Hey guys, anyone who was following the drama of Jaxx Wallet not having been able to download the whole Bitcoin Cash blockchain and get out the kinks so that those of us who moved our Bitcoin to Jaxx before the fork would be able to get our coins out. If there's one thing I can't stand it's feeling helpless! So after tweeting at Jaxx, asking them for updates on Reddit and asking around from other people if they had any idea when we could get our BCH out I finally decided to take the plunge and get my BCH out myself. Last weekend I managed to get my BCH out and sell it at $775.
It's a symptom of the fact that cryptocurrency still seems a little bit like fairy magic to me that I had my doubts that I would actually have BCH there when I looked and I steeled myself for it to be empty! I was also terrified that I would do something incorrectly in this transaction and if I really did have BCH, lose them forever. But I didn't really need to go through such drama.
I was told I should download the Electron Cash wallet, use that transfer my keys and get my BCH, immediately move the BCH off to a more secure wallet. Electron Cash is very rudimentary. It doesn't have much of a GUI. But it works well enough to extract pre-fork BCH coins.
I read a simple explanation of what to do and followed it:
- Download the Electron Cash wallet from http://electroncash.org.
- Install the wallet, create a password, login.
- Click on the tab called Wallet, go to Private keys, then Sweep
- Then I entered my private keys from my Jaxx wallet where I had originally held Bitcoin during the fork.
- Alakazam! Alakazoo! Amazingly, the default wallet appeared with the two batches of Bitcoin Cash that corresponded to my first two Bitcoin purchases before the fork. Again, like magic. So instead of trying to figure out a BCH wallet I decided I would just ShapeShift my BCH directly out of this wallet into Bitcoin, and then send the Bitcoin to a secure wallet.
Using my newly installed VPN to take a little trip to Wolverhampton, UK, I pulled up ShapeShift, gave them the Bitcoin address and BCH refund address, ShapeShifted to BTC and sent the Bitcoin off to a safe place.
Whew! That felt so good. I figured it out myself (I'm not a tech dummy after all!) and I took charge of the situation rather than waiting for someone (Jaxx) to figure things out and help me.
Now I may decide later that I would like to hold some BCH after all, and I'll deal with that as I go along. The price has already fallen off dramatically from what I sold it for, so if I do buy back it will be cheaper.