Millions of users store their bitcoins on web based wallets, such as blockchain.info. With the impending hard fork coming up on August 1, a lot of those users are worried whether they would have access to all the versions of their bitcoins in the case of a hard fork.
To answer this question, first we need to understand the different kinds of web based wallets. The two main types of web based wallets are custodial and non-custodial ones. With a custodial wallet, you don't have access to your public and private keys, while with a non-custodial wallet, you do have access to them. If your wallet has the option of keeping a 12-24 words phrase (Wallet seed), it means it is a non-custodial one. Moreover, with that phrase, you can recover all your public and private keys. Blockchain.info is one such example and in my previous post (https://steemit.com/bitcoin/@hmushtaq/how-to-get-your-private-keys-from-a-blockchain-wallet-account), I showed how to use the wallet seed to gain access to all the public and private keys of a blockchain.info wallet. However, if you are still not satisfied with a non-custodial web based wallet, you can always move to a desktop based or even a hardware based wallet.
Below, I am giving a list of web based wallets and their types.
- Blockchain.info - Non-custodial
- BreadWallet - Non-custodial
- GreenAddress - Non-custodial
- Uphold - Custodial
- Spectrocoin - Custodial
Note that in the case of a hard fork, the amount of bitcoins in your wallet would not simply double, but you will have access to two separate cryptocurrencies. But like I previously said, make sure you use a wallet whose public and private keys you have access to, or else you may lose one version of your bitcoins forever!