Nano Ledger s shows BTC when sending BCH

Question

I find this weird..

• I have the nano ledger S
• I open the Bitcoin app on the Nano Ledger S (so not the "Bitcoin Cash" app)
• I open the Ledger wallet Bitcoin program on my computer
• the propram asks me what bitcoin chain I want to use, I choose "Bitcoin Cash"
• the program asks me to select my wallet (Main / Split), I choose "Split"
• I now see my BCH balance
• I click on Send
• a popup appears which let's me select an adress and an amount of BCH to send
• when I click Send, on the display of my Nano Ledger S I see "Amount 0.025 BTC"

Is this a bug in the nano ledger s? Is my useage of Bitcoin cash without the "bitcoin cash" app wrong?

What am I sending.. BTC or BCH ???

Answer 1

Is this a bug in the nano ledger s?

No.

Is my useage of Bitcoin cash without the "bitcoin cash" app wrong?

Yes.

What am I sending.. BTC or BCH ???

BCH. But actually neither because the transaction that is created will be invalid on both chains.

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The Ledger Nano S has no idea of the blockchain that you actually want to use. You have to tell it what you are using by opening the correct app; it can't figure that out automatically. So when you choose to use the Bitcoin app but are actually using Bitcoin Cash instead, the Ledger doesn't know that you are actually using Bitcoin Cash. So it will simply display information as if it were Bitcoin. Other information (such as balances) are correct because the wallet software (which is using Bitcoin Cash) tells the Ledger what to display for those. The Ledger itself has no way of retrieving that information, nor does it store it.

So your Ledger thinks you are using Bitcoin, not Bitcoin Cash. Thus it shows you the BTC unit. Furthermore, it will sign the transaction using Bitcoin's signature algorithm, not Bitcoin Cash's. Thus the transaction will be invalid on Bitcoin Cash, but because it spends Bitcoin Cash outputs, it won't be valid on Bitcoin.

Answer 2

I was having this problem too. I realized where I was making an error, was when the google bitcoin app asks to open using the ledger, make sure you select the bitcoin cash icon on your ledger and not the bitcoin one. That solved it for me.