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I don't follow cryptocurrency news much, and don't really understand the consequences of this. I do have some BTC in Coinbase, though I don't really spend it. W

I don't follow cryptocurrency news much, and don't really understand the consequences of this. I do have some BTC in Coinbase, though I don't really spend it. Would you recommend I withdraw it ahead of the fork?

themodelplumber 9y ago
Can you afford to see those funds depleted? If so I'd keep it in there, see what happens. Ideally your portfolio is diverse enough that your little BTC corner can handle a rodeo. Risk exposure is important.
antichaos 9y ago
Yes, you should withdraw your BTC from Coinbase ASAP. Otherwise, you won't get any BCC in case a blockchain split happens on August 1st.
- chasote 9y ago
  The "in case" part is what I don't understand. This wording from Coinbase also makes it seem like things are still up in the air. August 1st is in a few days! How can there still be ambiguity with what is going to happen? That seems crazy to me.
  - thinkloop 9y ago
    In the world of blockchain it doesn't happen until it happens, but it looks like it will happen.
  - LeoPanthera 9y ago
    As far as I know there is no ambiguity. BCC will be created via a fork on August 1.
    - sowbug 9y ago
      This is a pedantic point, but Bitcoin forks happen frequently as part of the blockchain design (see https://blockchain.info/orphaned-blocks https://blockchain.info/orphaned-blocks for around 20 forks last month). The only differences for the August 1 event are that the fork will be given a name (Bitcoin Cash), and that some people will be running modified code that doesn't care if its fork is shorter than the main chain. Observing that the fork will exist isn't the important thing. It's whether anyone will care after a week or two.
      - Dylan16807 9y ago
        People are using 'fork' to mean 'multiple branches of the blockchain are considered authoritative', not 'multiple branches of the blockchain exist in an immediately-abandoned state'.
  - chowells 9y ago
    What happens is an emergent phenomenon based on the actions of at least a few hundred actors who each will be watching closely and may revise their decisions several times along the way.
relyio 9y ago
As a rule of thumb, if you're not completely technologically illiterate or a trader then you are better off withdrawing your money and storing it offline. Exchanges lose their customers' funds all the time.
- yebyen 9y ago
  If BCC takes hold, with its 8x block-size increase, I'd say the bar would be going up from "not completely technologically illiterate" to "a bit of a storage engineer"
  - saalweachter 9y ago
    I am not sure that follows? Can you elaborate?
    - yebyen 9y ago
      Well you're going to need to add more than 1TB each year, from the back-of-the-napkin calculations I saw. In 20 years maybe it won't be so uncommon to have 20TB lying around, but I know I don't have a lot of things on my computer that take up more than 1TB and only ever grow. I certainly won't have two of them...
      - saalweachter 9y ago
        I thought the OP was talking about wallets; are you saying you need to download the entire blockchain to store your wallet offline?
        yebyen 9y ago
        If you want to transact the coins out of the wallet, then yes you need to download the blockchain. I know there are some clients that don't need the whole block chain, but I'm not sure if I trust them over core bitcoin? Do you have a favorite one that supports importing keys from a wallet.dat?
Alex3917 9y ago
> Would you recommend I withdraw it ahead of the fork? You basically get free money if you withdraw, because you can split the coins so that they can be spent on both chains. But you need to be able to do this without messing anything up, which has gotten more difficult since 2013 or whenever. Wallets have new features to protect privacy, but the trade off is that they are more dangerous to work with. A few years ago the best practice was to make a cold wallet and then delete the private key from your computer, but doing that with a modern wallet can result in losing all your coins.
- cwilson 9y ago
  This is the part I'm slightly confused by. Obviously it makes more sense to hold in your own wallet (which I do), but what happens to the BTC people decide to keep on Coinbase when a separate fork is created? If those people are not getting the BCC for "free", who is? Coinbase?
  - Zarath 9y ago
    Yes, they basically keep it, though it may turn out like ETC and eventually allow withdrawals.
  - thinkloop 9y ago
    If it ends up having value, and they keep/use/sell it in any material way, there will probably be a class action lawsuit.
zanny 9y ago
I'd recommend it. If Coinbase is set on sticking to the original blockchain, in the event the fork prevails, that means your money effectively becomes unusable - you don't control that wallet, but Coinbase won't submit your transfers to that forked blockchain. The money dies on that chain the moment Coinbase decides not to interact with it. If you have it on your own, you can technically use it on both chains independently. The history breaks August 1st. From there are on it is basically two currencies. Though in general you should keep your bitcoin close to home. If Coinbase gets hacked or just ceases operations your money could just be gone if the fallout is lost in litigation hell.
- nether 9y ago
  Do these instructions for transferring one's btc to a non-Coinbase wallet sound legitimate? https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/6o9iv0/comment/dkg90yj https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/6o9iv0/comment/dkg90yj
  - spolu 9y ago
    I wrote that a few weeks ago: https://spolu.now.sh/notes/bitcoin_gmail_keybase.html https://spolu.now.sh/notes/bitcoin_gmail_keybase.html
- elif 9y ago
  Just clarifying that both forks are sticking to the original blockchain, and structurally SW is the divergent fork.
deleted 9y ago
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deleted 9y ago
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gibybo 9y ago
It's hard to predict what the market is going to do on August 1st, but Bitcoin is splitting and it's reasonable to assume some of the value will go to BCC and some will go to the new BTC (or the old BTC depending on how you look at it). A very small futures market is predicting about 20% of the current BTC value to go to BCC. If that's correct, you'll miss out on about 20% of the value of your holdings if you don't withdraw prior to August 1st. This number is very uncertain though, I think it could end up being anywhere between 5% and 50%.
- runeks 9y ago
  I also think it's reasonable to assume that a chain split does not mean a market cap split, given that we didn't see this when Ethereum split into Ethereum+Ethereum Classic. In my opinion, market cap is too superficial to capture what happens in the market. A better measure would be market depth: how many coins can you sell into the market before the price goes to zero? This figure very well might split into two, since otherwise it would require action on part of the market makers, i.e. entering the BCC/USD or BCC/BTC market.

themodelplumber 9y ago

Can you afford to see those funds depleted? If so I'd keep it in there, see what happens. Ideally your portfolio is diverse enough that your little BTC corner can handle a rodeo. Risk exposure is important.

antichaos 9y ago

Yes, you should withdraw your BTC from Coinbase ASAP. Otherwise, you won't get any BCC in case a blockchain split happens on August 1st.

chasote 9y ago
The "in case" part is what I don't understand. This wording from Coinbase also makes it seem like things are still up in the air. August 1st is in a few days! How can there still be ambiguity with what is going to happen? That seems crazy to me.
- thinkloop 9y ago
  In the world of blockchain it doesn't happen until it happens, but it looks like it will happen.
- LeoPanthera 9y ago
  As far as I know there is no ambiguity. BCC will be created via a fork on August 1.
  - sowbug 9y ago
    This is a pedantic point, but Bitcoin forks happen frequently as part of the blockchain design (see https://blockchain.info/orphaned-blocks https://blockchain.info/orphaned-blocks for around 20 forks last month). The only differences for the August 1 event are that the fork will be given a name (Bitcoin Cash), and that some people will be running modified code that doesn't care if its fork is shorter than the main chain. Observing that the fork will exist isn't the important thing. It's whether anyone will care after a week or two.
    - Dylan16807 9y ago
      People are using 'fork' to mean 'multiple branches of the blockchain are considered authoritative', not 'multiple branches of the blockchain exist in an immediately-abandoned state'.
- chowells 9y ago
  What happens is an emergent phenomenon based on the actions of at least a few hundred actors who each will be watching closely and may revise their decisions several times along the way.

relyio 9y ago

As a rule of thumb, if you're not completely technologically illiterate or a trader then you are better off withdrawing your money and storing it offline. Exchanges lose their customers' funds all the time.

yebyen 9y ago
If BCC takes hold, with its 8x block-size increase, I'd say the bar would be going up from "not completely technologically illiterate" to "a bit of a storage engineer"
- saalweachter 9y ago
  I am not sure that follows? Can you elaborate?
  - yebyen 9y ago
    Well you're going to need to add more than 1TB each year, from the back-of-the-napkin calculations I saw. In 20 years maybe it won't be so uncommon to have 20TB lying around, but I know I don't have a lot of things on my computer that take up more than 1TB and only ever grow. I certainly won't have two of them...
    - saalweachter 9y ago
      I thought the OP was talking about wallets; are you saying you need to download the entire blockchain to store your wallet offline?
      - yebyen 9y ago
        If you want to transact the coins out of the wallet, then yes you need to download the blockchain. I know there are some clients that don't need the whole block chain, but I'm not sure if I trust them over core bitcoin? Do you have a favorite one that supports importing keys from a wallet.dat?

Alex3917 9y ago

> Would you recommend I withdraw it ahead of the fork? You basically get free money if you withdraw, because you can split the coins so that they can be spent on both chains. But you need to be able to do this without messing anything up, which has gotten more difficult since 2013 or whenever. Wallets have new features to protect privacy, but the trade off is that they are more dangerous to work with. A few years ago the best practice was to make a cold wallet and then delete the private key from your computer, but doing that with a modern wallet can result in losing all your coins.

cwilson 9y ago
This is the part I'm slightly confused by. Obviously it makes more sense to hold in your own wallet (which I do), but what happens to the BTC people decide to keep on Coinbase when a separate fork is created? If those people are not getting the BCC for "free", who is? Coinbase?
- Zarath 9y ago
  Yes, they basically keep it, though it may turn out like ETC and eventually allow withdrawals.
- thinkloop 9y ago
  If it ends up having value, and they keep/use/sell it in any material way, there will probably be a class action lawsuit.

zanny 9y ago

I'd recommend it. If Coinbase is set on sticking to the original blockchain, in the event the fork prevails, that means your money effectively becomes unusable - you don't control that wallet, but Coinbase won't submit your transfers to that forked blockchain. The money dies on that chain the moment Coinbase decides not to interact with it. If you have it on your own, you can technically use it on both chains independently. The history breaks August 1st. From there are on it is basically two currencies. Though in general you should keep your bitcoin close to home. If Coinbase gets hacked or just ceases operations your money could just be gone if the fallout is lost in litigation hell.

nether 9y ago
Do these instructions for transferring one's btc to a non-Coinbase wallet sound legitimate? https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/6o9iv0/comment/dkg90yj https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/6o9iv0/comment/dkg90yj
- spolu 9y ago
  I wrote that a few weeks ago: https://spolu.now.sh/notes/bitcoin_gmail_keybase.html https://spolu.now.sh/notes/bitcoin_gmail_keybase.html
elif 9y ago
Just clarifying that both forks are sticking to the original blockchain, and structurally SW is the divergent fork.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

gibybo 9y ago

It's hard to predict what the market is going to do on August 1st, but Bitcoin is splitting and it's reasonable to assume some of the value will go to BCC and some will go to the new BTC (or the old BTC depending on how you look at it). A very small futures market is predicting about 20% of the current BTC value to go to BCC. If that's correct, you'll miss out on about 20% of the value of your holdings if you don't withdraw prior to August 1st. This number is very uncertain though, I think it could end up being anywhere between 5% and 50%.

runeks 9y ago
I also think it's reasonable to assume that a chain split does not mean a market cap split, given that we didn't see this when Ethereum split into Ethereum+Ethereum Classic. In my opinion, market cap is too superficial to capture what happens in the market. A better measure would be market depth: how many coins can you sell into the market before the price goes to zero? This figure very well might split into two, since otherwise it would require action on part of the market makers, i.e. entering the BCC/USD or BCC/BTC market.