Don’t Get Scammed: Hodl Your Bitcoin Gold

Keep an Eye Out For Bitcoin Gold Scams

Let us offer a clear warning. Don’t go chasing Bitcoin Gold so hard you get scammed. There are fake wallets and fake instructions floating around. Using them can result in you losing Bitcoin.

Essentially, if you put your private keys in a fake Bitcoin Gold wallet designed for “phishing,” it can eat your Bitcoins.

The official Bitcoin Gold site will release instructions for claiming Bitcoin Gold tokens (i.e. the cryptocurrency known as Bitcoin Gold). The instructions have not been released yet (and even after they are, they need to be verified by outside sources before you should follow the steps).

UPDATE: The official site is starting to list wallets that can be used to claim Bitcoin Gold. You can follow the instructions in those links. However, in general, you won’t be able to access your Bitcoin Gold until after November 1st. For an example of a legit way to collect Bitcoin Gold see: Collecting your free Bitcoin Gold ($BTG) coins with Coinomi from Medium.com. UPDATE 2: See Bitcoin Gold officially launched, see the most the recent update and find out how to claim your Gold.

You already have your Gold if you were in a wallet/exchange that supported the fork during the fork at block 491,407 (i.e. if you held your private keys or if you were on a platform that supported the fork). That is, you have the private keys associated with your Bitcoin Gold it even if you don’t have Bitcoin Gold tokens in a Bitcoin Gold wallet.

TIP: After block 491,407 you can spend or move out your Bitcoins. A snapshot was taken at block 491,407. It was only in that moment that Bitcoin and Bitcoin Gold were directly connected. Moving forward, Bitcoin and Bitcoin Gold should be considered completely different coins.

With that said, to actually access your tokens, you need to take steps that are essentially unknown at the moment.

If you found a source that seems like they are offering you instructions, chances are they are phishing for your coins and you are going to get burned.

Don’t get burned. Take a chill pill and wait for official instructions and a thumbs’ ups from pros like Bittrex, Coinbase, official wallets, the Bitcoin core team, etc.

Or, if you do want to play with fire, don’t literally put all your BTC in the rando wallet you found online that claims to be the Bitcoin Gold wallet but isn’t on the official site and doesn’t even show in Google.

Bitcoin Gold might go up or down in the meantime, and so might Bitcoin, but like, your Bitcoins are the real asset with value here. You don’t want to jeopardize them because you have itchy fingers and want your Bitcoin Gold now.

This whole fork as been a little sketchy. Proceed with caution and consider, as Bittrex says:

Bitcoin Gold does not currently have:

• Fully formed consensus code
• Implemented replay protection
• Adequate code for testing and auditing
• Publicly known code developers

Do you want to go messing with fake wallets and a coin without replay protection based on secondhand information? That is your call. Most will likely want to heed more conservative advice and wait for an official word (or wait for your wallet or exchange to give you the thumbs up).

All that said, we can give you are insight, but we can’t tell you what to do with your life. You need to make your own investment decisions. Just, for all the average investors out there, be cautious and don’t let the lure of trading Bitcoin Gold now get in the way of your better judgement.

TIP: Word on the street (which can be verified via GitHub code; see following link) is that Bitcoin Gold has been premined. Consider what Bittrex says, “Bitcoin Gold codebase also contains a private premine of 8,000 blocks (100,000 BTG). Please be aware that if a market does open there is a possibility of the developers selling their premined BTG on the open market.”

BOTTOMLINE: You are an adult (probably), you can make your own choices. If you want our advice, that advice is: Watch out for fake instructions and fake wallets (see examples of fishy instructions for claiming Bitcoin Gold tokens via fishy wallets). You can lose your Bitcoin if you make the wrong moves here. Once the official site gives instructions, we will verify and post them. See the official BitcoinGold site.