Hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of BCH is languishing in segwit addresses. The funds were mistakenly sent there by users who have no easy way of differentiating segwit and non-segwit addresses. Retrieving the funds is difficult, but not entirely impossible, as p2sh.info’s Antoine Le Calvez has revealed. He’s discovered what’s believed to be the first successful bitcoin cash recovery, aided by the miners who confirmed the transaction.
Stuck in No Man’s Land
When bitcoin forked leading to the creation of bitcoin cash, woeful tales of funds sent to the wrong chain abounded. With bitcoin and bitcoin cash addresses indistinguishable, it’s an easy mistake to make. Provided the user holds the private keys to the destination wallet, however, retrieving the coins is relatively straightforward.
Sending BCH to a BTC address on an exchange is a different matter. 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; and then there’s Bittrex, who said they would consider looking into such cases, but there would be an admin fee of at least 0.1 BTC…
