3 Min Read 
On August 1st, 2017, a group of bitcoin users intend to create a fork of Bitcoin, creating a new digital currency called Bitcoin Cash (BCH). After August 1st, users that own Bitcoin (BTC) will gain an equivalent amount of BCH. ie. If you own 3 BTC, after Aug 1st, you will also own 3 BCH.
While the value of BCH may not achieve significant levels relative to BTC, there is a chance it will achieve enough value to warrant retaining access to your BCH coins.
Users who have interest in claiming their BCH are suggested to transfer them from any exchange service or hosted wallet. Bitcoin held in a hosted service will not likely give its users access to the forked BCH coins.
To ensure access to the forked BCH coins, users must utilize a wallet solution where users themselves control the private keys. Airbitz is one such solution and any Bitcoin stored in Airbitz will enable users to access the corresponding BCH after the fork.
While there are fears of replay attacks that would cause people to lose BCH or BTC, the Bitcoin Cash developers have implemented strong, two-way replay protection that will ensure the two chains stay separate and that coins spent on one chain are not accidentally spent on another.
Once the fork is complete, users can extract their Bitcoin private keys in Airbitz and utilize a BCH supporting wallet (such as Electrum Cash) to spend their BCH coins. Airbitz will continue to function as a Bitcoin (BTC) wallet for sending and receiving BTC funds.
Airbitz does not currently support spending BCH coins, but should there be enough value and demand in BCH, Airbitz would also look into supporting full BCH functionality in a future release.
Airbitz is a multi-address, HD wallet meaning that funds may exist in multiple private keys in an Airbitz wallet. To simplify extraction of BCH private keys from Airbitz, we recommend consolidating funds into a single private key PRIOR TO Aug 1st. Here are the necessary steps to do so. Follow these steps for EACH wallet you have in Airbitz
- Tap Request and tap Copy
- Tap Scan/Send
- Tap [Address] at the bottom then paste the address
- Tap [Max] in the upper right
- Slide to confirm
After the fork, you can extract the private keys by doing the following
- iOS: Go to Wallets -> Export [icon]
- Android: Go to the transaction list of a wallet. Tap Export from the top right menu.
- Tap Master Private Seed
- Tap View
- Enter your password
- Your private seed will show on screen
Note that the Master Private Seed is specific to a wallet and each wallet will need their seed exported.
You can then view all your individual private keys using our Recovery utility. You can find the utility at https://airbitz.co/recovery or on GitHub at https://github.com/Airbitz/airbitz-wallet-recovery
The recovery tool is a standalone HTML file capable of showing all the private keys of a wallet given the Master Private Seed. Any private keys containing funds can then be transferred to a BCH supporting wallet to enable use of the BCH coins.
Airbitz staff will be available to assist users during this transition and can be reached on the various channels below
Slack: https://slack.airbitz.co
Telegram: https://telegram.airbitz.co
Whatsapp: https://whatsapp.airbitz.co
Thanks for using Airbitz
Paul Puey
CEO / Co-founder
