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Prior to the split I moved my bitcoins offline from Coinbase to my local Electrum wallet (Original wallet) since at the time Coinbase said they were not going to support bitcoin cash..

After the split I then created a new wallet with a new seed and moved my bitcoins to that new wallet (BTC wallet). I then created a new wallet with the original seed and moved my bitcoins from my Original Wallet to this new wallet (BCH Wallet.) Each of these new wallets showed the correct amount of bitcoins. Presumably one was the old bitcoins and the other was bitcoin cash, although the only way to tell was by how I named the wallets.)

My understanding from all the online procedures was that I should have ended up with my bitcoins in the BTC wallet and bitcoin cash in the BCH Wallet.

I later moved the coins from my Electrum BTC wallet back up to Coinbase. Since Coinbase doesn’t yet support BCH I then tried sending my BCH to Kraken, but I get an insufficient funds message. All my offline wallets show a zero balance. Did I in fact never have two separate bitcoin amounts, original as well as cash? Have I in fact lost my bitcoin cash, or did I ever really even have it?

If my bitcoin cash does in fact exist, where would I go to find it?

Any help appreciated.

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    Can you explain how you created the "BCH wallet"? In particular, it sounds like you created it using the same Electrum software you had been using, which would be BTC only, so in that case you've been using BTC all along. You can still recover BCH, but you'll need to install a BCH wallet to do so.
    – Nate Eldredge
    Aug 9, 2017 at 19:34
  • Thanks for your reply. For the BTC wallet I did a File/New/Standard Wallet/Create a New Seed For the BCH wallet I did a File/New/Standard Wallet/I Already Have a Seed and then used the seed from my original wallet. Unless I looked at stuff wrong, I thought that each wallet then showed the same number of bitcoins. They looked identical. I thought that the BCH wallet was just appearing that way since it didn't have a way to visually show BCH. That is was, so to speak, BCH in BTC clothing, which when transferred to a wallet that did recognize BCH would represent as such.
    – RVDowning
    Aug 9, 2017 at 21:12
  • Ok, but did you create the two wallets with the same program (i.e. both with Electrum), or with different programs? The BCH version of Electrum is called Electron. If you use Electrum to create a new wallet with the same seed, you'll just have two BTC wallets that are both looking at the same BTC coins, and all BTC transactions would show up in both of them. But post-split nothing you do in Electrum will have any effect on BCH.
    – Nate Eldredge
    Aug 9, 2017 at 21:48
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    Ok, think I am there. I found Electron for Linux and was afraid I would have to compile it, but it had the ability to just execute. When I executed it and it came up, it came up showing my bitcoin cash amount. I didn't do ANYTHING with keys. Odd. Must have taken it from the older Electrum application. Anyway, I am in the process of transferring the cash to Kraken, currently awaiting confirmation of the transaction. Thanks for your help and patience. Not sure if there is a way to reward someone for an answer. If so let me know. Thanks again!
    – RVDowning
    Aug 10, 2017 at 16:42
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    You can post an answer to your question explaining how you resolved it, so that future readers can benefit. That would be the best reward!
    – Nate Eldredge
    Aug 10, 2017 at 16:46

2 Answers 2

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I downloaded Electron for Linux which I then executed. It picked up my keys from the original Electrum that was on my desktop. It automatically showed the correct number of Bitcoin cash tokens, presumably having taken this data from the Bitcoins that I had originally downloaded from Coinbase into Electrum before the fork. I then uploaded this Bitcoin cash into a Kraken online wallet so that it would be available for trading.

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The following was copied from the Electrum website today:

Recommendation on how to redeem Bitcoin Cash

July 31st, 2017.

Electrum is a Bitcoin wallet created by Thomas Voegtlin in 2011. Electrum is distributed by Electrum Technologies GmbH, a company registered in Germany, using the website https://electrum.org

Electrum users who are not interested in Bitcoin Cash do not need to worry nor to take any particular action. The following note is only for users who want to access their Bitcoin Cash (BCC).

"Electron Cash" is a fork of Electrum for Bitcoin Cash. Electron Cash is not endorsed by Electrum. It is open source, and binaries (executables files) are available for Windows, OSX and Android. However, when you run binaries instead of source code, you have no guarantee that they match the source code. This is why wallet binaries are usually signed by developers. A digital signature engages the responsability of the person who signs.

The person who distributes the Electron Cash binaries has decided to remain anonymous, and uses the fake name "Jonald Fyookball" in order to sign Electron Cash binaries. Thus, if these binaries contain code that is designed to steal your bitcoins, the author of the theft will be anonymous and walk away safely with your funds.

This danger is exacerbated by the fact that the default behaviour of Electron Cash is to silently copy all your Electrum wallets into its own directory. Thus, if you run Electron Cash on a machine where you previously used Electrum, all your pre-existing wallets will be available in Electron Cash, and you will only need to enter your password in order to expose your bitcoins to potential theft.

Therefore, users who want to run the Electron Cash binaries should do it on a separate machine, that does not have their Bitcoin wallet. We recommend to proceed as follows:

  1. Install Electron Cash on a machine that does not have your Electrum wallets.

  2. Wait until the BCC hard fork has taken place, and a few BCC blocks have been mined.

  3. Move all your Electrum funds to a new Electrum wallet. This will move only your BTC, and not your BCC, because the BCC blockchain has replay protection. Wait until the transaction is confirmed.

  4. Enter the seed of your (now empty) old wallet or private keys in Electron Cash. Since the BTC have been moved to a new wallet, entering your old seed in Electron Cash will not put your BTC funds at risk.

Following these 4 easy steps you will be able to access your BCC without compromising your BTC.

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  • I would add "move your BCC to cold storage then wipe and restore the machine you used to run Electron Cash since you consider it possibly infected.
    – Bart
    Aug 20, 2017 at 21:31

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