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I have BTC in an account with Coinbase.

Since Coinbase doesn't support BCH, they don't provide access to it.

In all honesty I don't know much about bitcoin and how to move my BTC from Coinbase to an offline wallet, so when I received the notification they wouldn't support the split, I didn't understand the ramifications.

From the little I understand at this point, I believe this is the situation I find myself in, and I am looking for verification that my points below are correct - hence this question:

  • Coinbase owns the private key to my wallet with them.

  • If I now move my BTC to a different wallet, to which I own the private key, only the BTC will be moved.

  • As such, the BCH (which is technically mine), is held against the private key in my Coinbase wallet, and won't be moved.

  • Therefore, to all intents and purposes, unless Coinbase is somehow persuaded to release the BCH and/or private keys to their BTC customers, that BCH is lost to me.

Final question:

Is there any way for me to obtain access to my BCH?

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2 Answers 2

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If you didn't move out your BTC before the fork, then your BitCoin Cash tokens remain with CoinBase. They are not really lost, but they might remain in their system for a while. Here is the explanation directly from CoinBase Support:

We are planning to have support for bitcoin cash by January 1, 2018, assuming no additional risks emerge during that time.

Once supported, customers will be able to withdraw bitcoin cash. We'll make a determination at a later date about adding trading support. In the meantime, customer bitcoin cash will remain safely stored on Coinbase.

Thank you,

Coinbase Team

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You are correct, if you send your BTC out of coinbase to a private wallet coinbase will still have your BCH.

If coinbase doesn't give you a way to access your BCH such as via their UI or direct access to the private key (which is unlikely since they would no longer be able to guarantee safety of the account) then it will be lost but they have already said they will eventually allow access...

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  • 1
    Yes, looking like a lot of angry customers! Some suggesting legal trouble
    – Steve Lorimer
    Aug 2, 2017 at 17:22
  • Thanks for the tip re multisig vault - will check it out
    – Steve Lorimer
    Aug 2, 2017 at 17:23
  • I wish I saw your link sooner (which now doesn't work). I now found: "Aug 09, 2017 As Coinbase is a hosted wallet, it's not feasible to provide the private keys to individual wallet addresses; doing so would prevent us from taking advantage of our secure cold-storage technology to protect your funds. This not only ensures your security but it also allows us to reduce the cost of sending digital currency to another Coinbase account." support.coinbase.com/customer/portal/articles/…
    – Ryan
    Nov 29, 2017 at 15:46
  • I updated my comment. It makes sense that they wouldn't allow users direct access to their private keys or else users could try to say blame coinbase when their private key gets stolen.
    – anthonybell
    Nov 29, 2017 at 18:23

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