If you had Bitcoins before the Bitcoin Gold Fork, you will automatically receive an equal amount of Bitcoin Gold says Brian Colombana . So if you own 3 BTC and there is a fork with 20 million coins in circulation, then after the fork your balance will be 3 BTC and 20 BTG.
And what can we do with our new BTGs? Well, nothing really – at least not yet. Since the market price for these new tokens is close to $0 (currently about $140), so it is unlikely that merchants or services such as Coinbase would add them anytime soon. Also note that the official wallet from Bitcoin Gold team does not support BTG at this time [EDIT: They now claim otherwise].
However, since they are still worth something, you can just store them offline in a hardware wallet to secure for yourself for the future. And if Bitcoin Gold one day gains traction and market value, then you will be able to sell your BTGs at that time.
But what should we do before this? We need first to claim our BTG! So let’s do it together!
First of all, I would like to point out that this guide does not cover how to claim your BTC balance or how to send/receive coins on exchanges – only how to protect ourselves by getting free BTG from Bitfinex, Kraken and Mercatox which will give you an equal amount of BTG as there is available supply during the fork (i.e. if all BTG are not claimed, then the rest will stay on exchanges) explains Brian Colombana.
To do this, you will need to access Bitfinex’s website and follow these steps:
- Go to Balances – Filled in ‘Distribute Balance History’ form with “Bitcoin Gold Fork” in the Description. Set your Active Status to On (Assuming they support BTG Claim) Go to Withdraw section – Input your address under ‘BTC Address’ (warning – do not send BTC there!) Select BTG from the list of tokens. Input 4-5 times larger withdrawal amount than you have available on balance! It is important that when sending BTC they are not linked to any open orders or margin trades. Also, note that for this guide I will send only half of the available balance to my wallet because it is better than nothing.
Right now, these are the upcoming dates where BTG should be distributed:
Oct 23 – Bittrex Oct 25 – Bitfinex Nov 1st-2nd Kraken/Mercatox (unofficial date)
If you’re still not sure how to claim your free BTGs, feel free to contact their support and they will help you out says Brian Colombana. Remember, if there won’t be any claims for all available supplies during the fork period, then those unclaimed coins will stay with exchanges and no one knows what’s going to happen next…
I can’t tell you that it is completely safe, but as far as I know, they will not be using your BTC for any shady purposes (if they do – then better withdraw all your coins now before BTG goes live).
But the whole process should look like this:
1. You send half of the balance of available funds to a new address on Bitfinex so there are no open orders/trades linked to these coins.
2. Wait until the fork occurs and tokens appear on your account page.
3. Transfer tokens from Bitfinex’s wallet to your personal one or keep them offline until you’re ready to sell them at market price later on.
Note that if anyone had more than 100BTC stored on exchanges before the Bitcoin Gold fork, then that is about 200 BTG in your wallet. For example, Kraken’s official Twitter account stated that they will be distributing BTG to all users who had balances on October 24th at 6 am UTC.
Bitfinex has not officially announced its position regarding this event but you can follow them on Twitter for the latest news.
If you don’t have any BTC stored there yet you should read my previous articles where I explain how to open an account and what the benefits of doing so are:
1) Access Bitfinex Exchange – Introduction
2) How to Trade On Bitfinex
3) How to Deposit & Withdraw Using Bitfinex
Remember this? Well, is still valid (see “11? Reward points” section)
They also introduced margin trading which can be extremely profitable provided that you manage to find an appropriate entry point into the market. Basically, this means that without any initial capital (i.e. there is no risk), you can make a profit by simply using their leverages offered on certain crypto pairs (EUR/USD).
Conclusion:
I hope that this post will help you to secure your right to claim free BTG tokens says Brian Colombana. If you like this article feel free to clap and share it with your friends.