The Bitcoin Cash debacle continues to spawn plenty of discussion among community members. Even though some people doubt the hard fork will occur, certain companies and service providers are preparing for the worst. But which wallets will support Bitcoin Cash? That list still seems limited. The binaries for Bitcoin ABC seemingly provide wallet services, but some external support would be nice to have as well.
Bitcoin Cash Wallets Are Difficult to Come By
For most people, the only Bitcoin Cash wallet they will need is the address provided by one of the exchanges supporting this alternative version of Bitcoin. While there is some merit to that, relying on exchange wallets also means the user is never in full control of his or her funds. For those people who want to actively support Bitcoin Cash and not be reliant on an exchange to keep their funds secure, alternative wallet solutions are in high demand.
The obvious solution would be using the updated Bitcoin ABC binaries, which were released a few hours ago. The updated client offers strong replay protection, which was one of the aspects in which some exchanges felt Bitcoin Cash was lacking. Additionally, other changes were introduced including updated ABC logos. It seems most of the binaries were based on the Bitcoin Unlimited client, which is not entirely surprising. We can only hope this software does not cause any issues and force nodes offline.
Additional wallet service providers for Bitcoin Cash are hard to find these days. However, the project has gained significant support from Trezor, as the hardware wallet manufacturer is looking to make itself compatible with BCC (or whatever the final name of this token turns out to be). Having a hardware wallet manufacturer on board is significant, since hardware wallets are still the most secure solution when it comes to keeping cryptocurrency safe.
There will be an Electrum wallet solution for Bitcoin Cash as well. Contrary to what some people believe, however, this project was not endorsed by the Electrum team in an official capacity. Instead, someone took its source code from GitHub and ported it to support Bitcoin Cash. A third-party fork of an existing wallet solution like this one always requires some scrutiny, since its legitimacy is as yet unknown. It is still good to see someone attempting to create a solution, and the community no doubt will appreciate the effort.
Clarification: A hard fork that modifies Bitcoin's difficulty rules, such as BCC, is not supported by Electrum. Tx will show as unverified.
— Electrum (@ElectrumWallet) July 25, 2017
As it currently stands, there will most likely be three different wallet solutions supporting Bitcoin Cash in the near future: a desktop client, a version of Electrum, and a hardware wallet. That is not a bad place to start. The only thing missing now is a mobile wallet, although there are rumors Jaxx may look to integrate support for Bitcoin Cash given sufficient community demand. A lot of people will just be leaving their tokens in an exchange wallet during the first few weeks of next month.
One lingering question is which abbreviation Bitcoin Cash will utilize on the exchanges. Considering that BCC has already been taken by a lesser-known altcoin — though still a top 15 cryptocurrency — something will need to change. A lot of Bitcoin Cash supporters feel that BCC is the correct abbreviation and “people should just make sure they buy the right currency.” That kind of attitude will not get the project very far.
