What is Bitcoin Gold?
In this article, I will give you a thorough review of what the Bitcoin Gold blockchain and native coin are. Bitcoin Gold is the second fork of the Bitcoin network appearing after Bitcoin Cash. The second fork of the cryptocurrency giant took place on 24th October 2017 at block height 491,407 giving birth to the BTG crypto coin. The new blockchain shares the transactional history of Bitcoin, so the same amount of your owned BTC will be given to you in BTG. The goal of this new cryptocurrency was to introduce a more resistant to ASICs mining algorithm giving a better chance to the standard user to be a part of the network and be incentivized.
The maximum supply of BTG is capped at 21 million just like Bitcoins with the same block rewards and cycles as its origin network. The prediction for the final BTG coin to be mined is at roughly 2140 year. After that, the only incentive for miners on the network will be the transaction fees within the blocks.
Advantages
One of the main advantages of the Bitcoin Gold network is that it is designed with equal opportunity in mind. Unlike its bigger brother, Bitcoin, it is easier and actually can be effective and profitable to mine BTG with a GPU miner. Other noteworthy pros include:
- Due to the ability to be mined with GPUs, the Bitcoin Gold cryptocurrency does not require very expensive equipment like ASIC miners to be mined. This increases decentralization.
- Since it’s a Bitcoin fork and shares the same transactional history, you will have the same number of BTG as the number of BTC that you held before the fork
Disadvantages
Of course, there are some disadvantages that the network possesses. For example, one of the main ones is when the BTG was in its early stages and the team pre-mined thousands of coins, making them appear malicious. There are a few more deficiencies that are worth mentioning:
- Delays in releasing the source code which raises suspicion
- The team appear to be indecisive when making decisions regarding if they would also be mining BTG, which really made the community loose trust
History and Evolution
The Bitcoin Gold project was created by Jack Liao. He is the founder of Lightning ASIC, which is a computer mining company in Hong Kong. He went public with the project in July 2017 and gathered a team of specialist to help him develop the network.
Part of the team consists of fellow co-founders Robert Kuhne, Alejandro Regojo and Martin Kuvandzhiev, marketing director, Igor Soshkin, lead designer, Franco Niebles, and communications director, Edward Iskra. They are currently working towards future updates for the network like cross-chain atomic swaps, Schorr signatures, and additional privacy-oriented upgrades.
Bitcoin Gold’s Future
The first and main goal of the development team is to make Bitcoin Gold increasingly more and more ASIC resistant. The algorithm it currently uses was designed in such a way that developing and manufacturing an ASIC for BTG would prove a very expensive and inefficient endeavor. The second major goal is to make the network more resistant to 51% attacks as there are many hash rate providers like NiceHash, that can make it possible for a malicious organization to rent out enough computational power in order to control 51% of the mining strength in the network.
In addition to the earlier mentioned future updates, Bitcoin Gold has already integrated support for open-source libraries like CoPay, BitcoinJ, and BitcoinJS, as well as implemented Lighting Network. The future according to their roadmap promises a lot of new technology and great major updates.
Bitcoin Gold Blockchain
The Bitcoin Gold blockchain is a decentralized peer to peer network that uses the Proof of Work consensus mechanism. It is using the Zhash hashing algorithm and new coins are issued at every new block. Of course, just like its bigger counterpart, Bitcoin, the network goes through a reward halving cycle roughly every 4 years. Currently, the block reward is 12.5 BTG and it is expected to get reduced by half around the year 2020.
Due to it being a fork of Bitcoin, the BTG network shares some of the features as well. For example, the block time is 600 seconds or 10 minutes with a block size of 14.121 Kbytes. The difficulty adjustment of the network is also the same, with an automated scan of the overall block time for miners and adjusting itself every two weeks.
Bitcoin Gold Nodes
The nodes are the backbone of the network. There are two types of them present in Bitcoin Gold – full node and light node. The full nodes are the most vital ones. They download and distribute the full transaction history of the blockchain and also, they are the ones that validate transactions and blocks in the blockchain. On the other hand, light nodes are considered most of the active devices on the network. They don’t need to download a full copy of the blockchain history in order to be operational. Light nodes just need the headers of the blocks and memory requirements towards the device they are on are minimal. Please bear in mind that some wallets are designed to operate as a full node, while others can be only a light node.
- Light Nodes – To operate they download a part of the blockchain on the device and keep it updated. Light nodes serve no validation purposes
- Full Nodes – These are the most important ones for the network. To have a full node on the Bitcoin network, you will need to download the whole blockchain which is over 200GB currently. Full nodes are also called Full Validation Nodes. They are the ones that reach a final consensus on the validity of blocks from miners and thus allow the initiation of transactions
Bitcoin Gold Additional Features
One of the most notable features that the Bitcoin Gold network can offer its users is the integration of the Lightning Network. It is planned to be fully implemented by Q2 of 2019. Lightning Network is designed in such a way, that after adding it to the blockchain, it will allow near instantaneous transactions and a great decrease in fees. This is done through dedicated side channels that are created between users.
In short, when two user entities would like to trade on the network, a channel for them is opened that is hosted on a side chain. To open that tunnel, both users need to announce to the system with how much and what currency they are entering. Once in the side chain, they can trade between each other without limits and without delays. Both balances are being constantly monitored and when the users are finished with their exchanges, they close the channel and sign the final result of the trades. Then that result is fed to the blockchain network as one transaction, thus only one fee and less stress on the system.
Forks or Tokens Based on Bitcoin Gold
Soft Forks
As I mentioned earlier, the Bitcoin Gold cryptocurrency is a hard fork of Bitcoin. It emerged on 24th October 2017 and the main goal of the creation of this new cryptocurrency is providing an equal ground for mining and make GPU mining profitable again.
In its history, Bitcoin Gold had 1 major hard fork and 1 soft fork. The hard fork occurred at block 536,200 and it brought with it a change in the hashing algorithm from Equihash to Equihash-BTG (Zhash) in order to increase its resistance against ASIC miners, prevent double spending of coins and prevent 51% attacks on the network. The soft fork occurred in July 2018. Along with it, a mainnet upgrade was made.
How to Get Bitcoin Gold
If you would like to get a hold of some BTG coins, you have two options. You can either start mining them or go to an exchange and buy them with either fiat money or other cryptocurrencies.
Where to Buy Bitcoin Gold
If you are interested in straight up buying Bitcoin Gold coins, you will need to go to an exchange and see your options. Some exchanges offer crypto to fiat money pairs, while others offer only coin to coin trading. If you would like to use real life money, you can visit Bitfinex as it will offer you both of the above-mentioned options. Alternatively, if you already have some other cryptocurrencies in your possession and would like to trade them in, I can recommend checking out Binance, as it is one of the largest exchanges in the world, as well as Hitbtc. I have put links to these exchanges below.
I would like to also give attention to what your motives for obtaining BTG can be. As this network is relatively new, anything can happen in its future. It has been proven more than once, that the past of a cryptocurrency does not dictate its future. The markets are as volatile as ever and Bitcoin Gold could skyrocket in price and demand. When that happens, the opportunity to gain an amazing profit will arise.
| Exchange | Cryptocurrencies | Fiat Money | |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Binance
|
Bitcoin, Ethereum | – | Trade now |
|
Bitfinex
|
Bitcoin, Tether | EUR, USD, GBP, JPY | Trade now |
|
hitbtc
|
Bitcoin, Ethereum, Tether | – | Trade now |
How to Mine Bitcoin Gold
The alternative to buying the coins from an exchange is mining them yourself. The mining process will require some hardware that can be relatively expensive, depending on your goal. If you are not new to the mining field, you can use the same hardware that you use for mining other Zhash coins like Zcash, Zclassic, Bitcoin Private and others. This means that a GPU card of at least 3GB in memory would be a good choice when mining. I would also like to remind you that depending on the scale that you would like to get to, electricity consumption will rise as well. You can check this How To Mine Bitcoin Gold Guide if you would like to know more.
| Мining Hardware | Hash Rate | Power | Price | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nvidia 1080 TI | 770 Sol/s | 180W | $ 714 | buy now |
| Nvidia 1080 G1 | 550 Sol/s | 160W | $ 396 | buy now |
| Nvidia 1070 | 480 Sol/s | 140W | $ 420 | buy now |
Wallets for Bitcoin Gold
In order to own BTG coins and be a part of the network, you will need a wallet that will give you access and control over your funds. One of your options and what I would recommend using is the Official Bitcoin Gold Core Wallet as it is backed and supported by the development team and it is compatible with Windows, MacOS, Linux and even Linux using the ARM architecture.
For the purpose of providing full assistance, I would like to also add the Core Wallet Windows Install Guide, Core Wallet MacOS Install Guide and Core Wallet Linux Install Guide. Finally, please don’t forget to always back up your wallet as it will give you a safety net in case something happens and add an additional layer of security.
Alternative Wallets
If you don’t want to use the official Bitcoin Gold Core Wallet, fret not, there are alternatives out there. These alternative wallets are mainly developed by other entities that specialize in this kind of technology. Alternative wallets can provide a wide array of additional features like an improved user interface, multiple cryptocurrency support, security etc. You can find a short list of what I consider to be good alt wallets below.
Desktop Wallets
Mobile Wallets
Online Wallets
Bitcoin Gold Network Security
It is no secret that Bitcoin Gold had a shaky start as it experienced its first security breach straight after launching. Their cloud site was receiving over 10 million requests each minute, causing the network to clog up and crash. Even though the DDoS attack was handled relatively quickly, the community lashed out towards the development team for their lack of competence. Later on the same year, on 18th May, the Bitcoin Gold network experienced its biggest attack yet. The malicious party that hacked the network managed to take more than $18 million worth of BTG coins from various accounts and exchanges, which includes Bittrex.
News and Useful Links
If you would like to always stay on top of news and updates regarding Bitcoin Gold, you can start by visiting their official website. Alternatively, you can register and follow their official forums, as well as their social media accounts.