How to Claim Bitcoin Cash SV (BSV)

To claim Bitcoin Cash SV (BSV) if you own your private keys, you’ll need to configure the official BSV wallet. To claim via a third party, follow their directions. There is a lot that could go wrong, so take a breath and don’t do anything without thinking it through.

Below we’ll walk you through how to claim Bitcoin Cash SV (BSV) safely. UPDATE MAY 2019: If you owned your private keys, this guide will be helpful regardless of what point and time you use, it however, if you did not, most of the other options for claiming BSV are no longer relevant.

In short, the method for claiming your SV differs by where you kept your BCH before the snapshot.

If you had it on an exchange or third party wallet, you need to follow their directions. UPDATE MAY 2019: BSV was delisted from many exchanges, so even some that had credited it won’t moving forward, like Kraken.

With exchanges you’ll do nothing and it is a matter of waiting. UPDATE MAY 2019: If you haven’t been credited already, it is likely the exchange isn’t supporting BSV.

With third party wallets you must follow the directions on their official website very carefully.

If you had your BCH in a wallet where you owned your private keys, then it is a little more complicated.

First you need to download the official BSV wallet. You can choose another wallet that is BSV friendly where you control your private keys in theory, but at this point using anything other than the official wallet is dangerous (BEWARE FAKE SV WALLETS; people will lose all their BCH ABC and BSV rushing to find a wallet that can’t be found with a simple search, scammers do this every fork, if you were in control of your private keys use the official Github wallets below only to be safe).

The official Bitcoin SV wallet software can be found here https://github.com/bitcoin-sv/bitcoin-sv/releases (that is the Bitcoin SV Release 0.1.0). NOTE: To fully complete the process you may also need to download the ABC wallet. See the official Bitcoin ABC wallet software: https://github.com/Bitcoin-ABC/bitcoin-abc/releases (Bitcoin ABC 0.18.2). Also, if needed, the official Bitcoin Unlimited wallet software can be found here: https://github.com/BitcoinUnlimited/BitcoinUnlimited/releases.

NOTE: As time goes along there may be newer version of the above wallets, if it is on the official Github, you can download the newest version.

All that covered, if you want to confirm anything on SV, the Official Bitcoin SV website is https://bitcoinsv.io/. You can also see an official list of third party wallets and exchanges that support SV.

Once you have your software ready (either you have done the research and have the link to click, or you have the file downloaded and everything installed), you can follow these directions on how to safely claim crypto forks carefully.

With that in mind, if you are dealing with your private keys and had to search for “how do I claim my Bitcoin SV,” and especially if you aren’t in a rush to sell/trade, then I suggest doing nothing until the dust settles (because what you need to do to be extra safe is a little high level right now).

Not only can you run into issues by not knowing what you are doing (not a big problem if you methodically follow best practices for claiming forks), but you can run into issues even if you know how to claim a fork due to other necessary steps like like not protecting yourself against replay protection (Neither chain implemented replay protection at first, that meant sending BCH and BSV carried an extra risk… and since part of best practices of claiming a fork involves moving funds, a chain not having replay protection adds in another complication NOTE: See the update below for more details).

Long story short, if you don’t know what you are doing to any extent, and you didn’t have your BCH on an exchange or in a third party wallet you trust, for now the best bet for you might just be to do nothing.

For those who want to brave it, it is a matter of 1. downloading the ABC and BSV wallets, waiting for the blockchain to load, and then importing your existing Bitcoin Cash private keys (this is the same general solution for every fork), and 2. in this fork specifically, taking measures to protect your funds, including protecting yourself against replays and moving your existing BCH before you import your private keys.

I’ll update this page as things get a little more user friendly 🙂

UPDATE ON REPLAY PROTECTION: Bitcoin SV stated that they were implementing replay protection sometime after this article was written. However, they then said that Bitcoin Cash (BCHABC) still hasn’t implement replay protection. For me things are still a little fuzzy on what exactly is going on. I think the bottom line here is that if you are going to claim the fork, do a quick read up on the state of replay protection with both BCH (ABC) and BSV. With that in mind, BSV has covered “coin splitting” on their site, and that is a good place to start your research. When a chain adds replay protection, they take care of the coin splitting process for users, however, users can manually use coin splitting tools to do this themselves. That said, the BSV site, like our site, still recommends “waiting.” So bottom line, 1. you can technically claim your SV now, but 2. general wisdom still says “wait.”