How I retrieved and converted my BCC/BCH

By Guillaume Goutaudier • August 2017 • 4 min read
Bitcoin Cash

My setup

As a blockchain enthusiast, I possess a few bitcoins and ethereums. I mainly use Jaxx to store them: https://jaxx.io

What I like about Jaxx is that it runs on all my apple devices, allows me to keep my private keys locally, and has a sexy UI.

The Segwit2x saga and BCC hard fork

Over the last weeks, Bitcoin got a lot of attention with the strong debate on how it should scale. Following the threat of the UASF and possible hard fork, it was a big relief to see BIP 91 gaining support and eventually locked in. I told myself "cool, it seems my bitcoins will still value something after the summer".

Then came BCC. Why would anyone continue to push for a UASF after a consensus was eventually reached? I was not surprised to see the lack of support from the main exchanges and mining pools. To me the BCC value will follow the same pattern as the Ethereum Classic: even if it is closer to the idealistic views of Satoshi (actually this can be debated) and has its "fans", without a strong economic support its value will not follow the one of BTC.

The good news with the hard fork and the introduction of BCC, is that any BTC owner now possesses an equivalent amount of BCC on the forked chain. Cool!

Even better, the BCC has a very good value for an "alt-coin": around 650 USD as I am writing these lines.

It is pretty clear to me that the relatively high value of the BCC is directly linked to the fact that the big majority of the BCCs as stuck on exchanges or wallets not supporting it, with most users still sitting on their $4000 BTCs and not worrying too much yet on how to get/convert them.

Retrieving and converting BCCs: the strategy

  1. Split the private key: what matters is the private keys because this is what will eventually allow you to move your crypto assets. The main issue is that the same private keys are used on the Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash networks. So if the private keys are stollen while playing around with the BCCs, then your BTCs will be stolen as well. To take a safe approach, here is what I did with Jaxx: I exported all the public/private keys and manually checked how much each address contained. I then transferred all the founds to myself. This way the last address used has all the BTCs and I will not use its private key to retrieve my BCCs.
  2. Import the private keys into a BCC compatible Wallet: https://www.bitcoincash.org lists a series of wallets that support BCC. I opted for Coinomi because of its ability to "Sweep" a BCC wallet using its private key (just what I needed!). The Mac version does not exist yet so I had to install Andy first.
  3. Deal with the unexpected: it should have been the end of the story. I successfully imported a few private keys in Coinomi and successfully exchanged them against Bitcoins or Ethereums, then moved them to my Jaxx wallet. At some stage though, it did not work anymore (Coinomi just returned to my balance sheet without sweeping the wallets anymore). I finally opted for Electron Cash, which has a Mac version, and can initialize your wallet using a private key. Eventually, I followed this process: Private Key import with Electron Cash => BCC transfer to Coinomi wallet => BCC to BTC/ETH conversion with Coinomi (using Shapeshift) => Transfer back the BTC/ETC to my usual wallet.