August 4, 2017 at 16:33How to survive hard fork and not rush to the hospital
- Tutorial
On the evening of August 1, Bitcoin hard fork occurred . Our friend (let's call him Dmitry) turned to DTI with a problem: all BTC + disappeared from the wallet and BCH were not credited. We will omit the whole gamut of feelings experienced by Dmitry and his relatives. We describe only the facts and actions that led to a positive result. About it below.
Disclaimer: all matches of names and other personal information are random.
In anticipation of the Bitcoin hard fork, Dmitry decided to secure his savings and transferred them to the Ledger hardware wallet .
Hardware cryptocurrency wallet is a device that provides “cold storage” of digital assets in an isolated environment. A key is used in such a wallet, which is used to sign transactions. In other words, this is an analogue of a flash drive onto which a digital currency is “downloaded”. Read more about the various types of cryptocurrency wallets here .
By Tuesday evening, after the hard fork, Dmitry decided to open Ledger to check if access to his wallet appeared on the Bitcoin Cash blockchain.
However, he faced two important problems:
In other words, instead of receiving twice as many bitcoins, Dmitry lost all.
DTI Technical Part Comment:
Dmitry’s experience has shown that the “glitch” in which BTC disappears is eliminated in two ways:
As a result, he managed to return BTC, but BCH did not appear in the wallet.
DTI Technical Part Comment:
As Ledger emphasizes, all BTC owners on their wallet automatically received BCH. However, as it turned out, a problem may arise when trying to find them. To do this, you need to update the device (in the case of a hardware wallet) and follow the following algorithm - it works with Ledger wallets :
1) Download from Ledger Manager and install a Bitcoin Cash wallet.
2) Open the Bitcoin Cash wallet and in the Bitcoin Chrome App select “Settings” - “Blockchains”.
3) Select Bitcoin Cash, and then click on “Split”.
4) Click on the down arrow and copy the address.
5) Select “Settings” - “Blockchain” - “Bitcoin Cash” - “Main” by analogy with points 2 and 3.
6) Send the required BCH amount to your Bitcoin Cash “Split” wallet (the address that was copied in paragraph 4).
Important: BCHs will not appear in the wallet right away - you need to wait until the transaction is added to the block, usually about 10 minutes on the Bitcoin network.
In the future, always use the Bitcoin Cash “Split” wallet to use BCH.
If this algorithm does not lead to the desired result, you can use additional tips on the Ledger website :
Disclaimer: all matches of names and other personal information are random.
The essence of the problem
In anticipation of the Bitcoin hard fork, Dmitry decided to secure his savings and transferred them to the Ledger hardware wallet .
Hardware cryptocurrency wallet is a device that provides “cold storage” of digital assets in an isolated environment. A key is used in such a wallet, which is used to sign transactions. In other words, this is an analogue of a flash drive onto which a digital currency is “downloaded”. Read more about the various types of cryptocurrency wallets here .
By Tuesday evening, after the hard fork, Dmitry decided to open Ledger to check if access to his wallet appeared on the Bitcoin Cash blockchain.
However, he faced two important problems:
- After dividing the wallet into BTC and BCH parts (more about this in our algorithm below) on the Bitcoin Cash wallet, the number of BCH accrued was zero.
- When moving back to the Bitcoin wallet, the number of BTCs also reset, + the transaction history was deleted and the interface settings were reset.
In other words, instead of receiving twice as many bitcoins, Dmitry lost all.
DTI Technical Part Comment:
According to the idea of the fork, the entire blockchain is duplicated - respectively, and all wallets. Ledger provides access to a duplicate wallet in the Bitcoin Cash blockchain, it is called the Main-wallet. However, for security reasons, it is recommended to transfer all funds to a new wallet - Split. Dmitry went into the Ledger wallet and saw zero on the balance of BTC and BCH-Split. Zero on the BTC balance was caused by an application bug, and zero on BCH-Split is normal, because you still need to transfer coins to it from the BCH-Main wallet.
Bitcoin Recovery
Dmitry’s experience has shown that the “glitch” in which BTC disappears is eliminated in two ways:
- by wallet recovery by keywords
- through the menu in the application: “Settings” (where to find them, shown in the algorithm below) - “Tools” - “Reset”
As a result, he managed to return BTC, but BCH did not appear in the wallet.
DTI Technical Part Comment:
Recovering a wallet was an optional item. Many people in the discussion on Reddit wrote that the wallet shows zero balance and an empty transaction history after changing the blockchain. This problem is corrected by the second paragraph.
Getting Bitcoin Cash
As Ledger emphasizes, all BTC owners on their wallet automatically received BCH. However, as it turned out, a problem may arise when trying to find them. To do this, you need to update the device (in the case of a hardware wallet) and follow the following algorithm - it works with Ledger wallets :
1) Download from Ledger Manager and install a Bitcoin Cash wallet.
2) Open the Bitcoin Cash wallet and in the Bitcoin Chrome App select “Settings” - “Blockchains”.
3) Select Bitcoin Cash, and then click on “Split”.
4) Click on the down arrow and copy the address.
5) Select “Settings” - “Blockchain” - “Bitcoin Cash” - “Main” by analogy with points 2 and 3.
6) Send the required BCH amount to your Bitcoin Cash “Split” wallet (the address that was copied in paragraph 4).
Important: BCHs will not appear in the wallet right away - you need to wait until the transaction is added to the block, usually about 10 minutes on the Bitcoin network.
In the future, always use the Bitcoin Cash “Split” wallet to use BCH.
If this algorithm does not lead to the desired result, you can use additional tips on the Ledger website :
- understand how Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash differ , as well as how they are displayed in the wallet,
- read about updating the device and other preliminary steps necessary to get BCH,
- learn more about the difference between Main and Split and watch a video guide.
Summing up: what to do if after a hard fork it has lost everything
- Calm down. This is really important!
- Restore the wallet using one of the specified methods and find your BTC
- Use the wallet installation and configuration algorithm and find your BCH
- Breathe out - your funds are back with you!