i am not a hardcore user, but just curious about cryptocurrencies. I am a little in mining, not very serious, but already two or three years long. Collected some BTC.
Now my problem: I hold my BTC on coinbase, which was in the early beginning more a wallet than an exchange. Anyway: at the time of the fork, they were at coinbase. Coinbase does not - and probably will not - support BTG. I will now purchase a hardware wallet, which supports BTG.
I would like to claim my forked BTG. How can i do this ?
Yes itâs true. Coinbase is in charge of all the Bitcoin Gold from the October snapshot. It is up to them to distribute it to their users. If they decide not to, then there is no way for you to retrieve your funds.
The reason for this is Coinbase does not provide private keys for its users, this makes it impossible to export your wallet to somewhere else to claim your Bitcoin Gold.
Youâll need join with others in approaching Coinbase to make it happen.
If you had your BTC in your own wallet - one where you control the private keys and are responsible for the security of those keys - you would be able to gain access to your BTG whenever you liked.
Coin held at Coinbase are in whatâs called a âcustodial wallet.â Coinbase has custody of the private keys and manages the security, and you simply log into their service to tell them what to do on your behalf. Youâre trusting them to handle certain things for you, which can be convenient, and for people who are careless, can be more secure than handling private keys yourself⌠but you give up custody and direct control over your own coins. Because of this, you and others like you are dependent on Coinbase to give you access to your BTG.
Coinbase is a for-profit company that is sensitive to customer desires and demands. Iâm fairly sure that if a large enough chorus of their customersâ voices were asking for BTG, Coinbase would make it happen. Thereâs absolutely not reason that they couldnât.
I for sure will get in contact with coinbase. But for the moment, they are even not reachable for those topics (support team under heavy loadâŚ).
Can you provide me with a valid helpful email adress I can write to ?
Can I remove my coins from coinbase and even get my BTG if Coinbase decides to support BTG later on ? Or are the private keys which give access to the BTG lost, when I remove my coins now ?
Coinbase argues that BTG is not secure because the source code (or parts of) is not public.
How do you see this ?
If we had any unpublished emails to staff at Coinbase, it would be inappropriate to publish them.
I believe the answer is yes, but thatâs a policy question for Coinbase. Generally, split distributions are determined based on holdings at the time of the split.
Again, the answer is typically âno.â Your addresses remain associated to your account even if you withdraw your funds and stop using their services. But, again, this is a policy question for Coinbase.
In general practice, an exchange holds a minority of their funds in hot wallets. Any deposits/withdrawal you make are going through hot wallets. The bulk of their funds are actually held in cold wallets, and they manage how much to keep in the hot versus cold wallets depending on daily flows.
This is why exchange withdrawal requests sometimes take a little while to approve - if itâs a small withdrawal and the hot wallet is flush, it can happen quickly. But if itâs a huge withdrawal or the hot wallet is depleted, it may take time before funds can be shifted and the withdrawal approved. (This is on top of all the security layers involved in authenticating and securing the actual transfer.)
This also means that the effects of a split or fork canât be calculated based on holdings in your specific deposit address - they must be calculated based on the total the Coinbase has allocated to your overall account holdings.
This is completely false. I suspect youâre referring to an old statement made before our launch on November 12th, 2017. All source code for everything has continuously been entirely public since Launch; this is independently verifiable, so any statement otherwise is completely false.
Ed, i didnât want you to publish any confidential or private mails from Coinbase.
I just need a legal email adress where i can write to.
Coinbaseâ support team is actually âunder heavy loadâ and they refuse support to topics which are not related to late payments and paypal (as stated on their support site)
To be fair, they do not say they are refusing support other than those topics; they say they are prioritizing those topcs. The sooner you get your query in, the sooner you can get an answer.
I do not know if emails to support simply go into their support queue, or are processed separately.
You mention a âlegalâ address - Iâm not sure if you mean to reach their legal team. I donât have information on that, but they do provide their list of state licenses:
They also have phone support, but I donât know if theyâll answer your specific question; phone support does exclude all issues except for a few specific ones:
Phone support is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year:
Every Coinbase user who held Bitcoin on their system on October 24th, 2017, is in the same situation as you are, as far as being unable to access their Bitcoin Gold. I do not, however, think many of them wrote a message to Coinbase, as you have.
Hi, for the BCT - BTG claim does the Bitcoin Gold version v0.15.0.2 allow the import of original BTC Private Keys into the wallet for conversion into BTG?
As always when handling private keys, you need to make sure your download is correct (check the hash) and make sure the machine on which youâre working is safe. Ideally, your machine will not be connected to any network while you work with your private keys.
Also, if youâre going to access your new coins manually, best practice to protect all your coins after a fork is as follows:
Handle the BTC side:
a. Create a new (empty) wallet address for BTC.
b. Move your BTC out of the forked address and into the new address.
Handle the private keys:
a. Export the private keys for the forked address from the old BTC software.
b. In the new wallet software for BTG, import your private keys for the forked address.
Handle the BTG side:
a. Create a new (empty) address for BTG in the new wallet software.
b. Move the forked coins into the new wallet address.
Why do it this way?
In step (2) above, you handle your private keys. When you handle your private keys, thereâs some risk - perhaps slight - that theyâll get exposed. Those private keys give access to both your old BTC wallet and access to the forked BTG wallet. For that reason, any time youâve handled private keys, itâs best to move the coins out of those addresses into safer ones.
Gentlemen (any Ladies here,too ?)),
a short update from me ybout Coinbase.
After several standard answers and after several repeated mails to them, I got now a statement from a real human)))), as follows: Hi again,
We do not support Bitcoin Gold, sorry! Regards,
XXX The Coinbase Team
which i answered:
Hi XXX,
I have the feeling, that you even did not read my message. Any standard answer is not appreciated nor accepted.
THIS IS ABOUT MONEY!
At the time of the Bitcoin Gold Fork i hold a considerable amount of BTC in my coinbase account. I expected to participate on this fork as with Bitcoin Cash.
By now, the Bitcoin Gold code is public, your arguments against any support ot BTG due to security reasons are void.
If you decide not to support BTG then export my private keys, that I on my own can participate on the fork.
I do not see any reason not to cooperate this way. I am ready to pay you a fee for your service.
Look forward to have a qualified reaction on my request!
I have written in to coinbase on 2 occasions too⌠first time in December last year which they replied in a generic way then this recent one which had a âhumanâ response.
It wasnât positive but i think it wasnât negative either. They have been employing more employees for their customer support department and i think have a better handle of things now then before⌠probably why i got a better response from them this time round⌠or maybe⌠just maybe⌠they might already be getting many similar requests and are seriously considering BTG but are not ready to send out any positive news for fear of repeating what happened to the insider trading with BCH⌠these are just my thoughtsâŚ
by the way am no rich guy and only have 1.10 BTC but 1 additional BTG is additional investment and money to me tooâŚ
