I have had a few questions about protecting bitcoin in a hard fork from friends and colleagues recently. I have also read people asking this question in various bitcoin forums throughout the internet and while I have seen a lot of good advice out there, I have also seen some terrible advice.

Protecting your bitcoin has come to a head recently with a new bitcoin fork about to happen at block 494,784. I will try to spare you my opinion as to what fork is ‘right or wrong’ or any of the politics involved, I will just tell you how to protect your bitcoin by splitting them, as safely as possible, if that is what you chose to do.

I mostly want to help you understand how and why this method of spiting works so you can make the best-informed decision you can. My hope is that if you have already decided to split your coins I can point you to a method that is (relatively) safe and easy to follow so you don't end up being forked.

In less than a months time the fix put into place to prevent a fork like the one on the 11th of March will no longer be in place and miners will again be able to make large blocks that will be rejected by version 0.7.2 bitcoind software …