you can do either one. it makes no difference, the new wallets you create are separate and that is what matters. the reason for what he said is to create a new Seed because when you use that seed elsewhere you should consider it compromised.

but at the same time you should know that when you are on your desktop computer and connected to the internet your wallet is not the safest possible. you should think of offline storage instead.

When you say "send your coins to a new Electrum wallet", does that mean source another computer, download Electrum on it and send the coins to that new wallet? Or can I just make an additional/second wallet with a new seed phrase on my existing desktop with Electrum?

It would be much more dangerous than moving your coins around. You could likely import the private keys into a BCC wallet entirely offline, but you would never be able to bring that PC back online and would have a difficult time trying to spend the BCC coins. The best option is to move your bitcoins after the fork and then use the private keys for the old addresses entirely in BCC. You could even move the coins to a temporary address now and then back to your old address after the fork.

So no one feels qualified to answer my previous post, regarding how dangerous it is to write down private keys after (temporarily) disconnecting from the internet? It seems like that would be important information to be aware of, for noobs and even people with some computer/software knowledge.

 I'd rather not move the entire content of my wallet if it is avoidable....

You should send your coins to a new Electrum wallet after the fork before using your private keys in any Bitcoin cash wallet.

That is actually mentioned with https://electrum.org/bcc.txt under "How to redeem my BCC?"

If I wanted to write down my private keys by hand, and use them in Bitcoin cash wallets, how safe would it be to disconnect from the internet, open the wallet, and jot the private keys down by hand? (Let's say I'd rather send  a single private key that controls one address with a small amount of BTC rather then hand over my wallet seed to a Bitcoin cash wallet)

In other words how bad would my computer need to be infected for this to still be a potential problem?

Can these viruses still take screenshots or monitor keystrokes even if my machine is offline, and then send them back to whoever infected my computer after re-connecting to the internet?

Or am I being overly paranoid? Anyone with enough hacking knowledge who can give some detail as to what the worse viruses with the worst case scenarios could do, even if you're opening up the wallet offline?

I'm sure some people like me would want to know.

Ok, thanks. So it sounds to me like the original procedure that electrum came up with on protecting your coins if there was a split to bitcoin unlimited is no longer applicable, and if we just keep our coins in our current electrum wallet, there should be no problem.

One thing I am wondering now, though, is with the new hard fork, will some people "duplicate" their coins rather than "split" them? Something in the way the document was written seemed to say that you could keep your real bitcoins in your bitcoin wallet, but because the new hard fork is basically an altcoin that came off the original bitcoin blockchain, you can also at the same time have your old coins duplicated to the new bitcoin cash.  Maybe I am reading it wrong, but is that the case or not?

you can think of bitcoin unlimited as bitcoin cash, it is the same thing. they are changing the block size limit and increasing it to 8 MB with this hard fork. it is a different repository with a different name but doing the same thing with the same people behind it. and their goal is the same.
and in my personal opinion this is an attack on bitcoin and so far as i have seen community is considering it an altcoin.

and they don't seem to care that 100% of the mining power and also the majority of the bitcoin users and all the bitcoin developers are on one side. they insist on forking with a small minority!

as far as what to do, it is all the same. if this hard fork or any other hard fork in the future happens you have to make up your mind about whether you want the coins on the other fork or not. if you don't want them then you have nothing to worry about. continue using bitcoin as you were before.
if you want those tokens then you have to take additional steps.
now if the new fork has "replay protection" your work will be easy. (i believe BCC has it, but they keep changing things so we need to wait and see in reality).
if it had replay protection, you just download their wallet (preferably spend your BTC on the main chain first then) import your private keys in their wallet and spend the new tokens.
if it didn't have replay protection you first have to split your coins manually and then have access to new tokens (i can explain the process if you like but it is not needed here since BCC has the protection)

That is a good discussion about the upcoming hardfork of "bitcoin cash."  So it is good information, and thank you for posting.

However, my question is about the implementation of BIP 141 and segwit activation, and what to do if enough miners signal support for bitcoin unlimited, and force a hard fork there. The procedure posted on electrum's website is about whether the activation of BIP 141 will result in enough support for a hardfork to "bitcoin unlimited."  In the event that the activation of BIP141 results in a new breakaway coin, bitcoin unlimited, then the procedure posted protects one from having one set of coins become invalid.

Before "bitcoin cash" was announced, all the talk was about "bitcoin core" vs. "bitcoin unlimited."  Now all the talk is about "bitcoin core" vs. "bitcoin cash." Has "bitcoin cash" replaced "bitcoin unlimited"?  Or is "bitcoin unlimited" going away because the mining pool has now signaled 100% for segwit?

It just seems weird that only a couple of weeks ago, the big debate was about unlimited vs. core, now you cannot find anything current about unlimited, as if the idea of "bitcoin unlimited" has completely disappeared, and everyone is talking about "bitcoin cash" now. If someone understands the relationships between core, unlimited, and cash, any kind of brief explanation would be greatly appreciated.

Hi there,
I tried following the procedure listed on this page: http://docs.electrum.org/en/latest/hardfork.html

And the instructions are pretty straightforward, except for one thing. It seems that in order to make this work, the history server (that will also be the single node you are using) for the bitcoin unlimited has to be a dedicated node for bitcoin unlimited. Is that right?

So, how do you find out an address for a node that is a dedicated to bitcoin unlimited?

I copied my electrum directories into electrum_btc and electrum_btu. Then I ran through the procedure, starting them up with these commands simultaneously in separate windows:

electrum -D .electrum_btc --server electrum.anduck.net --oneserver

electrum -D .electrum_btu --server electrum.akinbo.org --oneserver

These made sure in each instance the wallet was connected to a different server. However, after sending the bitcoins to myself with rbf enabled, I still had the same transaction id.

It seems I did everything right, but I have no way of knowing how to force my btu to only look to a server that is dedicated only to btu. Is that even possible? Are there servers that are only dedicated to btu? Or is there some other way?

I also tried initiating the transaction from the btu wallet, and disabling RBF, but when the transaction was broadcasted onto the other wallet, even though RBF is enabled in the gui on that wallet, the transaction is not RBF enabled when it showed up.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.