Bitcoin Gold

bitcoin gold symbol

Bitcoin Gold (BTG) is a hardfork of the cryptocurrency Bitcoin. The fork occurred in late October 2017, on block 491407. The purpose of the fork is to create an ASIC resistant Bitcoin, by reusing Equihash proof-of-work algorithm from Zcash. The token debuted at №5 on Coinmarketcap.

Contents

What is Bitcoin Gold?

Bitcoin Gold is a proposed fork to the Bitcoin network to create a new blockchain. The new blockchain will be incompatible with the existing version of Bitcoin.

The Bitcoin Gold fork from the original Bitcoin blockchain took place on October 24, 2017 at block height 491407. There are any number of reasons for cryptocurrencies to experience a hard fork, including improvements to the code, differences among developers, or changing goals. In the case of Bitcoin Gold, the stated purpose for the fork was to “Make Bitcoin decentralized again.”

Bitcoin Gold coin price

The price of BTG token or Bitcoin Gold coin is always chaining, however, BitcoinWiki gives you a chance to see the prices online on Coin360 widget.

Mining Bitcoin Gold

Bitcoin mining can be profitable, but it is also very resource intensive. This has led to miners choosing to pool their resources together, and to large centralized mining operations, housing hundreds of very powerful mining rigs, and bringing immense computing resources in the process.

This means that the solo miner, those who wish to simply mine on their own from home, were forced to spend large amounts of money to build their own super-powerful mining rigs. Those who didn’t choose to do this would be passed over in the mining process as their computers simply didn’t have the computational power to solve a block before the professional systems. Or they could join mining pools, further centralizing Bitcoin mining themselves.

Bitcoin Gold took as one of its central goals to change the mining algorithm, and in so doing prohibit the use of specialized ASIC chips in mining. This keeps the large mining operations from dominating the mining process, and allows solo miners to continue mining with only their computers GPU.

Bitcoin Gold Wallet

Buy Bitcoin Gold

Exchanges

Bitcoin Gold has never had a problem with cryptocurrency exchange listings, and it was listed on some of the biggest right from its inception. And it continues to add more exchange listings even six months after the fork. This means you’ll never have a problem finding a place to buy or sell your Bitcoin Gold.

According to the Bitcoin Gold website, as of May 2018, the cryptocurrency is trading live on at least 30 exchanges including the largest. For example, they are listed on Binance, Bitfinex and Bittrex. Below is an example of some of the exchanges[1].

PayPal

There is no way to directly buy Bitcoin Gold with PayPal. You will have to first buy bitcoin with PayPal and then convert the bitcoins to Bitcoin Gold using a service like Binance.

Cash

There is no way to directly purchase Bitcoin Gold with cash. Not even any ATMs support buying Bitcoin Gold.

You will first have to buy bitcoins with cash and then convert the BTC to Bitcoin Gold using a service like Changelly or Binance.

Bitcoin

You can use Binance to easily exchange bitcoins for Bitcoin Gold.

Skrill

BitPanda allows Europeans to buy Bitcoin Gold directly with Skrill.

Ethereum

You can use Binance to easily exchange Ethereum for Bitcoin Gold.


Fraudulent activities and hacking attempts

What is Bitcoin Gold (BTG)? Review of Prices, Wallets, Exchanges and Mining

Between 12-15 November 2017 users of Bitcoin Gold started reporting that their wallets were being emptied of various cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin, Bitcoin Gold, Ether (Ethereum) and Litecoin. Investigations revealed that an open source wallet found on mybtgwallet.com and linked to from the Bitcoin Gold website was stealing users’ master passphrases or “recovery seeds” used to generate the private keys for multi-wallets containing multiple cryptocurrencies[2].

At first the BTG development team issued statements to the media that the wallet was “modified by unknown parties long after it was originally published”. They later changed their statement after it became apparent that the website wasn’t hacked and the developer, going only by the name “John Dass”, broke all communication with the team. Some users reported that they only used the wallet on 12 November when Bitcoin Gold’s mainnet was launched and subsequently had their funds transferred between 14 and 15 November. It’s still not known who changed the website code and installed a broken security certificate after the keys were stolen so that it would look like it was hacked.

An analysis revealed that the code contained a line to convert the entered passphrases into Google Analytics cookies that could later be retrieved. Altogether more than 440 Bitcoin worth more than $3 million at the time together with unknown but smaller amounts of Bitcoin Gold, Ether and Litecoin were transferred from users’ wallets.

On 26 November 2017 the Bitcoin Gold team issued a statement that their Windows wallet contained on their Github repository contained a file of “suspicious origin”. The team stated: “Until we know otherwise, all users should presume this file was created with malicious intent – to steal cryptocurrencies and/or user information. The file does not trigger antivirus / anti-malware software, but do not presume the file is safe.” It further advised users to check their computers for malware and move all wallet funds to new addresses.

Criticisms

From its inception Bitcoin Gold has been marred in controversy. Developers initially planned on an ICO to raise funds. This was then changed to an ICO and premine with the ICO part later dropped. A premine is usually frowned upon by the crypto community with many calling the fork a money grab.

See Also on BitcoinWiki

External links

References

  1. ↑ https://www.coinbureau.com/review/bitcoin-gold-btg/ Coinbureau – Review of Bitcoin Gold (BTG)
  2. ↑ Bitcoin Gold Coin Wiki