Bitcoin Cash or BCH is a cryptocurrency that was created from a hardfork of Bitcoin (BTC), therefore users can usually use a wallet address of BTC for BCH transactions. In the beginning, the wallet address of BCH was in the 'Legacy' format. Later on, the team of developers of BCH created a new format called 'Cash Address' to make the BCH differ from the BTC address to prevent confusion.
There are 2 major formats of BCH wallet address:
- Legacy format is the old wallet address format that starts with number 1 or 3.
- Cash address format (CashAddr) is the new wallet address format that can start with or without 'bitcoincash:'. (However, for internal transfer, please always indicate this text at the beginning of the address when creating a BCH transaction to prevent the loss of assets.) This format is also used on the Bitkub system.
The good news is every Legacy address has its own Cash address format that users can check by themselves on blockchain.com.
Sometimes users are unable to transfer BCH to a Legacy wallet; this is because the exchange does not support (unable to detect) the Legacy address format.
In this case, users are advised to contact the Legacy wallet provider whether they can use the Cash address format of the Legacy wallet for BCH transactions and the assets will not be lost. (If it is okay to do so, you only need to check the Cash address format as previously mentioned and use it for your next BCH transaction!)
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