Everything you need to know about Bitcoin Gold

A couple of months after Bitcoin Cash split from the Bitcoin network, its blockchain experienced another hard fork known as Bitcoin Gold (BTG).

The goal of Bitcoin Gold is to change the mining paradigm

According to the creators, the Bitcoin blockchain has become too centralized. Large companies with huge mining pools now mine the majority of Bitcoins. BTG developers believe that this does not correspond to the main ideas and goals of distributed ledger technology and p2p cryptocurrencies. 

The goal of Bitcoin Gold is to create a network where any user can mine using basic hardware. Thus, Bitcoin Gold mining will be distributed among a large number of miners, and not a narrow circle of large monopolists.

Today, almost all mining on the Bitcoin network occurs using ASIC miners. These devices are designed specifically for Bitcoin mining and are a million times better at mining cryptocurrency than the average PC. However, it is worth remembering that buying, installing and operating an ASIC is too expensive and is not suitable for the average user.

In addition, the most successful mining pools use entire ASIC farms that work 24/7. Small miners simply cannot compete with this. In order to make Bitcoin mining fairer, the Bitcoin Gold team is proposing to change the blockchain to eliminate the possibility of ASIC mining.

Who received Bitcoin Gold?

The Bitcoin Gold fork appeared on October 24, 2017, along with the appearance of block 491407 on the Bitcoin blockchain.

Since BTG is a fork of Bitcoin, people who had BTC before the fork received the same the amount of BTG at a rate of 1:1. If your wallet is configured correctly, you don't need anything special to receive BTG. BTG trading is available on about 20 exchanges, such as HitBTC, OKEx, Bitfinex, Binance.

How to mine Bitcoin Gold?

The setup process is quite simple, you mine with a GPU and not with an ASIC. 

First, you need to join a mining pool. There are ten different pools to choose from, with pool.gold being the most popular choice. Next, you will need to download the mining software of the selected pool and follow the instructions. Pool.gold offers mining software for NVIDIA and Radeon.

If you do not have a BTG wallet, install it. 

Although Bitcoin Gold is a hard fork of Bitcoin, it is not a direct competitor... And while other Bitcoin forks, like BCH, are trying to lure Bitcoin miners to their blockchain, BTG's anti-ASIC algorithm means that miners will have no incentive to switch to mining the new currency.

Bitcoin Gold competes with other anti-ASIC cryptocurrencies like Ethereum, since mining on such blockchains occurs using a network of small GPU miners. It is not yet clear what, other than a possible sharp increase in the price of the asset, could encourage miners to switch to BTG mining. 

At the moment, Bitcoin Gold is the only fork of Bitcoin that has implemented an anti-ASIC algorithm. In addition, BTG is the only Bitcoin fork that simultaneously supports Segwit technology and replay protection. Replay protection is vital when implementing a fork of an existing blockchain. 

What do people think about Bitcoin Gold?

Most new cryptocurrencies have anti-ASIC algorithms, promoting decentralization is becoming one of the industry standards. At its core, Bitcoin Gold is one of the solutions to decentralize mining on the Bitcoin network.

Despite this, it cannot be said that the current Bitcoin mining system is completely unusable. But still, some community members criticized it, and the centralization of this system is a big disadvantage. 

The general opinion of cryptocurrency experts is that Bitcoin Gold does not have enough new features to be called an independent investment asset. And, although receiving additional BTG from a network split never hurt anyone, we recommend that you take your time placing orders to buy this asset.

According to www.retailcrowd.co.uk