New Cryptocurrency, Bitcoin Gold (BTG) Hard Fork Is Underway

Bitcoin Gold was primed and ready to go when the Bitcoin blockchain hit block number 491,407. Well that time has passed now and the official Bitcoin Gold fork is now underway. When the process is complete the new cryptocurrency (BTG) will be released to everyone who held Bitcoin at the time of the fork.

The main aim of the Bitcoin Gold project is to ensure decentralization of the blockchain. Currently the Bitcoin blockchain has a strong barrier to entry with an elite few controlling the majority of the mining operations. Large mining companies control a large percentage of the network pool by using expensive ASIC miners that are both costly and difficult for the average user to get a hold of.

Bitcoin gold takes a different approach and uses a GPU friendly hashing algorithim, much like some other cryptocurrencies, such as Monero, Ethereum or ZenCash. However, just because a fork has been initiated does not mean that BTG will take off and gain value. Support for popular wallets is absolutely necessary for the new crypto to take off. Afterall, what good is BTG if the average user can't even aquireor spend it. Additionally, miners will also need to jump on the Bitcoin Gold bandwagon to keep the blockchain humming along.

The developers of Bitcoin Gold will be running the new BTG blockchain in isolation for a while before opening up mining to the public. They may cite that they need to work out any kinks (which I'm sure is true) but obviously they want to claim the block rewards for themselves in the early stages as well, in hopes that it will attain value much like Bitcoin Cash (BTC) did.

Time will tell whether or not BTG will take off and what effect it has on the value of the original Bitcoin. As more and more forks occur we could see the value of Bitcoin be diluted. The "value" for these new forks has to come from somewhere.

Bitcoin Gold, according to the developers, will be ready for the public on November 1st.