The Fork Awakens… BitcoinCash is expected to fork off from the main chain on Tuesday taking roughly 30% of the hashpower with it. Antpool, the largest bitcoin mining pool, is expected to mine the alternate chain.
BitcoinCash Hard Fork
August 1st has been a long-awaited day for months on the calendars of Bitcoin enthusiasts worldwide. But with the UASF being deemed a success by many people in the community, a new event is worrying some and it just so happens to be on the same day. BitcoinCash or BCC (some are proposing the ticker abbreviation of BCH as BCC is already taken) is a planned fork of the Bitcoin ledger by means of a User Activated Hard Fork, or UAHF.
Mining company Bitmain has stated their intentions to fork and create this separate blockchain with different consensus rules, most notably an immediate blocksize increase to 8MB. It also includes wipeout and replay protection, something the developers added to allow both blockchains to coexist peacefully and without loss of user funds.
How to Secure Your Assets?
As with all cryptocurrency hard forks, users that own Bitcoin on the legacy chain and control their private keys will automatically own coins on the new BCC chain. No further action needed. However, your claim to these new coins could be threatened if you use a third-party wallet provider such as Coinbase or blockchain.com.
Not controlling the private keys of your Bitcoins means you don’t control the private keys of your BitcoinCash either. Some examples of wallets that allow you to control the keys are Electrum, Jaxx, or Mycelium. The fork is scheduled to occur on Tuesday, August 1, 2017, at 12:20:00 pm (UTC time), so make sure to move your coins as soon as possible.
Exchanges That Support BitcoinCash (BCC)
Numerous exchanges have come out stating how they plan to deal with the upcoming hard fork. According to the BitcoinCash website, the following exchanges have announced that they will support, or at least allow users to access, BitcoinCash
Wallets That Support BitcoinCash (BCC)
Along with the exchanges, many reputable wallet providers, such as Ledger and Trezor, have released statements saying they will have their wallets support BCC. A more comprehensive list can be found below.
Full Nodes
Other Wallets
One thing to note is that ElectronCash is NOT made by the Electrum developers, which was cleared up in a statement made by them here.
ViaBTC currently has a futures market for BitcoinCash, and it currently sits at around $311.59, or about 12% of Bitcoin’s current market price. Only time will tell if this coin will gain traction, or be crushed by the thousands of people ready to dump the moment the fork occurs.
What do you think of the looming fork? Will BCC be blown out of the water by the massive offload of coins? Will you be transacting with BCC? Or do you think this is going to be one of hundreds of altcoins? Let us know in the comments below!
Images courtesy of Bitcoincash.org, Coinmarketcap.com