Topic: PLEASE HELP! I accidentally sent BCH to BTC paper wallet (Read 595 times)

Thanks for this TryNina, really helped me out.

So you sent BCH to a Ledger Nano S SegWit BTC Address correct? If so, you chances are getting it back are pretty much zero at the moment. It *might* be possible one day, but for now, those coins are effectively locked away.

BCH Network does not have SegWit, so you can not create that SegWit address on BCH or create a "SegWit" transaction to spend it... because "No SegWit".

Refer here for some really in-depth research and explanations of all the BCH->SegWit address issue: https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/6z56x3/attention_benevolent_bch_miners_a_bch/

Wow I can see how other folks are doing this too.  It's entirely frustrating and I just spent the last 8 waking hours on it with no luck.

Hopefully I can provide some insights here that can put you in the right direction.  It's gotten me CLOSE but still no cigars.

From my research, if your BTC wallet starts with a 1, then it's a classic wallet.  In that case you're in luck.  Simply obtain the private key and use Electron Cash or Exodus to import the private key.

If your BTC wallet starts with a 3, from my research which I hope is wrong, then it's a segwit wallet, in which case you'll need a miner's help to track down the wallet and transfer it to the right wallet for you.

For me, I'm using a Ledger Nano S.  The BTC wallet was a segwit wallet that starts with a 3.  I've used a BIP39 converter (https://github.com/iancoleman/bip39) to get my private key from my seed phrase.  I was able to track down the address and private key after messing with the converter's settings.  For Ledger Nano S, you have to use BIP49 Derivation Path on this converter... or you can use BIP32 with derivation path: m/49'/0'/0'/0

So I've gotten a private key here but I can't seem to import it with neither exodus nor electron cash.  When I import it with the private key, I get an entirely different wallet address, one that starts with a 1 and not a 3.  =(

Next I figured I'll import the wallets via Electrum and get the private keys that way because who knows, they may be different.  GENIUS!  So created a new wallet using the master private key (Account Extended Private Key on the BIP39 converter) and voila!  FOUND THE WALLET! But of course the balance is zero because it's a BTC wallet and not a BCH wallet.  So I found this tutorial from exodus (http://support.exodus.io/article/156-ive-sent-bitcoin-cash-to-my-bitcoin-address) that shows you how to access BCH sent to a BTC address. 

I extracted my private key from Electrum (the one with my bitcoin address) and compared it to the private key I got from the BIP39 converter and they are different!  Why is that?  Same address different private keys.  At anyrate,  I took this private key and tried to restore it with Exodus but it gave me a "invalid token" error.

That's as far as I got.  I found my private keys - 2 of them.  1 from the BIP39 converter and 1 from the BTC wallet after being able to access it with the master private key from the BIP39 converter.  These 2 are different.  I also converted my WIF private key to compressed WIF and tried that but could not access that wallet.  So I have 3 different private keys, all for the same address but I still can't access my wallet =(

Any help here is appreciated.  Thank you much!

Don't worry. You haven't lose anything.

You can store both BTC and BCH in the same BTC/BCH address. You just need a compatible wallet to be able to spend each coin.

Sent BCH? Import your address in Electron Cash[1].
Sent BTC? Import your address in Electrum[2].

[1] https://electroncash.org/
[2] https://electrum.org/

Sorry but I can't grasp what exactly happened. Did you send your BCH to a BTC address? If yes, you just have to export the BTC receiving address private keys/seed and import it to any BCH wallet e.g. electron cash. After that you should be able to access your coins again [Be careful with phishing download links]

Or is it a different problem? 

I've recovered BCH from a BTC paperwallet before, so I thought BCH would work with BTC addresses. Now I cannot retrieve the BCH even when I can see the BCH balance . What changed?? Please help, I feel sick to my stomach thinking of how much money I may have lost.