Introduction

Dealing with forks and claiming value from private keys is an involved process no matter how you look at it. For some, the complexity multiplies because the have a large number of addresses and a complex transaction history. Clearly, an automated, industrialized approach is needed.

The need was so great, that we created Forkdrop Suite to address this need.

This guide is to help the advanced or enterprise-level user through the process of using this tool and dealing with the related concerns that arise along the way.

Does This Apply To Me?

This guide assumes you are already familiar with the fundamentals of the fork and aidrdrop coin topic. These are covered and stepped through at a basic level in the Novice's Guide. To keep it simple, the Novice's Guide was written to overlook some concerns, which we will cover here.

The reason to follow these steps and use these advanced tools is to help automate the task. If you have many addresses and a complicated transaction record, the manual steps in the Novice's Guide may be too much to handle manually and this is the solution.

This process also uses TAILS as a platform over Ubuntu and therefore utilizes Tor for anonymity protection while claiming. We believe this is important for professional claiming too since it helps hide the physical location of keys holding value. But equally important, the security features of TAILS are superior when it comes to handling private keys. These tools we deem worth the minor additional complexity for the intermediate user who is more skilled than the novice.

If you have a requirement for hard anonymity in accomplishing the claiming and exchange task, the Cypherpunk's Guide has some additional discussion, though there is a lot of overlap with this guide.

What You Need

At the minimum, you need PC hardware that is capable of running a TAILS live-boot session. Mac hardware may be capable of running TAILS in some circumstances, but PC hardware is recommended. For following best practices, running TAILS off of a read-only DVD ROM drive is preferable than running it off a read/write USB drive. Also, having a SD card or USB drive you can use as encrypted storage is very helpful for safely keeping records between claiming tasks. System requirements and more details are covered in our TAILS setup guide:

Know Your Device

TAILS will not protect you from hardware-based attacks and other physical eavesdropping. Ensure you are using a computer that you reasonably trust to be working without hardware exploits and keyloggers. If you have a habit of visiting shady sites, or running shady software, or you have roommates or someone with access to your private space that you might not be able to fully trust, then using that PC could put your Bitcoin at risk. Also, ensuring a safe, secure and private physical location when handling keys is advisable.

Section 1: Conceptual Refresh

The Forkdrop Suite tools and guides that are here assume more familiarity with the claiming task than with the steps in the Novice's guide. If you are not deeply familiar, it is good to refresh on the basics involved for non-automation-assisted fork coin claiming:

Section 2: Setting Up A Secure System

TAILS

You will need to set up a TAILS live boot, since that is the target platform for Forkdrop Suite.

Removable Storage

To be able to store your report and record your claiming activities, it is highly reccomended that you set up an encrypted storage drive.

Getting Tools Ready

You will need to use some software tools that don't come installed with TAILS, so you will need to set them up before using them.

Section 3: Getting Organized To Claim

Finding Coins

Before deciding to go ahead with the task of claiming, using the tools to process your public addresses to get you organized and allow you to scope the task.

Before bringing your cold-storage private keys online and into the picture, Forkdrop Suite will process your public addresses and generate you the reports with detailed claiming instructions tailored to your addresses. This generated report document is essential for getting you oriented and organized. Once this is done, you can pause to read the report to understand the subsequent steps. The following two guides cover the execution of the tools to get you your custom report:

Finding Destination Addresses

Once you are aware of the quantity of coins you own and the keys associated with them, next you must figure out where to send them. Usually this is an exchange for the high-value amount of more widely-supporte fork coins:

You will find that some of the coins of lower value are difficult to sell and also trade for an underwhelming amount that may not be worth your effort. It is possible to donate these coins to Forkdrop.io to help support the site, this kind of guide and the backing tools. Have made the case in this article for your consideration:

The donation addresses for each coin are also provided in the generated report.

Accessing your Private Keys

Once you have your plan organized for your public addresses you have given the tool and are ready to proceed with the task of claiming, you need to access your private keys. We have guides for utilizing some popular tools for accessing private keys on tails.

Since the BIP39 tool is fairly complex, we also have a primer on how to use it to get at the required WIF private keys from your seed phrase:

Proceeding

Once you have prepared, you can actually start transacting with the bitcoin_fork_claimer tools:

Related Articles