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Comment by sowbug | Hacker News Reader

You got a lot of replies, but I don't see one critical point addressed. You said you moved from Coinbase (no internal caps) to an exchange. So we can't tell whether you'll get any BCH. If you don't know the private keys for your funds, then you can't spend those funds. You can only ask whoever has your funds to spend them on your behalf. Coinbase hasn't implemented the infrastructure to spend from anything but the main chain. We don't know whether the exchange you're using has, either.

Someone at Coinbase is slapping their forehead right now reading your story because you pretty much jumped out of the frying pan into the fire when you transferred from Coinbase to an exchange (rather than a wallet you control). That's exactly what Coinbase _didn't_ want you to do if you wanted full control over your funds.

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> Someone at Coinbase is slapping their forehead right now reading your story because you pretty much jumped out of the frying pan into the fire when you transferred from Coinbase to an exchange (rather than a wallet you control)

Actually, transferring from Coinbase to an exchange was the correct move. If you transferred BTC before the fork to an exchange that quickly implemented BCH trading you would have been credited and been able to trade right away. People (like me) who did the 'correct thing' and withdrew to their own wallets now have to wait days to deposit to a BCH exchange and will likely never see $700 BCH again.

Your statement is completely right, but the way the question was asked, OP probably didn't know whether it was an exchange "that quickly implemented BCH trading." So maybe a better analogy is being in the frying pan and pressing the hyperspace button.

By the way, why would you need to wait to sell a BCH deposit? That confirms almost immediately, right? I could understand AML/KYC on a cash withdrawal, but incoming crypto is zero risk to the exchange.

Takes 80h to confirm because of the low hash rate on the fork.

Doh. I thought the fork code had a built-in contingency for a quick difficulty adjustment in case of slow blocks. Maybe I just dreamed that.

I still don't understand how removing my funds from CB into a wallet VS into an exchange has any issue on wether or not I'll get equivalent BCH. Also, I don't understand how removing my funds from CB (into a wallet, I guess) will guarantee them giving me BCH VS having not done anything and just left the money on CB. It seems the latter would have been easier for them to debit me BCH, no?

I'm so confused.

Edit: if I know my private keys for my BTC, does that mean they are the exact same for BCH? If so, how would I then "acquire" said BCH?

> if I know my private keys for my BTC, does that mean they are the exact same for BCH? If so, how would I then "acquire" said BCH?

Yes, they are exactly the same. To "acquire" the BCH, do the following: first, as a safety measure, "spend" it all on the BTC chain, by sending them all to a new wallet you also control; after that, these private keys have no BTC, but still have all the BCH. Then, you have to find a BCH wallet software which is compatible with your private key format, and import the private keys into it. That's it.

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