Bitcoin Gold – November BTG Hard Fork Different From BTC & BCH?
We already have Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash. Are you ready for Bitcoin Gold?
A small group of bitcoin developers and miners plan to complete a fork of the blockchain on October 25. That hard fork would create a new version of bitcoin called Bitcoin Gold. By November 1, the developers plan to open Bitcoin Gold trading on exchanges.
The goal of the project is the same goal as any bitcoin hard fork: to improve the protocol. Bitcoin Gold appears to be designed specifically to challenge Bitcoin Cash.
Details about the project were scarce when it first hit the internet in August. Over September, however, more details about Bitcoin Gold have become available.
The Bitcoin Gold project is led by Jack Liao, CEO of LightningASIC, a Hong Kong-based bitcoin mining firm.
There’s a lot of controversy over what Bitcoin Gold means for the community. The general sentiment seems to be that Bitcoin Gold is a non-issue and an insignificant development. Some believe it’s a purposeful attempt to divide the bitcoin community even further.
Others, however, believe Bitcoin Gold could be the future of bitcoin, and a genuine improvement on the original codebase.
Most analysts are pointing to the launch of Bitcoin Cash as a precedent for Bitcoin Gold. Bitcoin Cash was hyped far more than Bitcoin Gold has been hyped so far. When BCH launched on August 1, the price fluctuated wildly before settling into the $450 to $600 range. Today, it’s worth about 12% as much as the original bitcoin, and ultimately produced a smaller bitcoin network.
With that in mind, Bitcoin Gold looks like it will be even smaller than Bitcoin Cash. Bitcoin Cash had a modest amount of mining support, while only a few miners appear to be preparing to back Bitcoin Gold at this time.
Of course, we wouldn’t be talking about Bitcoin Gold if it had 0 potential. Let’s take a closer look at some of the proposed benefits and changes behind Bitcoin Gold.
What Are The Advantages Of Bitcoin Gold?
One of the main goals of Bitcoin Gold is to make a truly decentralized version of bitcoin.
To do that, Bitcoin Gold’s developers hope to open up mining to more participants by replacing bitcoin’s mining algorithm with one that will allow it to be mined with graphics card. The idea is to make big miners – which are often seen as controversial figures in the bitcoin community – less relevant.
“Bitcoin gold will implement a proof-of-work change from bitcoin's SHA256 to Equihash, a memory-hard algorithm that is ASIC-resistant and optimized for GPU mining,” explained Bitcoin Gold developer “The Sorrow”, as reported by Coindesk.
Ultimately, aside from the details mentioned above, we don’t have much information about Bitcoin Gold or how it will work. Details are scarce at this time.
The Bitcoin Gold Project Is Still Evolving
Bitcoin Gold is in active development. Most details of the public haven’t yet been made public, and certain details have changed over time.
For example, the original website mentioned an ICO where 1% of Bitcoin Gold coins would go to the developer team, although details of that ICO have since been removed.
Bitcoin Gold Conclusion
Overall, based on what we can see online, Bitcoin Gold appears to be a minimalistic fork of Bitcoin Core’s blockchain built in the spirit of Litecoin. Only a few conservative modifications have been made.
After the launch of Bitcoin Cash in August, many people predicted that hard forks would become more common across the bitcoin community. Some people genuinely want to improve bitcoin’s blockchain, while others want to take bitcoin in new directions. Some people, of course, just want to make money.
Stay tuned for more information about Bitcoin Gold as the currency prepares to launch on October 25, with Bitcoin Gold appearing on exchanges starting on November 1.
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