How to Recover BCH sent to a BTC Address

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4 years ago (Last updated: 3 years ago)

Let's face it, BTC addresses aren't that easy to differentiate from BCH addresses, well thats because BCH is a fork of BTC. Most people have had the daunting process of always checking the address they want to send their BCH, and to make sure it's the right one.

Due to this similarities, we find people making this kind of mistake more often than not.

Recovering BCH sent to a BTC address, technically depends on two things;

  1. If the BTC address you sent it to, belongs to you, or you at least control the private key for that address. This is especially important in cases where users end up sending BCH to BTC addresses belonging to exchanges. Without private keys, the customer is reliant on the goodwill and patience of the exchange to remedy the mishap. Some exchanges have done their best to help; some have shrugged it off as not being their problem.

  2. If the BTC address you sent the BCH to, is a Segwit address. Sending BCH to a regular BTC address is unfortunate but not always fatal. But what happens when bitcoin cash is sent to a segwit bitcoin address? That’s when things get complicated. Legacy bitcoin addresses start with a 1, whereas segwit addresses generally start with a 3. (There are also segwit addresses that start with bc1, but that technically isn't supported by BCH, so it won't be a problem.) The trouble is that while segwit addresses start with a 3, not all addresses that start with a 3 are segwit compatible. And there’s the problem.

HOW TO RECOVER MY BCH IF I HAVE THE PRIVATE KEY FOR MY BTC ADDRESS

If you have the private key to the destination wallet (BTC address), retrieving the coins is relatively straightforward.

I'll be using electron cash in this guide. You can get it from http://electroncash.org

After downloading and installing electron-cash for the first time, you'll be prompted to select between auto server and manual server

  1. Choose auto server >

  2. click on new wallet >

  3. select import bitcoin address or private key >

  4. paste the key there, and click next. The coins should show right up... Pretty straight forward right?!


HOW TO RECOVER MY BCH IF I HAVE THE SEED PHRASE FOR MY BTC WALLET

If you don't know how to get the private key for your wallet, but have the seed phrase, no need to worry. Follow these steps and you should be able to recover the BCH

Open up Electron-cash

  1. click on new wallet >

  2. standard wallet >

  3. I have seed >

  4. put the seed phrase in the box that pops up >

  5. click options and tick bip39 ( If you had a passphrase on your wallet, you can enable the extend seed option here. If not, leave it as is.) >

  6. Derivation path is usually the tricky part.. Different wallets have different derivation paths... wallets like bitcoin.com, Jaxx use m/44'/0'/0' and some others use m/0'.. so its usually best to find out the path used by your wallet first.

  7. After that, you click next and the coins should show up.

HOW TO RECOVER MY BCH IF I SENT IT TO SEGWIT BTC ADDRESS

Unfortunately, the only way to recover the coins, is to contact a miner...

I Have been in contact with a miner on reddit who has had some few successes so far. If you need help regarding sending bch to a segwit, hit me up on reddit u/dcryptoguy

If you enjoyed this article, leave a like, share and donate.. Thanks.

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4 years ago (Last updated: 3 years ago)

Comments

How can I do this on Coinbase? I sent BCH from bitcoin.com to my BCT wallet by accident. I can “view” it on Electron-Cash app but I can’t access it. Please help! Thank you!

$ 0.00
3 years ago

Hi how can I get in contact with a miner I’ve lost 320 dollars and the app I used are being ridiculous, I’ve followed the steps above I can find the funds but I can only view them 😂😂 feels like they are right there but I can’t reach them

$ 0.00
3 years ago

Did you ever figure this out? I did the same on Coinbase.

$ 0.00
3 years ago

Well, nobody is above mistake. Some people do the mistake, especially when they are not using the cash address .

$ 0.00
3 years ago

Lol, We are in 2020 and not 2017. Bitcoin cash addresses start with bitcoincash:

$ 0.00
4 years ago

"Most people have had the daunting process of always checking the address they want to send their BCH, and to make sure it's the right one."

I've never heard of anybody having this problem before.

We have a thing in Bitcoin Cash called "cash address" which is typically used instead of the legacy address which you're referring to.

Not only does the cash address start with several letters, but it has a prefix of "bitcoincash:"

So, for example, my Bitcoin Cash address is: bitcoincash:qrxvslm4v7k2ezd9hsp9f85y8lsf65jfzuj7y0rr00

This would be absolutely impossible to confuse with any other cryptocurrency.

$ 0.05
4 years ago