Bitcoin Cash (sometimes referred to as Bcash, and mostly using the tickers BCH or BCC) launched today. Anyone who held bitcoin at 12:20 p.m. UTC should have an equivalent amount of BCH attributed to their Bitcoin private keys.
This guide will explain how to secure your private keys so you could be sure to access your BCH. At the time of writing that article, There are still a lot of uncertainties about how this event would play out.
You Can Take Your Time
Fortunately, if everything worked out as expected, Bitcoin Cash implements solid replay insurance. This implies you shouldn't have the capacity to unintentionally spend your BTC when you intend to spend BCH, or the other way around.
In that capacity, in the event that you couldn't care less about BCH is OK now, you don't have to do a thing. You can simply continue utilizing bitcoin as you generally have. In the event that you ever alter your opinion (and don't lose your Bitcoin private keys in the meantime), you can in any case claim your BCH anytime later on.
Claim Your Coin
Full Node Wallet
To begin with, the first suggestion was to utilize a full node wallet, as Bitcoin Core or Bitcoin Knots. These wallets store your private keys in a devoted organizer on your PC. You can make a reinforcement of this envelope utilizing the menu in your wallet. Once you've done this, you ought to have the capacity to import this reinforcement into a Bitcoin Cash full hub, as Bitcoin ABC.
However, to be on the safe side at this point in time, we are uncomfortable recommending any Bitcoin Cash software. It is all very new, developed within a short period of time, and the peer review done on all this software has probably not been as exuberant as it usually is within the Bitcoin space. It is therefore probably wise to not import your private keys in such software right away; instead, wait to see if there are any reports of problems.
Paper Wallet
The Second recommendation was to use a paper wallet. This advice was given in the context of storing your coins particularly for a longer period of time . But if you want to access your BCH, you can ofcourse do this right away.
Unfortunately, not many wallets actually support directly importing your private key(s) — and less so for BCH. One wallet that does allow for this option in Bitcoin is Electrum. Therefore, the BCH version of Electrum, dubbed “Electron Cash,” should allow you to do this, too.
However, Electrum itself has issued an official warning concerning Electron Cash. Electron Cash is not properly vetted and therefore not guaranteed to work as advertised. This is a big risk, and we recommend against using it for now. (This may change in the future.)
Hardware Wallet
The third suggestion was to use a hardware wallet, as listed on bitcoin.org. Two of these hardware wallets in particular, Trezor and Ledger, have gone through the effort of offering you access to your BCH. So if you have one of these wallets, you’re in luck: this is probably the safest and easiest way to access your BCH.
Ledger has published a blog post explaining how to access your BCH, so you can just check that one out.
Trezor has also published a blog post on how to claim your BCH, Update: Trezor has removed BCH for now, due to a bug in their Bitcoin Cash backend server. Don't worry, your funds are secure.
The third hardware wallet, Digital Bitbox, has published an FAQ on how to access your BCH. However, note that this wallet recommends using Electron Cash, which is not guaranteed to be secure.
So, to Recap …
You don’t have to do anything if you don’t want to, and you can take your time. If your private keys are secure, your funds are secure.
If you want to use your BCH in any way, it's best to first move your BTC to a whole new address that you control, or even an address generated from a whole new seed. (But don’t lose your old private keys or seed: these still hold your BCH!)
Once you know what you’re doing, move your BCH either to a new address you control or perhaps to an exchange to sell, or whatever it is you want to do with your “free money.”