BCH in Quantum Physics

Last May 15, Bitcoin cash underwent an upgrade to its network. The updates brought were to enhance user experience and a couple of improvements when it comes to processing transactions. The community accepted the upgrade as a successful one. I think however that the upgrade brought my sort of weird experience in read.cash.

I along with a number of users noticed and experienced a bit of trouble in sending out the BCH we have collected in read.cash's wallet to other wallets. Upvoting was fine, buying promotional placement was fine, sending sponsorships was also fine, the only feature affected was sending out the money.

Scenario

The issue went like this: I decided to withdraw some of the BCH I had from read.cash to another wallet to serve as savings, and I also sent some to another wallet for consumption. One of the wallets I sent to was bitcoin.com and the other was coins.ph. When using coins.ph, I have observed that there is always a significant delay for the transactions so I have patiently waited for hours. But when I tried to send to bitcoin.com, I was surprised that it seemed to be delayed to, which was unusual. Normally, once you send BCH to bitcoin.com wallet, the arrival of the sent funds was almost automatic and real time. But not this time, I had to wait for minutes, and then it turned to hours.

I was worried that there's something wrong with my read.cash wallet and opted to ask around the platform. I posted a short post detailing my situation and the community responded. As it turned out, I was not the only one having that problem, most of us experienced that debacle. As I read around, many users posted their experiences too. So it seemed that it was happening sitewide, we speculated that this was brought by the upgrades the BCH network underwent.

@Laurenexai shared an article with me to somehow "recover" the funds that were seemed to be missing. I followed the instructions written on the article to the letter and voila, I seemed to have "recovered" my funds.

Basically, the steps to recover the missing funds included importing your read.cash wallet to an external service like bitcoin.com using the seed phrase provided with your read.cash wallet. After successfully importing your wallet to bitcoin.com, you then need to go to your wallet's information and select "Scan missing transactions". After waiting for a minute or so, your original balance will reflect in the bitcoin.com wallet.

After importing the wallet to bitcoin.com I tried using the funds and tried to send some to other wallets. And it worked, I was able to receive the sent amount appropriately and promptly. So I was a bit relieved and quite glad to see that my humble earnings didn't go to any wasteland and weren't lost in transit.

BCH Superposition

But after importing and recovering my wallet, I now have a weird and a bit confusing predicament. My read.cash wallet now exists in two places at the same time. Yep, in scientific sense my wallet entered a state of quantum superposition. My wallet from read.cash seemed to be split into two but they are not in sync or equal. The normal expectation is, the imported wallet on bitcoin.com shall reflect what is on the wallet embedded here in read.cash. But for a time after importing the wallet, they were out of sync and their balances differ.

Let us just say that my imported wallet on bitcoin.com displayed a usable balance of $20 worth of BCH and the read.cash embedded wallet displayed only $10. When I transacted using the bitcoin.com wallet, I sent $1 worth of BCH so it's now $19 and read.cash is still at $10. I thought that it was just a delay in consolidating so I waited for a bit. A generous user upvoted my post for $0.05 and then the magic happened. The two wallets became one, their balances synced. They were both now showing $19.05. And again, I was relieved and glad that they are now seem to be working properly, but with just a bit of delay in consolidation. But with that time, my imagination ran wild.

At first glance, it seemed that I have two separate wallets at the same time because the transactions did not reflect in real time. What if I upvoted an article for $19 and at the same time I spent the $19 on the bitcoin.com wallet. I wonder what would have happened? Will there be a reversal after or will I be in debt to either wallet? Or maybe the second attempt will not push through because as I gathered the recent upgrade also included safeguard against double-spending.

As of today, both wallets seemed to be in sync with the same delay in consolidating between them. I am not sure how much time they need to be synced but as far as I am concern, it seemed to be working as intended.

Hey there!

Have you experienced the recent fiasco in read.cash? How did you resolve it? Are you still experiencing it? No matter what happens, always keep your seed phrases secure okay?

Any thoughts or resolution you want to impart, kindly visit my comment section and I will be waiting for you. Thanks and as always,

Cheers!!!

Update:

Wallet of read.cash is now back on track and it's in sync with the whole BCH network. Hooraaah!

References :

Tom Siegfried 2020, How a quantum technique highlights math’s mysterious link to physics, Science News, accessed 18 May 2021, <https://www.sciencenews.org/article/how-quantum-technique-highlights-math-mysterious-link-physics>

Jennifer Leman 2019, A Quantum Leap in the Classical World, Popular Mechanics, accessed 18 May 2021, <https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/math/a29339863/quantum-superposition-molecules/>

Sergio Goschenko 2021, Bitcoin Cash Slated for May 15- Upgrade to Bring Improvements for Users and Merchants, Bitcoin.com, accessed 18 May 2021, <https://news.bitcoin.com/bitcoin-cash-slated-for-may-15-upgrade-to-bring-improvements-for-users-and-merchants/>