A thread on Reddit has revealed some cryptocurrency users have been sending Bitcoin Cash (BCH) to legacy bitcoin wallet addresses. This has caused them to lose their funds.
Also read: Bitcoin.com Just Added Bitcoin Cash Functionality for All Wallet Versions
Btctroubadour wrote the post on Reddit. He said many people have been making this mistake. They have especially been sending their BCH to BTC Trezor wallets. The author of the post provided a list of users who have accidentally made these BCH to BTC transactions. Here are just a couple:
- https://np.reddit.com/r/TREZOR/comments/6zlagx/noob_needs_helpby_mistake_send_bitcoin_cash_bch/
- https://np.reddit.com/r/TREZOR/comments/6wm3re/sent_bch_to_wrong_address_help/
According to the Reddit report, users are also allegedly being told there is no way to recover their lost funds when they enter the wrong address. However, that is not the whole truth.
Solutions to the problem?
Private Key Fix
First it is important to note that these kind of mistakes will happen. The BCH and BTC addresses look similar, but it is still up to the user to confirm the proper address. For instance, on Trezor’s page, they issue multiple warnings about sending coins to the proper addresses.
That stated, there is a quasi-technical method to retrieve lost coins. A user can go through the process of using their private key to sign the transaction correctly on the chain they are transacting on. However, Btctroubadour elaborated on another fix using the public key:
In order to spend money sent to a P2SH-wrapped segwit address, you only need to know the public key of the address (or more precisely: the RIPEMD160 hash of the SHA256 hash of a the public key). Yes, a hash derived from the public key, not the private key.
BCH Recovery Service
In his final analysis on the Reddit post, Btctroubadour hoped miners would eventually create a BCH Segwit-Recovery Service. He said, “What we need is one or more trustworthy (yes, trust would unfortunately be required) miner to step up and make a BCH Segwit-Recovery Service for this particular purpose, in a somewhat similar way that they provided acceleration services for the BTC network (example1 and example2).”
This proposed solution would allegedly allow miners to help users regain control of the BCH they accidentally sent to BTC addresses. However, it is always good to bear in mind that end users are wholly responsible for the final destination of their funds.
This post has been updated for clarification. In its original form the phrasing around how miners would be able to solve this issue was disambiguous.
Additional reporting by Sterlin Lujan.
Have you had troubles distinguishing between bitcoin and bitcoin cash wallet addresses? Share your thoughts in the comments section below!
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Bitcoin is a decentralized digital currency that enables near-instant, low-cost payments to anyone, anywhere in the world. Bitcoin uses peer-to-peer technology to operate with no central authority: transaction management and money issuance are carried out collectively by the network. Read all about it at wiki.Bitcoin.com.
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