Bitcoin Gold: How to get the new coins

Who understands how private keys work, has a clear advantage: Recently, Bitcoin Gold can be traded on some stock exchanges. Time to think about how to split them off from bitcoins.


After Bitcoin Cash has demonstrated that a spin-off of Bitcoin by a Hardfork can work well, Bitcoin Gold is catching up. All credits that were in Bitcoin on the 25th of October are available in principle as Bitcoin Gold. If you want to know more about the spin-off and its possible advantages or disadvantages, you should read this article.

This is about how you can benefit from it. Since November 11, the Bitcoin Gold Blockchain has been running publicly - meaning that transactions are possible - and since yesterday, trading in Bitcoin Gold tokens has been possible on the Bittrex Stock Exchange, where the new coin has a trading volume of nearly 100 million Dollars in 24 hours. Anyone who intends to sell his share now has a good opportunity to do so and is currently getting more than $ 200 per coin.

But not quite trivial is the question of how to split Bitcoin Gold from Bitcoins. Those who had their bitcoins at the time of the fork on a trading platform like Bitcoin.de have the luck that this usually takes over the trading platform for him. If you prefer to keep your bitcoins yourself, you will meet certain challenges.

Basically, once again the sentence comes true that you only really own bitcoins, if you have the private key. First, to get Bitcoin Gold, you have to export the private key and then import it into a wallet that is capable of Bitcoin Gold.

Bitcoin Gold export

The same amount of Bitcoin Gold is available at every address on Bitcoin on October 25th. However, so far the fewest Wallets know. If you do not want to wait until your rootwallet supports Bitcoin Gold, you can try exporting the private key to import it into a Bitcoin Gold enabled wallet.

For most desktop wallets, the export of private keys is quite simple: For Bitcoin Core, this is done via the console with the command "dumpprivkey" and then the corresponding address. First you have to unlock the wallet with the command "walletpassphrase".

Electrum is also extremely user-friendly: right-click, select "show private key" and enter the password. Especially handy: The private key is even displayed as a QR code. As we will see later, this is extremely useful in this case.

Also easy is the Wallet Bither. Exodus also lets you export the keys if you know how to do it. More in this article. Jaxx and Armory also show the user the private keys in the corresponding menu item.

It gets more difficult on most mobile wallets and online wallets. These usually only export the seed, but not the private keys. While it is possible to recreate all addresses, including private keys, using the seed and a tool such as Ian Coleman's BIP39 Generator, this does not cost a lot of work. The same is true for hardware wallets, but here's the advantage that Trezor and Ledger already support Bitcoin Gold, so exporting is not really necessary.

In case of doubt you can simply enter the name of your wallet with the addition "export private key" at Google. Probably you will find information on how you can pull out the key.

With all this, one must be aware that the export of the private key is a very delicate operation. When the private key is displayed, the sufficient information to clear an address is loaded into the memory. You should only do this on a secure system, and you should not save a private key in an e-mail or a text document.

It is best to first copy the address for which you want to know the private key, transfer the Bitcoin (and the Bitcoin Cash) to a new address and then display the private key. The address will then no longer contain bitcoin and bitcoin cash, but still the bitcoin gold.

How to activate them now is the next question.

Bitcoin Gold import

To activate Bitcoin Gold from the private key, you need a wallet that firstly supports Bitcoin Gold and secondly allows the import of private keys. Ideally, this is also a wallet that trusts her. That should limit the possible choice already clearly.

According to Bitcoin Gold's website, there are seven wallets for the new cryptocurrency. The two hardware wallets Ledger and Trezor are out of the game because they only generate keys from the seed and do not allow imports. I honestly never heard of Freewallet, Guarda and BitPie. They are available for Android and iOS. At Guarda and BitPie, I have not found any information that they allow the import of private keys, in Freewallet, it seems possible.

I tried Coinomi. This is an Android wallet for a lot of cryptocurrencies that you've heard of before. With her you can import private keys relatively easily. You first have to create a new wallet for Bitcoin Gold. Then click on the three dots on the top right. In the menu, the import of private keys under the somewhat confusing in German option "empty paper purse" to find. Here you can enter the private key, or, better: scan by QR code, if that is possible.

If you do not have an Android smartphone, it will be hard. A desktop wallet that supports Bitcoin Gold and allows the import of private keys is currently not available, except for the Full Node Client. This means that you have to download the entire blockchain. Maybe you can also do a reorganization of the previous blockchain. If you already have a client, that means you have to drive in two tracks, so you have to save the blockchain twice; even threefold if you already have a Bitcoin Cash Node parallel to Core.

At btgwallet.online you can create an online wallet or enter a raw transaction and sign it with the private key. So anyone who is able to make the raw transaction for Bitcoin Gold can use this tool. Everyone else will have to use Android or wait.

If the import of the keys is successful, you can send the Bitcoin Gold tokens to a stock exchange. I still found address incompatibilities between Coinomi and Bittrex, but this was resolved by first sending Bitcoin Gold to the Trezor wallet. There you can split off Bitcoin Gold from Bitcoins and receive, store and send Bitcoin Gold when you log in to the beta wallet.

Bitcoin Gold Care!

I have to make one important mention here: the export of private keys is not only a sensitive operation in terms of security, but also in terms of privacy. Coinomi, for example, does not import the keys directly, but forms a transaction with them on Wallet's addresses. That's quite useful.

However, you run the risk of publicizing how your bitcoins are related. Even if you have different Bitcoin addresses that are not connected to the Bitcoin blockchain, you are revealing that information by merging Bitcoin Gold. At the latest when you send the Bitcoin Gold on a stock exchange, it should have happened to the privacy of your Bitcoins.

Therefore, if you are splitting and selling Bitcoin Gold, you should be aware that you are paying for it with a bit of privacy.