Bitcoin Cash forks off from the main Bitcoin network on August 1 at 12:20 UTC. Investors and traders show no signs of panic. Crypto analyst Vinny Lingham, CEO of Civic, forecast the opposite earlier
Bitcoin Cash forks off from the main Bitcoin network on August 1 at 12:20 UTC. Investors and traders show no signs of panic.
Crypto analyst Vinny Lingham, CEO of Civic, forecast the opposite earlier this week. "If I were running a hedge fund, I'd buy a ton of bitcoin and short them simultaneously. On August 1, dump bitcoin, cover shorts and dump BCH (Bitcoin Cash)," he said. The community dubs Lingham the "Bitcoin Oracle" for calling price movements correctly. His prediction assumed panic selling would grip the market as the fork date closed in.
Instead, Bitcoin's price climbed from below $1,800 to $2,910 over the past 24 hours. Jameson Lopp, an engineer at BitGo, noted the divergence. He tweeted: "Bitcoin apparently hasn't heard about tomorrow's apocalyptic hard fork and is crashing in the wrong direction."
Hard forks disrupt normal operations because they alter security systems and infrastructure. Exchanges will go dark for nearly the entire day on August 1 to process the split and distribute Bitcoin Cash to users. Everyone who held Bitcoin before the fork receives an equivalent amount of BCH. Exchanges must handle the technical work of crediting these holdings.
Wallet providers are moving at different speeds. Breadwallet has adopted a conservative approach while Trezor and Ledger published detailed recovery instructions for accessing the new Bitcoin Cash. Bitcoin developers including Jimmy Song of Paxos and Andrew Desantis argue for the simplest path: don't move anything. Store your Bitcoin and let the exchanges do the distribution. Touching your private keys adds unnecessary risk.
Song laid out his thinking on Tone Vays' World Crypto Network podcast: "Right now, my backup is pretty secure. I know there is one backup in a Mac that doesn't turn on, and another back up on a couple of USB thumbdrives. I'm not in a rush to get this bitcoin private key out because right now I know it is safe. The moment I plug this USB drive to some computer, the moment I get it out, the moment I change the wallet.dat file, I bring this bitcoin into the world and that scares me. I'm really keeping my bitcoin private."
Users who manage their own private keys through non-custodial wallets must claim their Bitcoin Cash manually. Breadwallet, Ledger, Trezor and other platforms have committed to tools that let users access their new holdings. Market confidence in Bitcoin should hold steady as Segwit activation brings new functionality to the network.
