BitcoinSV Splitting Guide using Electrum BSV

Importing an Electron Cash wallet

This article is intended for users who have previously installed Electron Cash, and have wallets they already have used with it. They will want to safely split their Bitcoin SV (BSV) from the Bitcoin Cash ABC (BCH) held in those wallets.

Why split your coins?

The problem that splitting coins solves, is to make it so you can spend the coins on the Bitcoin SV network without the same transaction also spending the coins on the Bitcoin Cash ABC network. This happens for coins that have not been split, because when your wallet creates the transaction that spends them, it has no way of marking that transaction so it only works on one of those networks.

How might this affect a user? Alice might sell Bob her BCH, but because her coins are unsplit, when her transaction gets broadcast so that it gets mined, Bob can also send it to the Bitcoin SV network. Bob then ends up with both Alice’s BCH and her BSV.

Alice would be wise to download ElectrumSV and follow a coin-splitting guide like this one, so that her BSV can be separated from her BCH coins, before she tries to send either of them.

Getting ElectrumSV

If you already have Electrum sv wallet, it is important that you make sure you have the latest version, so please check that before proceeding.

If you do not already have ElectrumSV, there is only one safe place to obtain it, which is from the official web site at BitcoinSV wallet. Select the download appropriate for your operating system and get it working.

Importing wallets from Electron Cash

There are two ways that ElectrumSV can help you import the wallets from your existing Electron Cash. These both involve looking at the standard location for Electron Cash wallets, and offering you the chance to copy them over to the standard location for ElectrumSV wallets.

You should not under any circumstances open your original Electron Cash wallet in ElectrumSV, as it in the best case it contains Bitcoin Cash ABC specific information which will be lost and in the worst case might corrupt the wallet.

When you do not have any ElectrumSV wallets

When you start ElectrumSV if you have no wallets, it will show your Electron Cash wallets as the first page, and aid you in copying them.
Select one or more of the wallets listed here, then press the ‘OK’ button. If you selected any, you will see a popup confirming how many wallets were copied.

When you have other bitcoin sv wallet

If you start ElectrumSV and you already have wallets, it will not make the same offer to copy them. Instead it will indicate if it found your Electron Cash wallets and provide the option to opt-in to the same copying process as an additional ‘Import’ button on the wallet selection page.

You will see the text ‘Existing Electron Cash wallets detected’ and an ‘Import’ button beside it enabled as shown.

Select one or more of the wallets listed here, then press the ‘OK’ button. If you selected any, you will see a popup confirming how many wallets were copied.

Opening your imported Electron Cash wallet

Now that you have imported an Electron Cash wallet, and you want to go ahead and split the coins within it, you need to select it. If it is not already shown as selected, use the ‘Choose’ button to view the ElectrumSV wallet folder and select a wallet to open.

You should not under any circumstances browse to the place Electron Cash stores it’s wallets and choose one there. The dangers of doing so have already been covered above.

Splitting your coins

Now that you have opened your wallet, you will want to get on with splitting your coins. Go to the coin-splitting tab.

The tab outlines the process used to split your coins. You might want to read it before proceeding, to understand both the process involved, and also what will happen when you begin the splitting process.

The ‘?’ button provides additional information. Note that this guide only covers the simplest case of splitting all your coins at once. If you want to do more advanced actions like freezing coins and splitting them in separate chunks, you will either have to work it out for yourself or wait for a later guide that covers that in further detail.

Click on the ‘Split’ button, to begin the splitting process. If you set a password on your wallet, it will ask you to re-enter your password, to confirm the split.

When the process has completed, you will be able to see the transactions involved in the process in the History tab.

Confirming the split

The simplest way to confirm that your BSV has been split from your BCH, is to look at the histories in both the original Electron Cash wallet and also in the new ElectrumSV wallet which was copied from it.

The Electron Cash history should be unchanged, while the ElectrumSV history will show the splitting transactions and may feature a slightly different balance to indicate the small amount paid in fees to send the transaction which split your coins.