So a lot of you must be confused by this Bitcoin Cash hard fork, if you want to understand the what it is, I suggest reading this great write up by Jimmy Song Bitcoin Cash: What You Need to Know
Today I'm going to cover what you can do pre the event.
Essentially this split will award all current BTC owners the equivalent amount in BCC, assuming that your BTC was acquired before Aug.1. Now there will be exchanges who won't support this UAHF, like coinbase, so you won't be awarded any BCC for the BTC you own prior to Aug.1. Many suggest to withdraw your BTC to your local wallet, later put it in a BCC compatible wallet and redeem your BCC after the fork, this is my suggested method as well.
It is almost an unanimous decision that the community will simply dump this "shitcoin" after the fork, but by then it might be too late, ppl will swarm in and try to cash out this free money as fast as they can, network congestion will be insanely high, by the time its your turn it might be worth next to nothing! But you do have other options today.
ViaBTC is a Chinese exchange that offers BCC/CNY, BCC/BTC pairs that allow you to trade their futures, before the chain even exists (laughs). The caveat is that they will freeze your BTC till after the hard fork. How it works is like so
1. We will designate the token “Bitcoin Cash”（BCC）to the possible split coin led by the activation of UAHF.
2. From 22nd July 2017, ViaBTC exchange users can trade your “BTC” assets against 1:1 ratio into both “BCC” and “BTC_FROZEN2” assets. Namely, you can trade 1 “BTC” into 1 “BCC” token and 1 “BTC_FROZEN2” token, or vice versa. Deposit and withdrawal are not available for “BCC” and ”BTC_FROZEN2”.
3. On the same day, “BCC/CNY，BCC/BTC” trading pair will be released.
4. BTC_FROZEN2 represents all tokens besides BCC that may split from the original BTC chain, and is not available for trading.
5. After UAHF activates at 12:20 1st August 2017 (UTC time), all your “BTC_FROZEN2” assets will be redeemed to your “BTC” assets (no need to own the same amount of BCC) and are available for trading.
6. We will decide on the best timing to allow deposit and withdrawal for “BCC”, based on the functioning of its chain. And we will allocate all other (possible) split “BTC” tokens to your accounts then.
Many are hesitant to do this since it requires freezing your BTC for a period of time, I did a lot of background checks on ViaBTC since I've never heard of them and found very few user feedbacks. They do have a lot of hashrate (4.6% of total hash power) and a series A funding from antpool. That doesn't necessary make the exchange credible but it does show that they have some scale. So I decided to experiment with a fraction of my BTC and test this out.
So from the above rule, I figured once I convert my BTC into BCC and BTC_FROZEN2, I can then sell the BCC under their BCC/BTC pair, this is basically getting extra BTC for free, and you'll supposedly get them back after Aug.1 (no need to own the same amount of BCC) according to their rule. And then the BTC I just acquired is before Aug.1, so I can convert it again to BCC + BTC_FROZEN2, I should be able to again get additional BCC to exchange on their BCC/BTC pair. Repeat the process until I'm completely depleted of BCCs from the diminishing returns. So let's experiment this
So after exercising the above experiment, I'm end up with 3.51 BTC, a gain of roughly 0.5 BTC with 3 BTC, not bad ;) But... FROZEN.
Now I'll have my fingers crossed in hope that they will honor redemption from FROZEN to regular BTC to allow withdrawal!
Hope this helps!
BTC: 17UinPft3hCYzJK8aB2BTjrRd2JZkd96kd
ETH: 0x4c0c2FAc7360D5CbE6bD30C9c36CEB7Ce91Aa3C8
LTC: LYeu321o4MRvDZ3iGSnwSmJvtsNaePn55x