Move it to a downloadable wallet on your machine.
And, as always, buy the dip.
Ask HN: I have Bitcoin in Coinbase, what should I do before the forks?
31–40 of 41 posts
Re: Ask HN: I have Bitcoin in Coinbase, what should I do before the forks?
#32Move it to a downloadable wallet on your machine. And, as always, buy the dip.
By dip I assume you don't mean dual inline package which is an IC form where one can add or remove the IC from a socket, typically 8, 14, or 16 but larger sockets were used too.
If one puts one's btc onto a hardware wallet, e.g. HW.1, then the coins have been moved from the wallet on the computer or are they a copy of that which is on the computer?
Re: Ask HN: I have Bitcoin in Coinbase, what should I do before the forks?
#33Transfer them out to a paper or hardware wallet at a time when transactions are still visibly being hashed at a regular rate (overly cautious advice, but who's to say 100% that the miners don't decide to down tools for a day in protest?), but I'd suggest you do this a couple of days before August 1st to avoid the transactions being clobbered in the case of a fork. Monitor the exchanges for a couple of days (you'll no…
Do you have to commit to one or the other? Or could you transfer out from the paper wallet on both chains?
No - Your coins are safe under the single private key (i.e. wallet) on both chains, as all transactions prior to the fork are safely recorded on the blockchain for both forks (assuming the transaction out to the paper wallet was recorded to the existing single blockchain before the fork).
Your private key can be imported from the paper wallet to a wallet for both branches of the fork, meaning you'll have two wallets with the same amount of coin on each of the two blockchains - these can be sent independently of each other to wherever you like (as each branch of the fork will ignore the transactions of the other - in theory).
The only reason to commit to one of the two would be the perceived value of one over the other, and whether you want 'double' your eggs in one basket (perceived financial value ratio of one to the other notwidthstanding).
Again, the value of both will more than likely take a hit during (and for a while after) the fork, so please don't harbour illusions about doubling your investment overnight!
There will be plenty here on HN who know more about this however, so any corrections to the above are welcome.
Re: Ask HN: I have Bitcoin in Coinbase, what should I do before the forks?
#34Move it to a downloadable wallet on your machine. And, as always, buy the dip.
By dip I assume you don't mean dual inline package which is an IC form where one can add or remove the IC from a socket, typically 8, 14, or 16 but larger sockets were used too. If one puts one's btc onto a hardware wallet, e.g. HW.1, then the coins have been moved from the wallet on the computer or are they a copy of that which is on the computer?
Along the same lines, could we start describing the value of Bitcoin breaking through a price ceiling as Surface Mounting? :)
Re: Ask HN: I have Bitcoin in Coinbase, what should I do before the forks?
#35I cannot find it on-line - but I have received a following message from Coinbase ( ): """ Dear Coinbase Customer, The User Activated Hard Fork (UAHF) is a proposal to increase the Bitcoin block size scheduled to activate on August 1. The UAHF is incompatible with the current Bitcoin ruleset and will create a separate blockchain. Should UAHF activate on August 1, Coinbase will not support the new blockchain or its ass…
That's odd. Coinbase was part of the New York Agreement[0], which are the group supporting the UAHF. Both this email and the blog post make it sound as if Coinbase support the Core side, i.e. the UASF. Can someone explain what I'm missing? [0] https://medium.com/@DCGco/bitcoin-scaling-agreement-at-conse...
If I recall correctly, the New York Agreement is Segwit2x. UAHF is something else with little support.
Re: Ask HN: I have Bitcoin in Coinbase, what should I do before the forks?
#36remain calm and sell sell sell sell!
Hodl
Re: Ask HN: I have Bitcoin in Coinbase, what should I do before the forks?
#37You don't have bitcoin on Coinbase you have an entry in a database that says Coinbase owes you X amount of bitcoins. Yes it's a little more complicated than that but the analogy still stands. Coinbase is a hosted wallet with no key control meaning that you do not have any control over the transactions of that wallet. The other aspect of Coinbase is a nice interface for the GDAX exchange with about double the fees. In…
What is a good way to create a personal bitcoin wallet? p.s. I studied computer science, am reasonably fluent in computer security, but not a crypto or bitcoin expert.
Depends on your level of paranoia. I use an encrypted file on disk to store a client and keys. I back this up offsite incase I get ransomwared. That's good enough for me.
The super paranoid roll dice to generate the private key, use a totally offline computer to convert those dice rolls into an address.
Re: Ask HN: I have Bitcoin in Coinbase, what should I do before the forks?
#38you can always convert it to another coin: https://shapeshift.io/#/coins
No guarantee it won't go the way of cryptsy
Re: Ask HN: I have Bitcoin in Coinbase, what should I do before the forks?
#39I don't trade much. Pretty much just holding onto my btc parking it on Coinbase. I hear that slow transactions are part of the problem that led to the pending possible fork. That transaction fees have gone up. How much higher has it gotten, e.g. how much would it cost to move 1 btc from Coinbase to my Bitcoin-QT Core Wallet.dat and then how much to move it from Bitcoin-QT wallet.dat to a HW.1 hardware wallet? Thanks.…
Strange, for two days now I've been trying to login to bitcointalk.org and get an invalid login. When I do the Ask a question for invalid logins I get invalid login again.
Re: Ask HN: I have Bitcoin in Coinbase, what should I do before the forks?
#40So when Bitcoin hardforks, coinbase is saying they wont "support" the new fork... but since they have the private keys, doesn't that mean they're essentially keeping all the hardfork coins for themselves?